Oh, damn.

Ohhhhh.

Holy !

These people are panicking because they're being asked to step out of an elevator onto

a single plank that's suspended 80 stories in the air.

Oh, man.

This game is called Richie's Plank Experience and by their very real reactions you might

expect some groundbreaking, photorealistic visuals behind that headset.

Oh!

God!

No! !

But that's really not the case — Sure, it's nice, but it's clearly not real.

The graphics are really beautiful but the lighting isn't quite right - things are

just a little too diffused.

The buildings are almost too smooth.

The plants on the ground are clearly squared off.

It's hard to believe these people aren't dramatizing their reactions for the camera.

Oh!

God!

But it's not just the plank experience.

The internet is full of VR fails where people are sucked into pixelated worlds with disembodied

parts in front of them.

But this really got me thinking — How is it that a virtual world that doesn't look

very real at all, feel so real?

Of course, the first major difference between watching VR and being in it is putting on

the headset.

Here's where VR marketing has mostly failed.

Right?

Because it's always shown from a spectator's perspective.

And as a spectator, you do not get the experience of the person in VR.

Thong Nguyen is the founder and CEO of Roomera, a company that helps businesses test and understand

new spaces before they're built using virtual reality.

V.R. communicates to your brain in a different way than looking at a screen.

When looking at a screen — like our TV or phone — our brains read this as a flat image

in the same way we would view a picture.

If an object on a screen gets bigger or smaller or a person on TV moves toward the camera

you don't feel the need to take a step back or move out of their way, but in VR you might

want to because you're not looking at one screen — You're looking at two — And

those two screens are literally right in front your eyes.

Projecting a slightly different image into each eye.

Which is how our vision works in the real world — each eye takes in stimuli from a

slightly different vantage point.

You can test this: Hold your finger up in front of your face and wink each of your eyes.

Your finger should “jump” back and forth.

That “jump” is the difference between what your left and right eye are seeing.

The differences between what your eyes see conveys depth.

It conveys three dimensions.

This is known as stereopsis and VR developers have spent a lot of time perfecting it.

But what use is depth if you can't move through it?

Which brings us to the next most important way virtual reality tricks your brain: you

are the camera and it's fast enough where your brain starts interpreting it as your

perspective.

Head tracking allows a person in VR to look and move around a fake world in the same way

we look and move around a real one.

If you look left, you'll see more of the world to your left.

And if you look down…

(Screams) Ah.

Okay, maybe don't look down.

Other subtle effects make virtual spaces feel more real: Like 360 audio, which is a big

part of the plank experience.

As you turn your head the wind will subtly change.

The plank creaks, and if you listen closely a heart beat slowly begins to speed up.

Our brain takes all this new, virtual stimuli and begins to believe that this is reality.

Our brain has never really learned within the last one hundred fifty thousand years

to actually distinguish between computer generated content and the real world.

Dr. Frank Steinicke has been studying immersive technologies like VR for nearly 20 years.

If all the cues that we perceive from the virtual environment are so similar to the

cues that we get in the real world, it makes sense that we are unable to clearly distinguish

between both.

Our brains quickly adapt to virtual environments largely because it's wired to trust our

sense of sight.

There's some research showing that approximately 80 percent of all the information that we

perceive from our environment are based on vision only.

And this allows VR developers to manipulate our reality even further: what we found out

about 10 years ago is that if we guide users on a circular arc with a radius of 20 meters,

they have no chance to identify that.

They actually walk in a circle in the real world when they see a straight path in the

virtual environment.

You can walk an entire virtual city without ever leaving a room.

Once we believe the environment is real and accept that we're actually in it, our brains

then go on to fill in some other blanks: there is interesting findings that if you are in

the virtual world in a very, let's say, snow or icy environment, people feel cool, although

they're in the real world and maybe in a hot environment.

Outside of games, VR has shown a lot of promise in the medical world from reducing pain for

burn victims by immersing them in a snowy world while their bandages are changed and

with exposure therapy that helps people with phobias — like a fear of heights — and

body dysmorphia.

It's also been used for physical therapy like assisting elderly people with their balance.

Right now, we're still tethered to a system with a headset on our faces.

The graphics are nice, but not perfect — and so we're not fully immersed when we hover

80 stories above the ground — That is...we can still remember to take the headset off.

Steinicke cautions that it might not always be that way.

We can easily assume that within the next five to 10 years or so, we will not be able

to distinguish visually computer generated content from from real world content anymore.

And then, of course, there are a lot of ethical questions.

For now, VR might not look exactly like reality, but it follows a lot of the rules our brain

has learned to perceive as real, and that's often enough to make us sweat.