In SuperhotVR there are multiple acts of self harm; Shooting oneself in the head, jumping to your death. They make up a very very small amount of the game's content. After an update which made those scenes optional, the devs did another update and removed them all together. The VR community has surprisingly responded in a very mature and supportive manner.
LOL, just kidding. They're totally shitting themselves. https://old.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/op018r/all_scenes_alluding_to_self_harm_will_be_removed/ https://steamcommunity.com/games/617830/announcements/detail/2992063678829322337
Yes, people got used to it, but those same underlying functions happening in the brain are still there and they're only going to get more powerful as the technology advances. The entire goal of VR tech is to hijack so many of the senses that the brain no longer has a reference point to determine the difference between the real and the virtual. And that's not even really factoring in the danger of what's going to happen as we incorporate eye tracking, eeg, and other biometrics.
And btw, despite using modern VR for more than 6 years now, and playing half-life alyx for more than 50 hours with 3 play throughs I still find myself occasionally having uncontrollably visceral feelings of disgust to things like one of those nasty dark gray headcrabs crawling out of a dumpster next to me. And that's with video details on low. Each play through I've added something additional like a better headset or haptics and each time it results in a more immersive, fresher experience. We're barely scratching the surface.
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lol , you're agreeing with me and don't yet realize it. Do you think these are different cognitive mechanisms we're talking about? If people now are "used to movies" and not freaking out over trains, what changed that allowed them to make fools of themselves in VR? What we're talking about is an increasing exploitation of those same mechanisms. We went from surround sound and bigger and bigger screens in the cinema to smaller ones strapped to your face for stereoscopy that blows away typical cinema 3d and gives us almost total control over the visual cortex. By adding responsive movement tracking to the screens we're taking over our equilibrium and balance and overpowering our ability to track the world beyond the headset. By adding in hands and body tracking we're tying in our proprioception mapping to "dissolve" our brain's ability to track the body. Matter of fact much of Bailenson's research ties into how that affects our self-image, they're doing shit like giving peoples third arms and putting in them cow bodies. Again, we're barely scratching the surface and you're telling me that people got used to it while also telling me you get physiological reactions to configurations of light on a screen. We got used to it by accepting these things happening as part of the new normal, but the technology is still doing a number our brain.
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I don't talk about your airsoft idea because I find it laughable how you ignore the environment around airsoft as if most of the people involved in airsoft aren't playing war games fulfilling jingoist fantasies of the imperial nation that they've been raised in. But if you'd like me to address it; feel free to put an airsoft gun to your head, pull the trigger, and then get back to me if the feeling of the pellet bouncing off your skull encourages you to do it again the way people are whining about not being able to do it in VR anymore since that's what this conversation spawned from in the first place.
What makes you think we haven't? As if there aren't fucking massive fandoms of people cosplaying and getting way too into their favorite characters. Entire industries built on fulfilling those fantasies. A book, television, or movie is such a small portion of our lives, of our sensory inputs, and yet it fully takes over some peoples' lives.
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Lol. Aighty. Night.
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lmao. Yeah, the one acting like a debatebro here is definitely me. If I ever get to fulfill my hope of touring the VHIL I'll be sure to let them know some random guy on the internet says that in their almost 20 years of studying the psychological implications of VR that they forgot to consider movies. Take care.