What will happen if you are in Virtual Reality for a long time continuously? It is a question that all VR enthusiasts wonder at one point or another. For such curious VR fanatics, Jack Wilmot’s 168-hour experience of being in a VR headset would be an interesting one to follow.
So far, there were only speculations about the physical experiences of being in a VR headset for a long time. Experts believed that spending long hours in a VR headset might cause a loss of spatial awareness, disorientation and dizziness, nausea, seizures, trouble in focusing, eye soreness and other similar problems.
However, Jak’s experience gives us more than mere speculation. Wilmot, who is the co-founder of a VR Content Studio, decided to take up this challenge. He only had the option to switch between an Oculus headset that is computer-based and an untethered headset for 30 seconds while keeping his eyes closed. His Windows was also blacked out so that his physical body does not get into the daylight-dependent rhythm. He continued living like this for seven days.
Although Jak felt a bit of nausea, he could come back to his senses almost instantly. He said that wearing a VR headset for a long time can definitely be disorienting for the mind and is not a great idea. He even said that there is not a lot of take-away from the experiment although he did find it interesting to integrate into the real world. In his words, “I have never appreciated the smell of outside air so much. One thing we cannot replicate in nature.
We can do it visually and auditorily, but there is something about the energy of outside that is amazing.” With this experiment, it is evident that spending long and uninterrupted hours in the virtual world an actually harm the brain adversely. Therefore, despite all the breakthroughs in the VR world, it is also important to acknowledge its limitations. Thus, people who lose themselves in VR headsets for long hours should take Jak’s example and recognize theirs as well.
