Virtual Reality and Perception

If you like video games, then you've most likely have heard of Virtual Reality (VR). By putting on a headset, you are able to go to a completely new word in your living room. The sensation of being on an alien planet fighting aliens or exploring through a jungle is right at your fingertips. VR creates an out-of-body experience from actual reality. Although you do not see your actual body as explained with the out-of-body experience experiment in the textbook, you begin to think that you are in the reality that your VR headset has created for you, even though you just have a headset over your eyes. You begin to feel the environment around you, and if you're fighting villains and getting shot at with fictional ray guns, you're most likely fearing for your life. The reason for that is because the body that you see in the game feels like your own since it moves as if it was your actual body. As explained in Chapter 6, the brain is constantly figuring out where you are, and which body parts are yours as explained with the out-of-body experience and rubber hand illusion experiments. By putting on the VR headset, your brain sees what you see through the headset as reality, even though you know deep down that it is a virtual reality.

Reference
Guenard, Rebecca. “Perception Is Reality-And Virtual Reality.” Omnia, 13 July 2017, omnia.sas.upenn.edu/story/perception-reality%E2%80%94and-virtual-reality.