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I absolutely love hearing stories from astronauts about how quickly they adapt to microgravity and how easy it is to forget when they come back. Things like st

I absolutely love hearing stories from astronauts about how quickly they adapt to microgravity and how easy it is to forget when they come back. Things like stories of them suddenly letting go of stuff they are holding on earth and expecting it to float there, or reaching out to grab on to a wall to stop themselves while walking down a hallway.

taneq 8y ago
I've heard a couple of similar stories from people who spend a lot of time in VR and forget that the rules don't transfer back. One guy smacked his head into the fridge door trying to look inside it because he forgot that he would actually collide with the door.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  I'm really not looking forwards to VR driving games, then.
  - lqet 8y ago
    I heavily played GTA: Vice City during the time I learned how to drive. After I got my driver's licence, I remember one instance where I clearly noticed how my brain drifted into GTA mode while I was driving through town. I had to actively remember myself that this is a real environment and that I cannot just drive over the street lamp post without anything happening. I talked to a classmate about this and he had had a similar experience, but with Mafia (which had a very realistic car handling, you could even activate an expert mode where you had to shift manually iirc). I stopped playing GTA for a while after that.
    - mises 8y ago
      This has been part of my concern with such things. I don't know that the alarmism about "violent videogames create young terrorist-wannabes" is correct, but it's hard (especially as games become increasingly photorealistic and physics become more and more accurate) to distinguish, I'm sure. It's a little scary to think we might have a guy run someone else over, and plead insanity saying "I thought it was a videogame". This strikes me as another manifestation of the same problem we will have to deal with concerning things like Google Duplex: is it okay to have robots that can impersonate humans? Games that can impersonate the real world? There was a discussion the other day on how online dating apps are causing a large percentage of men to end up "involuntarily celibate"; some people proposed sex-bots as a solution. Can we really live with ourselves as people and as a society if these things come to pass?
      - taneq 8y ago
        That's the thing, though. It's not "I thought I was in a video game, officer." (In fact that's often used as a strawman.) It's "my reflexes were slightly perturbed by the amount of time I've spent practicing an activity that looks very similar to this activity but has very different rules in some circumstances."
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      I'm surprised you developed connections between the two - I've been playing computer games a longtime, and find the cognitive load and muscle memory of real world activities to be markedly different than something like GTA, but I only was playing Need for Speed 2 as I learned to drive, so maybe that didn't quite meet the realism requirements, not to say Vice City is some VR masterpiece, but it was credible in its day.
      - lqet 8y ago
        if you drive down a straight road in a quiet town at constant speed and don't have to shift, I don't think the cognitive load is much bigger than driving around in GTA. After all, you are basically just scanning the environment in front of you for obstacles. It also seems to go both ways: when I returned to playing GTA after a few months, I was driving much more carefully in the game.
    - dangero 8y ago
      I crashed my car this way, but the game I was playing a lot was need for speed underground (I drove my exact car on the game). Was getting onto the freeway in Palo Alto, drifted right into the side of the onramp. As I was about to hit the wall my mind snapped out of it and I realized I can’t slide off the wall in real life, but it was also too late to stop.
  - taneq 8y ago
    For real, though, apparently there was a notable increase in young driver deaths when all the kids who grew up on Gran Turismo started driving for real. A whole generation had been trained on some level that crashing had no serious consequences.
    - kurtisc 8y ago
      Now I remember my Need For Speed strategy of holding down the accelerator and bouncing off walls to go around corners.
- Retra 8y ago
  I used to play a lot of emulated games with save states, and afterward, I kept getting small bouts of depression every time I realized I couldn't save the world and perfect something crazy.
- Klathmon 8y ago
  Now that you mention that i've absolutely felt that from VR! In my case it was because I got so used to the ability to point at something, "grab" it in the distance, then float it to my hand, that I tried to do it at one point to a can of soda in real life and felt really dumb!

taneq 8y ago

I've heard a couple of similar stories from people who spend a lot of time in VR and forget that the rules don't transfer back. One guy smacked his head into the fridge door trying to look inside it because he forgot that he would actually collide with the door.

whatshisface 8y ago
I'm really not looking forwards to VR driving games, then.
- lqet 8y ago
  I heavily played GTA: Vice City during the time I learned how to drive. After I got my driver's licence, I remember one instance where I clearly noticed how my brain drifted into GTA mode while I was driving through town. I had to actively remember myself that this is a real environment and that I cannot just drive over the street lamp post without anything happening. I talked to a classmate about this and he had had a similar experience, but with Mafia (which had a very realistic car handling, you could even activate an expert mode where you had to shift manually iirc). I stopped playing GTA for a while after that.
  - mises 8y ago
    This has been part of my concern with such things. I don't know that the alarmism about "violent videogames create young terrorist-wannabes" is correct, but it's hard (especially as games become increasingly photorealistic and physics become more and more accurate) to distinguish, I'm sure. It's a little scary to think we might have a guy run someone else over, and plead insanity saying "I thought it was a videogame". This strikes me as another manifestation of the same problem we will have to deal with concerning things like Google Duplex: is it okay to have robots that can impersonate humans? Games that can impersonate the real world? There was a discussion the other day on how online dating apps are causing a large percentage of men to end up "involuntarily celibate"; some people proposed sex-bots as a solution. Can we really live with ourselves as people and as a society if these things come to pass?
    - taneq 8y ago
      That's the thing, though. It's not "I thought I was in a video game, officer." (In fact that's often used as a strawman.) It's "my reflexes were slightly perturbed by the amount of time I've spent practicing an activity that looks very similar to this activity but has very different rules in some circumstances."
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    I'm surprised you developed connections between the two - I've been playing computer games a longtime, and find the cognitive load and muscle memory of real world activities to be markedly different than something like GTA, but I only was playing Need for Speed 2 as I learned to drive, so maybe that didn't quite meet the realism requirements, not to say Vice City is some VR masterpiece, but it was credible in its day.
    - lqet 8y ago
      if you drive down a straight road in a quiet town at constant speed and don't have to shift, I don't think the cognitive load is much bigger than driving around in GTA. After all, you are basically just scanning the environment in front of you for obstacles. It also seems to go both ways: when I returned to playing GTA after a few months, I was driving much more carefully in the game.
  - dangero 8y ago
    I crashed my car this way, but the game I was playing a lot was need for speed underground (I drove my exact car on the game). Was getting onto the freeway in Palo Alto, drifted right into the side of the onramp. As I was about to hit the wall my mind snapped out of it and I realized I can’t slide off the wall in real life, but it was also too late to stop.
- taneq 8y ago
  For real, though, apparently there was a notable increase in young driver deaths when all the kids who grew up on Gran Turismo started driving for real. A whole generation had been trained on some level that crashing had no serious consequences.
  - kurtisc 8y ago
    Now I remember my Need For Speed strategy of holding down the accelerator and bouncing off walls to go around corners.
Retra 8y ago
I used to play a lot of emulated games with save states, and afterward, I kept getting small bouts of depression every time I realized I couldn't save the world and perfect something crazy.
Klathmon 8y ago
Now that you mention that i've absolutely felt that from VR! In my case it was because I got so used to the ability to point at something, "grab" it in the distance, then float it to my hand, that I tried to do it at one point to a can of soda in real life and felt really dumb!