Victorian VR

Writing in Wired in 2015, Will Smith finds it disheartening that VR items in the Oculus Store are listed with “a comfort meter that purports to let potential customers know in advance how sick their purchase is going to make them.”

There’s something wonderfully Victorian about a sick-o-meter for stories. Surely some early novels catalog somewhere offered something similar, to warn impressionable young ladies of the “sensations” to which fiction might give rise.

Just as novels posed threats to the borders of bodies too, once upon a time, when the history of this moment in VR is written, these sorts of tips will be used to point out how general unease with the very notion of VR manifested itself physically. (Meanwhile, can’t wait for less sick-making VR experiences.)

Source: Stop Calling Google Cardboard’s 360-Degree Videos ‘VR’ | WIRED