What is relevant is the distance to the focal plane.
For typical screens, the focal distance and the screen distance are obviously identical.
For VR systems, they're very different. The last one I tried had a focal plane that was about 4 meters away. This makes it better than typical screens!
However, the low resolution is an issue. I've found that I get sore eyes if I use a low-resolutions screen. This is because my eyes try to focus, fail, and keep "hunting" by changing focus back and forth looking for the point of sharp focus -- but it's never there. This is why all of my displays are 4K.
For VR because of the large field of view, the required resolution is at least 8K per eye or equivalent. Ideally a "fake" 16K using foveated rendering.
Similarly VR has a narrow range of possible brightness, this is less of an issue but can also cause problems long term.
So while I spend 8-10 hours a day in VR, I don't do it all at once - I do take breaks, which means walking the dog 3 times a day right now, in addition to bio breaks or just stretching my legs a bit.
Pardon and I believe that I am futurist .. forward thinker like AR Glasses apps I want to make...
- Keep track of real life ping pong game score via AI & show each awarded point in glasses view (can do similar for fencing, card games, etc)
- AR location history (show me how this building looked decades ago)
- AR turn day into night & vice versa
- AR zoom in ... Apple just added their Magnifer app .. put that in AR/smart glasses
AR/smart glasses (really should call them that "smart," it makes more sense to regular consumer) will be revolutionary for sure as it enhances and innovates something millions and millions already do wear glasses. People will pick them up by the millions to billions and possibly because some of the app ideas I listed above.
VR has been around for 30 years .... why would millions to billions want to strap on a headset to talk to memojis of their co-workers for hours each day. It's isolating vs. AR ... AR glasses will enhance social behaviors ... VR i never see becoming anything like the iPhone. AR glasse are no doubt the next iPhone especially where developers create revolutionary apps for them.
Ask those outside of your VR circle ... are they excited to use VR ... strap a headset on their face and work in a virtual world with their co-workers' memojis for 8 hours or would they prefer to wear their sunglasses or prescription glasses that are smart & enhance the world around them like never before. If my AR ideas are not good ...not ground breaking ideas that get millions to billions of regular people buying them im sure other developers ideas will be even better and prompt billions to adapt and buy them. But i am excited to be able to play real life games like ping pong (card games) and have my glasses keep/show me the score in my glasses view. I guess that is a stupid completely void of innovation type idea..... not changing how we do everyday things
Maybe out of all this work in VR things will be learned and used to create smart prescription or sunglasses.
It's obviously easier to look up from a physical screen and look around to change up your focal distance, but frankly, this is something that people already forget to do -- and it's just as easy to do in VR if you've got something in the far distance to look at.
Then your point definitely stands: taking off a headset in order to mix up your focal distance does sound like a pain.
I rather doubt it, but if we're lucky it's something they're working on. A generation or two after, maybe?
On a VR headset, your eyes will always focus at the exact same distance until you remove the headset.
This is almost always one of two things:
* A low or unsteady framerate or tracking
* Lack of spending twenty minutes in it to teach your body to cope with the aforementioned low or unsteady framerate or tracking
The Quest 2 won't drop below 90hz if in any productivity app, and you can even turn it up to 120hz (it can handle games at 120hz; a productivity app won't put any stress on the hardware), so there isn't really the opportunity for nausea.
It really does sound like you've only used Cardboard or Daydream, since the only thing you're listing is Street View. There's nothing wrong with Cardboard and Daydream, but they're 3DoF and you were lucky if it would hit 60hz consistently. They're a box for nausea. Even the original Vive (still an admirable headset, although pretty rough these days) is significantly below the state of the art enough that judgements about VR as a whole can't justifiably be made.
In my understanding it is extremely rare to experience VR motion sickness if the motion in VR matches the motion in IRL.
Distance isn't really a factor here, at least not as far as total light entering your eyes goes - a 1W/m^2 source 10cm from your eyes causes the same amount of light to enter as a 16W/m^2 source 40cm away.
What matters, as others have pointed out, is the distance between your eyes and the focal plane.
The resolution isn’t there yet compared to my 4-5k monitors for text, but clearly will get there in the future. For now I don’t see what advantages it really gives me compared to a normal monitor in the real world, especially if I’m just coding. The exception would be if I were on something like an airplane — being able to look forward is a big deal here.
Personally it makes me feel a bit nauseous, particularly if there’s any movement (I get motion sick easily in VR but not normally in real life). My understanding is that about 20% of the population is like this and nothing is known to prevent it.
There are cool things about VR that I really enjoy (particular things like Google street view) but I think it’s way over hyped, and possibly dystopian depending on what people are leaving behind.