It's not about switching time, it's about cognitive load. If any dense information creeps into your far peripheral vision, it might as well not exist because you have to locate it. During any concentrated work, only something you can fit in the center of your binocular field of vision (roughly speaking) doesn't cause severe mental context switching.

I tried to work on three 16:9 displays for some time, and found it exhausting. The cognitive overload isn't worth it, workspace switching with a hotkey turned out to be far easier for me. That's not even mentioning constant neck movement.

Maybe it's just me though, I can't speak for different people; but I strongly suspect it's the same for many.

> During any concentrated work, only something you can fit in the center of your binocular field of vision (roughly speaking) doesn't cause severe mental context switching.

I mean this doesn't seem to be true for anyone working in the trades. "Mise-en-place" allowed me to tend a 24-foot-long bar by myself with 60+ customers. At the time, I was essentially a highly trained, top performing athlete. Just because I can't see the cash register / margarita machine / well drinks / etc... it doesn't mean it's not an extension of my body.

It is possible for your entire workshop to become a second-nature extension of self, not just the desk in front of your face.

I think part of this discussion is: "What can be part of a singular focused task vs. what requires some amount of 'context switching'?" And its not always super obvious. Practicing a workflow can integrate context-switches so that it becomes one singular focused task.

But VR/AR can also assist with neurological training by allowing you to switch environments when you switch contexts. For someone who is WFH in a studio apartment it can separate their "gaming desk" from their "work desk" from their "hobby desk" ... or even their "React desk" from their "Concurrency-wrangling desk" from their "Email/Communications battlestation". This could enable much faster context switching -- meeting in 30 seconds? pop over to your "Virtual Conferencing Room". Then come back to your sanctum of concurrency troubleshooting.

Allow me to summarize this perspective as the future of "cognitive ergonomics" of sorts and second entirely the idea that it's the biggest promise of VR from an experience standpoint. Literally immersion in a wider context, not deliberate focus that by very definition a narrow viewport already covers quite well. Conversely to physical displays, contextual ergonomics is where VR must shine.

The way you expressed it actually reminds me of Iain McGilchrist's "left brain" versus "right brain" thinking model, wherein the narrow-ish "task-focused" approach is typical left-brain concern (essentialist, to a fault), whereas the wider "contextual" approach is typical right-brain associative concerns ("everything is complex/connected"). I'd never noticed this ergonomics question (should I say dichotomy) could be neurologically framed that way, thanks for the insight.

I'd imagine it changing the way I work to be closer to what I do when working on a physical project. Like when building a book case I have various pieces laid out in different stages of completion. My context switching involves moving physically from one to the other which provides a physical reinforcement to the mental change I have to make. Just like I have all the shelves on one bench ready to be sanded and the trim on another being cut to length I could have my server side code on one wall and the client code on another. It'd probably be a lot better for my posture and fitness to physically move from one to the other rather than be glued to a chair for 8 hours.

The parent was talking about moving around in a room filled with virtual displays. Regarding eye motion, I already use a screen filling my non-peripheral field-of-view (~120°), so any additional screen would require significant head movement.

You sit with your eyes closer than half the width of your screen? That is either a HUGE screen and/or you sit with eyes less than 14" away, which is at least novel?

Of course you need two of those screens to fill your field of view, unless you have a square screen that goes below your desk, but I'm sure that's available somewhere.

I’m near-sighted, and checking now it’s really more like 90-100° horizontally, but moving my eyes outside of that range without moving my head is actually not comfortable.

My subjective impression is that the nonperipheral visual field isn’t square. I would find 3:2 displays optimal, or maybe rather 16:11. While a 16:9 or 16:10 display could be extended vertically to fill more of the visual field, that extended portion is not large enough to usefully fit a second monitor there (without head movement).

Eyes (lenses/retina) are spherical with roughly (slightly more than) 100deg field of view each and a little more than 20deg left/right overlap at the nose. That gives a total range of almost 180deg horizontal-yaw and 100deg vertical-pitch. You don't even notice most eye motion... if you did then every time you moved 2.5deg you'ld think about it. Apparent field of view is made up of many saccades that allow your much higher high resolution fovea to cover the interesting parts as it moves/scans/jumps around. By the time you're +/- 10deg from center, you've lost 5x in resolution.

If you're like most people and the horizontal field is close to max, you'll do better stacking monitors than putting them side/side. Inter pupillary distance is a bit over 2in (~65mm), but that's usually small compared to screen distance, which is why I say roughly square (~16:14).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fovea_centralis