Towards an Analysis of Virtual Realism

Key insights

7 takeaways

01
The term "virtual realism" is ambiguous and should be decomposed into five distinct senses (immersion, psychological realism, depictive realism, ontological realism, and functional realism), each requiring separate evaluation rather than collapse into one notion of immersive realism.
02
Immersion, the most common framing in VR discussions, is primarily attentional rather than a form of realism: it can exist without realistic content, as in the non-realistic puzzle game Tumble VR, and realism can disrupt it, as in Resident Evil 7.
03
Psychological realism, drawing on the "virtual pit" experiment and reports of spatial presence, may be the predominant form of realism experienced in VR, and it does not depend on graphical fidelity.
04
Depictive realism, traced from Brunelleschi and Alberti through Hyman's optics-based defense, concerns whether VR images resemble natural vision, and the author argues VR's binocularity and motion tracking may strengthen it against Goodman's skepticism.
05
Ontological realism, following Chalmers, treats virtual objects as real digital objects, while functional realism asks whether VR preserves the function of real counterparts, illustrated by a study of ball-catching behavior.
06
The senses of realism are largely independent of one another, so collapsing them into a single notion obscures what is actually being claimed about VR.
07
The surrounding literature on presence measurement, embodiment, motion sickness, and the aesthetics of realism reflects the broader concern with how presence and realism are defined, measured, and understood perceptually and aesthetically.

Summary

"Towards an Analysis of Virtual Realism" argues that the term "virtual realism" is ambiguous and should be decomposed into distinct senses before it can be meaningfully evaluated. Its central thesis is that the concept breaks into at least five separate theses: immersion, psychological realism, depictive realism, ontological realism, and functional realism. The author contends these are materially different claims, and that immersion, the most common framing in discussions of virtual reality, is a poor fit because it is primarily attentional. It can exist without any realistic content, as in the non-realistic puzzle game Tumble VR, and it can be disrupted by realism, as in Resident Evil 7.

Among these senses, psychological realism receives particular attention. Drawing on the "virtual pit" experiment and reports of spatial presence, the paper suggests this may be the predominant form of realism experienced in VR, and notably it does not depend on graphical fidelity. Depictive realism, traced historically from Brunelleschi and Alberti through Hyman's optics-based defense, concerns whether VR images resemble natural vision. The author argues that VR's binocularity and motion tracking may strengthen this form of realism against Goodman's skepticism. Ontological realism, following Chalmers, treats virtual objects as real digital objects, while functional realism asks whether VR preserves the function of real counterparts, illustrated by a study of ball-catching behavior.

The analysis yields a methodological conclusion: because these senses of realism are largely independent of one another, each requires separate evaluation rather than being collapsed into a single notion of immersive realism. The surrounding literature, spanning presence measurement, embodiment, motion sickness, and the philosophical aesthetics of realism, reflects the paper's broader concern with how presence and realism are defined, measured, and understood both perceptually and aesthetically.