This month, Apple released its highly anticipated Vision Pro mixed reality headset. Company describes the devicewhich has a starting price of $3,500 as a “spatial computer,” an alternative to a standard laptop or desktop computer. Apple advertising has showing people using headset for sending email and other everyday 2D tasks, and June 2023. company press release said, “Apple Vision Pro is designed for all-day use.” Enthusiastic early adopters have already recorded yourself use it for dozens of hours in a row – and even wear it while sleeping.
However, many experts are skeptical that these kinds of headsets can (or should) replace our physical monitors, keyboards and mice. Some worry that using such a device for long periods of time could lead to motion sickness, new types of social isolation, or other unintended consequences.
Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are incredible tools for creating unique and immersive experiences, says Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, where he researches the psychology of VR and AR. But this does not mean that such a headset will always be a useful tool. “We don't use it for everyday tasks. You don't have to put on a headset to read email,” he says, or “type numbers into a spreadsheet.”
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Apple's 1.4-pound glasses use sensors, including a lidar scanner and a camera array, to place people in what it calls “mixed reality.” Outward-facing cameras provide a real-time view of users' surroundings, while two small screens positioned directly in front of their eyes simultaneously display an interactive digital space. The Meta Quest 3 headset, released in October 2023, also uses this video pass-through technology. Mixed reality is not traditional VR, which completely blocks out the real world, nor is it AR, which is a digital overlay on clear lenses. Instead, the pass-through device translates a digital representation of a person's environment (such as their hands and nearby objects) into a completely virtual space.
This means that the device conveys all the information about the user's experience. It's a tech company's dream because you'll never [have to] take it down,” says sociocultural anthropologist Lisa Messeri of Yale University, author of a forthcoming book on virtual reality. In the land of the unreal. “They can always get your attention. They always know where you are looking. They always know what you are doing.”
Pass-Through Traps
For Bailenson, Vision Pro and Quest 3 are exciting technological advancements that improve on VR graphics and AR's limited field of view. However, end-to-end technologies also pose new risks. In a study published earlier this month, Bailenson et al. assessed some short-term effects of mixed reality. They found that wearing the headset severely limits the user's visual perception and can also alter social behavior and motor function. In addition, pass-through technology has features that often cause visual delays and other distortions. Color saturation changes frequently. The light is dimming. Some objects appear too close or blurry. Despite the impressive characteristics of the Vision Pro, its image resolution is still lower than what the human eye is accustomed to perceive.
Currently, the research team does not recommend spending multiple hours a day wearing these glasses. “We recommend caution and restraint to companies lobbying for the daily use of these headsets,” the authors write, calling for more careful study of the implications. There are few long-term studies on the use of VR or AR. Bailenson is currently following participants who regularly use mixed reality headsets, but the results of this study are still months away from being published.
“We don't know what it's like to walk around the world with reduced peripheral vision or visual distortions for hundreds of hours a month,” says Rabindra Ratan, assistant professor of media and information science at Michigan State University and co-author of the recently published study. “This is purely speculative, but it could affect the way your eyes move in space, and it could possibly impair your vision,” Ratan suggests. “We don't really know what this will do to our brains.”
Past studies involving prismatic glasses (glasses with stickers that cause distortion and misalignment) suggest that people can adapt to significant visual impairments, Ratan says. But to alleviate vision changes, an initial period of adaptation is required, which can last several hours or even days, depending on the individual user and the severity of the impairment. Return to normal vision (for example, when removing the headset) is usually faster, in about a few minutes. However, in each case, the mind-body disconnect can make basic motor tasks such as pressing elevator buttons, high-fiving, and navigating crowds on foot much more difficult. They can also lead to serious security problems. When the researchers rode a bicycle with a headset, they found it much more difficult. In the worst case scenario, if someone is riding a bike with the headset on and the battery dies, their vision will suddenly be completely lost, Bailenson notes. And navigating with an internet-connected device strapped to your face can be very distracting.
People are already publicly driving moving vehicles, including cars, using mixed reality headsets. Just four days after Apple released Vision Pro, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published a statement urging people not to drive with a VR device in response to online videos of drivers wearing headsets. US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg also posted on social networksnoting that all affordable consumer vehicles—even those equipped with advanced driver assistance systems—still require fully engaged drivers.
The Harsh Reality of Simulation
Augmented, virtual and mixed reality headsets are also common in causing “simulation sickness,” a set of unpleasant symptoms including nausea, headaches, dizziness and eye strain. Bailenson, Ratan and their co-authors experienced nausea on the simulator in most sessions with the device, although the tests typically lasted less than an hour. Even low levels of simulant illness can affect people's quality of life, activity levels, and productivity. That's one reason Bailenson worries that people might try to use these devices in their daily work.
There are also potential effects on memory. In one 2014 experiment, Frank Steinicke, professor of human-computer interaction at the University of Hamburg in Germany, spent 24 hours alternating two-hour periods of virtual reality use and 10-minute breaks. Throughout his research, Steinicke was unsure of what was real and what was not. “Several times during the experiment, the participant was confused by the fact that he was in [virtual environment] or in the real world and mixed certain artifacts and events between both worlds,” the research paper said. Likewise, one 2009 study found that using virtual reality may cause children to be acquire false memories– although 15 years ago the resolution and image quality in virtual reality were much worse.
“Audio-visual display is getting better and better, so I'm pretty sure virtual and real content will continue to merge,” Steinicke says. Despite the findings of the 2014 experiment, he envisions a more positive future of computing in which these tools successfully replace keyboards and touchpads.
Immersive digital worlds can also impact how well users think and communicate, potentially influencing how they work or learn. In the presence of a virtual human character, people wearing augmented reality headsets perform better on simple cognitive tasks— but worse on more complex ones, according to one 2019 study. In a separate experiment from the same study, researchers found that people wearing AR devices felt significantly less socially connected to people around them who weren't wearing the headsets.
Wearing a virtual or mixed reality headset is inherently isolating, says lead author of the 2019 study Mark Roman Miller, an assistant professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology who studies the behavioral impacts of augmented and virtual reality. Personal collaboration becomes more difficult when employees wear headsets because it's impossible to show someone what you're looking at or share your screen without additional layers of software acting as intermediaries, Miller adds.
Miller views these devices as exceptional tools, but warns that they also carry enormous potential for counterproductive distraction. He says he “treats his smartphone like his shoe,” leaving it by the door when he gets home. Augmented and mixed reality devices could further exacerbate the divided attention problem that many smartphone users already face, he said.
Messeri agrees: Every common complaint about how smartphones disrupt our real-life social interactions will only get worse with the advent of mixed reality headsets, she says. She spent a year with a group of tech experts and artists in Los Angeles, developing projects with the goal of expanding human empathy, creating experiences that wouldn't be possible without virtual reality.* This techno-optimistic community has its flaws, she says, but its work has been exciting and demonstrates an openness to new possibilities. In contrast, Messeri describes Meta and Apple's marketing of their mixed reality devices as “predictable.”
“Meta says VR is just another gaming platform… Apple says it's your iPad, but on the surface it's just another productivity device,” she says. “If in the next technological era, all we do is the same thing we do now on screens, but on a screen that is a couple of inches in front of our eyes, it will not be inspiring.”
*Editor's Note (2/23/24): This sentence was edited after publication to correct the description of how long Lisa Messeri has been associated with a group of Los Angeles-based tech experts and artists.
