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Are there consequences for going VR for primary computer display?
Is there research into the effects of replacing physical monitors with virtual reality "monitors" for daily use? I imagine that VR is not great for one's eyes, but is it worse than a monitor 50cm from your face? If so, how much worse?
1 answer
The obvious risk is probably developing myopia due to prolonged focusing on a near object. This is similar to the idea that being on the computer too much exacerbates myopia (and perhaps also the idea that prompted this question). I believe the current mainstream view in the medical field is that myopia is genetic, and not caused by looking at nearby screens. The wikipedia article goes over this hypothesis in detail, with links to papers. There are some associations and risk factors but these do not sound definitive to me. There is a minority hypothesis that myopia is caused, can be prevented, and even reversed through behavior (essentially not looking at near things) but this is not accepted by the mainstream.
There may be non-obvious risks from extensive VR use, that are qualitatively different from other screens like smartphones. For example, perhaps the enclosure becomes hot and dries out the eyes. Simply put, I believe VR has not been around long enough for much research on this to be done. There are obviously no lasting acute problems, as anyone who tried a VR headset can attest. Necessarily, your concern must be chronic problems. To properly evaluate those, I imagine subjects would need to be studied over several years. Then the results analyzed, written up, submitted to a journal, peer-reviewed and finally published.
Also, the obvious group of people who have the resources and motivation to research such risks are manufacturers of VR hardware. These have a vested interest in concealing minor and moderate risks, but presumably extreme risks would cause them to avoid launching the product for fear of legal repercussion.
However, it is fairly common for VR to cause headaches after about 2 hours of use. This isn't like how 0.00001% of people get motion sickness from playing games on a normal screen, it seems that most people get the headache after 2 hours. I don't think this is what you're asking because it goes away once you take off the headset. However, it would likely thwart your plan of using it the entire day.
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