Maybe VR Shouldn't Give You Heaven--Maybe You Need Hardship

Virtual reality promises immersive experiences that sound like sweepstakes prizes. For one group of designers, though, VR shouldn't give you heaven, but hardship. After researching neuroscience studies on "embodiment," the cognitive illusion of being someone else, design collective BeAnother Lab set out to give people a taste of adversity. A performer wears a vest with a first-person camera, which streams their perspective to a user's Oculus Rift, along with a voiceover about their experience. As users interact with what they see in their headset, the performer mimics their movements, and the participants can witness in a very real way what it's like to be the person whose story they're listening to.