Practical insights
Practical insights
Presence
A convincing sense of space is crucial for establishing the sense of presence or being there, particularly in virtual environments114,115 (see section Creative opportunities: Boosting 'presence').
Spatial illusions
Our understanding of space is highly malleable and therefore susceptible to alteration. Spatial illusions can be used to intentionally distort virtual or physical layouts to make tight areas seem larger, or vast spaces appear more intimate. In VR and AR, by providing the right kinds of visual and auditory feedback, a small studio can feel like a sprawling landscape, or a lifeless corridor can transform into an immersive fantasy realm. The effectiveness of these illusions relies on the brain's assumptions about geometry, proximity and movement, revealing how easily we can be tricked into perceiving spaces that aren't really there. For example, in one VR study116,117 whenever an opaque door blocked the user's view, the system silently pivoted the adjoining corridor by 90°. Only 1 of 77 users detected this switch, showing how easily vision, proprioception and vestibular cues can be re-aligned to turn a small lab into a much larger building. Follow-up work on impossible spaces found that rooms can overlap by up to 56%, letting a 100-metre mansion fit inside a 9 m × 9 m tracking area without anyone noticing.