Perceptual Illusions and Distortions in Virtual Reality

From an early age, people become experts at deciphering the continuous stream of stimuli registered by various sensory systems in response to the perceiver’s own actions and events in the environment. However, even though the senses provide reasonably reliable information, perception is imperfect, leaving the perceiver vulnerable to illusions, i.e., instances of erroneous or misinterpreted perceptions of sensory information (Stevenson 2010).

A defining feature of Virtual Reality (VR) systems is that they support natural perception and actions by means of high fidelity tracking and displays. That is, VR systems...