Virtual places have real consequences

Years ago I asked whether we could step inside our software, physically, and see what’s going on. I still want that, and these days I’m building Graspable, where you describe a scene and an AI agent builds it as a WebXR project you can step into. (I also write about XR and AI on Parallel Mind.) But the more I think about places made of software, the more I see that somebody has to design them with the same care as the physical ones.

If a staircase exists only in a virtual world, nobody has to pour concrete for it. Somebody still has to climb it, understand it, or decide whether it belongs there. A virtual place directs attention, allows some interactions and prevents others, and can make a person feel welcome or out of place.

Mel Slater’s 2009 paper separates the sensation of being in a place from the plausibility of what happens there. It helps explain why people respond realistically to a virtual situation while knowing that it’s virtual. The paper is older than today’s tools for generating scenes, and I read it as a reminder that visuals are one part of the experience. A beautifully rendered room feels wrong if it ignores the person inside it, and a visually simple space can mean a lot when it reacts consistently and people do things there together.

Take a virtual workshop where people bring unfinished designs and work next to each other. The important decisions there are who can interrupt whom, whether a newcomer understands what’s going on, and whether unfinished work can stay private. Those matter more than the material on the walls.

It’s tempting to copy familiar architecture because everybody can read it, and it’s just as tempting to throw away every familiar constraint because software lets you. A door is a good example. In VR you don’t need it as a barrier, but it still works as a signal. Remove it and navigation gets easier while social boundaries get harder to read.

There’s also the world outside the headset. Real access depends on devices, networks, bodies and free time, and a place that’s easy for me to enter can be uncomfortable or impossible for someone else.

I see these places as an addition. They make some kinds of meeting, learning and experimenting possible without everybody being in one location, and physical places don’t have to become obsolete for that to be valuable.

The question I’d ask of any virtual place is what you can do there that you can’t do as well somewhere else. For an artwork, “look at an impressive room” can be enough. If the promise is community or learning, the place has to do a lot more.