The temptation to clock out and go somewhere else for a while is something that everyone experiences from time to time.

Good news for those who share that desire, then. Advances in virtual reality technology have made it so that you can now do that in a matter of minutes by putting on a headset.

CNN did a little investigation into virtual reality and where it is right now in terms of immersion, and shared this video below to give us a sense of what’s happening in that field.

It’s a longish video, but worth a watch if you’re considering escaping to VR.

Widespread adoption of virtual reality may depend on bringing people together in familiar ways like going to a party, seeing a band, or networking at a conference without leaving your couch. How real do VR connections feel?

It also goes into how VR impacts your mind:

More and more people are spending more and more time in a virtual reality where they experience something called “presence”, reports Medium.

Presence is feeling we are really in the virtual world. Our mind and body believe the virtual world is real, at least for a moment. Presence can be experienced in games with the most simple graphics. Our minds don’t seem concerned with things not looking real. So long as our body’s movement syncs up with the virtual space, we begin to feel presence.

The phenomenon of ‘presence’ is fascinating because it speaks to the adaptability of the human brain. It also invites questions about how we perceive reality.

The human mind is malleable, so the VR experience need not be 1:1 with real life in order to fool a human brain. We can see this in some VR experiences where the distances of objects are slightly further or closer than real life. While in VR the brain adjusts accordingly to compensate for the changes in distances. When users step out of VR, they feel disoriented as their brains re-adjust to the real world.

Virtual reality places users in a space where all of their senses have to recalibrate. It’s similar to how your eyes adjust when you put on a pair of reading glasses, except more intense.

The possibilities seem endless when it comes to VR. There’s even some speculation that our future interactions with other humans will mostly happen in virtual reality.

I’d try it, but I don’t think I’d want to live there.

[sources:cnn&medium]