到目前为止，我们的大部分虚拟现实体验都可以用几分钟来衡量——这里是一个短片，那里是一个技术演示——但这并不是因为技术限制或健康问题。据Oculus创始人帕尔默·勒基（Palmer Luckey）说，你在虚拟世界里花费的时间可能比你想象的要多，因为真的，当你的头被困在元宇宙中时，你怎么知道时间在物理层的流逝呢？

本周，Luckey和*** Games首席执行官Hilmar Veigar在GDC的一个简短游戏《Oculus发布前夜：Valkyrie》结束后，与一些记者交谈，讨论了是否有任何技术或游戏设计方面的问题，比如人们应该戴耳机多久。简单的答案是什么？一点也不担心。维格指出，他看到玩家在使用第二代裂谷开发工具包时，连续12个多小时玩早期版本的EVE:Valkyrie——“然后在第二天再次登录。”

这是一个公认的极端的例子，但这两个例子都用来缓解人们对长时间使用虚拟现实的担忧。那时候事情变得更加存在主义。全文评论如下：；为清晰起见，对其进行了编辑和压缩：

Hilmar Veigar: We've already seen players in our alpha [build] with the [Oculus Rift] DK2 spend over 12 hours in one session, and then log in again the day after. So yeah, it doesn't really seem to be a factor... Of course [with EVE: Valkyrie], we wanted to do something that's kind of quick to get into, super [frenetic] and opposite from EVE Online, which has a slower pace and sort of takes decades.

Palmer Luckey: And on the hardware side, there's no fundamental limitation. It's gonna vary by person, but generally speaking, you should be able to use [an Oculus Rift] for long periods of time without any issues. Most of the time that I've put people in for long periods, they don't stop playing because of any problem with the headset. They stopped playing because they needed to go do something in the real world. Twelve hours is great. I haven't been able to do that since... I didn't have a job. Most people aren't going to be doing that.

Veigar: There's also an additional factor I've noticed when I'm playing myself is that time passes differently. You think you've played for 15 minutes and then you go out and it's like, "wait, I spent an hour in there?" There's a concept of, I don't know, VR time.

Luckey: I think a lot of times we rely on our environments to gain perceptual cues around how much time is passing. It's not just a purely internal thing. So when you're in a different virtual world that lacks those cues, it can be pretty tough... You all have been able to be outside and sense what time it is. And you don't know exactly how you're figuring, but you've lived your whole life knowing roughly where the sun is [and] roughly what happens as the day passes. People have a pretty good intuitive sense of, "Oh, I think it's around two o'clock." And they're usually relatively close. In VR, obviously, if you don't have all those cues — because you have the cues of the virtual world [instead] — then you're not going to be able to make those estimates nearly as accurately.