In my opinion (limited physics understanding and as a student of biology), we cannot achieve actual time dilation like the experiments carried out in reality.
However, we can, as you've asked, achieve or simulate a pseudo form of time dilation by altering the users frame of reference, i.e time, day & night cycle, movement, input latency and isolation of the individual from reality. From my experience playing games, there are many games that already do this, i.e final fantasy 14, minecraft, etc etc. Day and night cycles happen in less than 24 hrs, the movement/distance covered in-game when traversing is also adjusted with the reference of those games day/night cycles.
However, from my experience, the emphasis of time is never a point of focus in these games, so we are players are never made acutely aware of the passage of time. For instance we don't have dialogues saying "it would take 3 days to reach another town" or "What took [insert MC] so long, its been [X] number of days."
In addition users are never isolated from the reality, therefore we are always more aware when 20mins or an hour has passed. Sometimes it also feels like reality is so much faster than the time we spent in these games. I have had those moments, where after finishing a story thinking that only 3 hrs has passed, but its already 10 hrs since I last started.
From my limited experience playing VR (it is expensive even now) if games can really isolate the players awareness from the real world (not like what you see in TV shows, but more like stop displaying actual time and having little not no interaction with reality), alter and emphasis that the passage of time is ever present, we might convince users that time is being dilated. Even then, i feel the effect would be limited since attempting to force these properties into interactions in the virtual environment such as talking or picking up items would be difficult without destroying the immersion
From a biological point of view, achieving a convincing time dilation effect with a direct brain interface would be difficult as our brain would have to transfer that information our other senses, and that in my opinion would be time gated. In order to trick the brain & body into thinking time has been dilated, i think you would have to attempt to achieve faster than human responses. This is where my limited understanding comes in, as an example, if you to guard from being hit by a ball in real life and, the whole experience of receiving and processing information would take 10 to 20sec. To go from 1 day in reality to 1 month in game, we would have to make that condense that whole sequence of being hit by a ball occur less than 1 milisecond.
For that to be possible, we would have to be part machine at that point to process that kind information at superhuman speeds, as someone suggested below, but that would also be limited to the transfer of information (speed of an electron, distance that the information has to travel) and the time taken to process that information (not just from us but the machine too).
To simulate actual time dilation, would a combination of both a pseudo dilation and a part machine human being that can process situations at super human speeds, as well as computers that can also process and transfer that amount of information at that speed. The closest we could get away with is like 1 day in real life is maybe 3 days in game. As it gets faster, it would become more apparent the human body cannot keep up, causing the effect and experience to be unconvincing and maybe comedic.
That is my thoughts and limited understanding (sorry i don't know how relativity would actually work)
Niryco t1_j6chkcf wrote
Reply to Is it possible to simulate time dilation in a full immersion virtual reality environment? by MascotBro
In my opinion (limited physics understanding and as a student of biology), we cannot achieve actual time dilation like the experiments carried out in reality.
However, we can, as you've asked, achieve or simulate a pseudo form of time dilation by altering the users frame of reference, i.e time, day & night cycle, movement, input latency and isolation of the individual from reality. From my experience playing games, there are many games that already do this, i.e final fantasy 14, minecraft, etc etc. Day and night cycles happen in less than 24 hrs, the movement/distance covered in-game when traversing is also adjusted with the reference of those games day/night cycles.
However, from my experience, the emphasis of time is never a point of focus in these games, so we are players are never made acutely aware of the passage of time. For instance we don't have dialogues saying "it would take 3 days to reach another town" or "What took [insert MC] so long, its been [X] number of days."
In addition users are never isolated from the reality, therefore we are always more aware when 20mins or an hour has passed. Sometimes it also feels like reality is so much faster than the time we spent in these games. I have had those moments, where after finishing a story thinking that only 3 hrs has passed, but its already 10 hrs since I last started.
From my limited experience playing VR (it is expensive even now) if games can really isolate the players awareness from the real world (not like what you see in TV shows, but more like stop displaying actual time and having little not no interaction with reality), alter and emphasis that the passage of time is ever present, we might convince users that time is being dilated. Even then, i feel the effect would be limited since attempting to force these properties into interactions in the virtual environment such as talking or picking up items would be difficult without destroying the immersion
From a biological point of view, achieving a convincing time dilation effect with a direct brain interface would be difficult as our brain would have to transfer that information our other senses, and that in my opinion would be time gated. In order to trick the brain & body into thinking time has been dilated, i think you would have to attempt to achieve faster than human responses. This is where my limited understanding comes in, as an example, if you to guard from being hit by a ball in real life and, the whole experience of receiving and processing information would take 10 to 20sec. To go from 1 day in reality to 1 month in game, we would have to make that condense that whole sequence of being hit by a ball occur less than 1 milisecond.
For that to be possible, we would have to be part machine at that point to process that kind information at superhuman speeds, as someone suggested below, but that would also be limited to the transfer of information (speed of an electron, distance that the information has to travel) and the time taken to process that information (not just from us but the machine too).
To simulate actual time dilation, would a combination of both a pseudo dilation and a part machine human being that can process situations at super human speeds, as well as computers that can also process and transfer that amount of information at that speed. The closest we could get away with is like 1 day in real life is maybe 3 days in game. As it gets faster, it would become more apparent the human body cannot keep up, causing the effect and experience to be unconvincing and maybe comedic.
That is my thoughts and limited understanding (sorry i don't know how relativity would actually work)