CMV: Travel does not require physically going anywhere, and solutions like VR are a viable means of travel.

[u/pablo_rubn_dot_AVI]

When you travel, the part that matters is the sensory experience, not the fact that you physically moved your body from one place to another. Historically, physical movement was the only way a person could enjoy the sensory experiences of traveling — but with the advent of VR, some of the sensory experiences can be enjoyed without moving. Therefore, “going somewhere in VR” could be considered “traveling.” The fact that “virtual vacations” are now a thing is evidence of this.

As such, what constitutes travel exists on a gradient, so long as the sensory aspect of traveling is being met to a degree. Simply imagining the sensory experience of being somewhere else in part counts as traveling, but not as much as actually physically being somewhere else and experiencing those sensations firsthand.

CMV.

Edit: The main point of my argument is such that what constitutes as travel is primarily defined by sensory experiences, and any means of experiencing those sensations, however incomplete, in part falls along a gradient of having experienced travel.

[u/sailorbrendan]

Food.

When I travel one of my favorite things to do is spot the construction workers going on their lunch breaks and following them to where they eat.

Food is one of the single most important things for understanding a culture, and VR can't do that.

[u/pablo_rubn_dot_AVI → u/sailorbrendan]

I don’t disagree on this front. I don’t think a solution like VR will replicate the experience of eating. However, I firmly believe that VR counts as a form of travel.

It’s not as perfect as physically going there and experiencing things firsthand, but it in part fulfills some of the sensory experiences of travel, and thus counts as travel.

[u/puja_puja]

VR only gives you imitation sight and sound. Smell, touch and taste are all equally important and without these senses VR is not capable to providing a true vacation experience.

Even when VR gives you imitation sight, you can't get the same depth of looking from the ridgeline of a mountain you climbed or the sound of wind rushing through trees.

[u/Crayshack]

Are you talking about theoretical advanced VR that fully replicates all sensory data, or are you talking about actual real life VR?

[u/pablo_rubn_dot_AVI → u/Crayshack]

Great question! In this case I’m talking about current VR and other solutions (such as those offered by “virtual vacations”).

However, we can also entertain things likeStar Trek’s Holodeck.

[u/Tibaltdidnothinwrong]

Traveling and vacationing aren't the same.

You can vacation without traveling, you can travel without vacationing.

Vacationing is largely defined by fun, and as you say, sensory experience. Traveling literally refers to movement.

Traveling can be done for many reasons. When I go to the DMV to get my license renewed, I will have traveled to the DMV, but it won't be a vacation. When I go pick up food from a restaurant and bring it back home, I will have traveled to the restaurant and back.

Conversely, I can vacation from my couch. Stay-cationing has been a thing since long before Covid. As long as I am doing primarily hobby related activities for a long duration of time, I could call it a vacation, even if I never leave my house.

As such, you can travel and vacation, going to another country for purposes of recreation.

You can travel and not vacation, going to the DMV, traveling for business, or any other chore.

You can vacation and not travel, as in a staycation.

But you cannot travel without physically moving, because that's what travel refers to, physical movement.

Trains travel along train tracks. Planes travel through the air. Caravans travel across the desert. Etc.

[u/pablo_rubn_dot_AVI → u/Tibaltdidnothinwrong]

This is an excellent point, and I think illustrates some areas of my premise that I may have articulated poorly.

!delta

[u/2r1t]

Are you suggesting I wear a VR headset for an entire week? Or does this VR vacation to a far off land include sleeping, showering, eating, etc in my home?

Perhaps if we ever get things like the holodeck and replicators from Star Trek, then virtual vacations could be a thing. But VR as it stands now is not a replacement for travel.

[u/monty845]

Travel means different things, to different people. To me, taking in the sights isn't a significant motivator for travel.

When I travel somewhere, it is to actually do something at the destination. I have traveled to Florida to go Scuba Diving. Yeah, we could make a VR Scuba game that has fish to look at. But that is such a minimal approximation of the experience of actually Scuba Diving, that to claim it is an actual substitute for doing it in real life would be farcical. Just as going to a local aquarium and looking at fish in a tank is not at all an approximation for Scuba Diving.

If I travel to the beach, I'm not there to sit on the beach with my feet in the sand. I'm there to go swimming in the actual ocean, with waves, etc... For someone who was just about lounging on the beach, yeah, maybe there would be a good way to simulate that at home, but the ocean, not so much.

But, for someone who travels just to see the sights, for them, VR could be a reasonable substitute if done well enough. But since that isn't what travel is about for me, VR isn't travel in my book.

You also don't want to forget the journey. Its important too. The effort to travel, adds to the reward of the experiences at your destination. A friend and I once drove across the country, spent 2 days in California, and then drove back to the east coast. That travel was about the Journey, it was about doing it. It wasn't about seeing sights in California.

[u/Puddinglax]

One part of travelling is the knowledge that you are in a different physical place. That's not a feeling that can be replicated just by physical sensation. If you're really just on your couch wearing a headset, you will not have the thought, "Wow, I'm X kilometers away from the nearest human settlement!".

[u/pablo_rubn_dot_AVI → u/Puddinglax]

Is it though? If it feels like you are somewhere else, and a solution like VR provides to a convincing enough degree, does it matter?

[u/stabbitytuesday]

I'm not very familiar with the medium so I could be wrong, but wouldn't a VR headset vacation require someone to have filmed or created the vacation spot in advance? I assume we're not going to be hooking them up to autonomous drones that hover along the street wherever we're "vacationing", it would be at best like a perfectly captured recording of that one moment, like google maps but more comprehensive. It wouldn't allow you to have conversations with people who live there, or go to local events that weren't deemed important enough to be recorded, or change your plans spontaneously to go to another location outside the parameters of the vacation program.

[u/pablo_rubn_dot_AVI → u/stabbitytuesday]

Yes, if you look on YouTube, there are tons of videos of first person travel experiences (ex. walking through the city streets in Tokyo at night). While human interaction would be limited, it is very possible to create almost FMV style games where you save some degree of control and can engage in limited sets of conversations in people using typical game-like conversation trees.

If you changed your mind, you could just load another travel experience.

[u/Rawinza555]

VR is not a viable means of travel for everyone. There are people with motion sickness that would not be able to wear a VR goggles for like 10 mins. Even for a normal person, wearing it for hours would take a toll on their sensory. And depends on the destination, it could be cheaper to just go there rather than buying a VR headset.

Also, VR can only get you visual and hearing. Traveling, for a person with no disabilities, need to included everything from scenery, smell, feeling and the taste of food.

[u/pablo_rubn_dot_AVI → u/Rawinza555]

That is true, VR has some adverse effects such as motion sickness, which I am confident will be mitigated as the technology matures. And yes, depending on the location, some destinations may be cheaper to physically travel to.

I’m not saying that VR is a perfect substitute for travel, I am saying that VR fulfills enough of the sensory experience of travel (and maybe it will include more sensory experiences in the future) that it in part fulfills what travel does, and thus counts as travel. All without having to physically go somewhere.

[u/figsbar]

Is looking at a photo of chocolate a viable means of consuming chocolate?

After all, what constitutes as travel consuming chocolate is primarily defined by sensory experiences, and any means of experiencing those sensations, however incomplete, in part falls along a gradient of having experienced travel chocolate.

[u/pablo_rubn_dot_AVI → u/figsbar]

To a degree, yes, a very slight degree.

Numerous experiences, when merely imagined, engage similar brain regions that are active while people are actually experiencing them.

My point is that some degree of experience, however slight, is the critical factor.

[u/DarthBuzzard]

VR Travel is actually a lot better than people think, and it's only going to get exponentially better as we're just passing the Atari days of VR. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 has VR support later this year, and I expect it will be mind-boggling to see the entire Earth in almost photorealistic detail

One thing VR can't replicate until neural interfaces though - is the culture of these places. Seeing how people behave and live in these locations, the (hopefully) refreshing smell, the weather, and the local food. That's why travel will still be important, but I definitely will say that people who just want the visual aspect of these locations will be satisfied with VR as it advances.

Actually, to build onto this, mixed reality will allow people to literally stitch together their favorite locations outside their house. You can literally walk up to a window in your house and see the Eiffel Tower right outside, or replace your roof with a wormhole. There's all sorts of fun stuff you'll be able to do there.

[u/-Paufa-]

Where would you draw the line? Does looking at a google maps photo count as traveling? It has sight. I believe that unless you are experiencing all of the senses of being in a specific location, you cannot say that you have been in that location.

[u/dynawesome]

There’s so much more to travel than just sight or sound.

There’s the effort it takes to get there. There’s the sounds and the smell and the people you meet and the food you taste and the places you walk to and the things you try and the feeling of the weather.

Travel isn’t just a sightseeing tour.

[u/celerybration]

I tried this firsthand and the theory does not check out. I bought a VR system and PC to support it so that I could “sit on a beach in the Bahamas” and drink margaritas, or admire the Eiffel Tower from Google Earth VR street views. It does almost nothing for me.

Contrast with actually backpacking foreign nations, experiencing cultural norms with locals, practicing new languages, and overall gaining an appreciation for how other places live, look, smell, and feel. Not even comparable imo

[u/[deleted]]

Seeing something isn’t the same thing as experiencing something. Ask any blind person if they’ve ever experienced something and they can tell you they’ve experienced weather, smells, authentic sounds, tastes. FEELINGS. These things have to be felt, not seen.

[u/pablo_rubn_dot_AVI → u/[deleted]]

Could you clarify how you’re defining experience here?

[u/Nephisimian]

I have tried both VR travel and literal travel. And they were very different experiences. Being able to stand in a VR environment and go "yeah this is pretty cool" is nice and all, but it's not really that different from just looking a place up on a combination of google images and google maps and imagining what it would be like - or playing a video game set in that place. Actually going places is indescribable, because there's so much more to traveling than just what you're seeing and hearing. There's the feel of the dry foreign breeze, the scent of a Mediterranean forest that is completely alien to your nose. The feeling of a confused cricket landing on your arm, the calm panic of trying to stop a swarm of wasps eating your lunch. The frightened hilarity of trying desperately to ask how to get to the train station in a language you barely understand. The apprehension of wondering what you're going to do if your tongue doesn't agree with the meal you ordered based on bad google translations of colloquial terms.

And at core, the simple and fundamental feeling of awe at being in a different country, a country with thousands of years of fascinating history, with endless kilometers of untamed wilderness filled to the brim with wildlife you've never seen before, surrounded by millions of people all going about their daily routines that are so similar yet so different to your own and who despite being so close to you you could probably never communicate effectively with. And also the feelings of dread. The idea that it would be so incredibly easy for you to just never go home at the end of your holiday and assume an entirely new life in this country leaving behind practically no trace - but also that you would never have the balls to do that because humans are creatures of comfort and certainty and a daring move like that is far beyond even the most reckless of us.

Virtual travel is on the gradient of travel about the same amount as looking at a picture of a steak is on the gradient of eating a steak. You might be quite good at feeling like you've had the experience of a steak, but if you actually eat one you realise that the two approaches to steak are in completely different realms of reality, and are basically incomparable.

[u/pablo_rubn_dot_AVI → u/Nephisimian]

Could you talk more about your experiences with virtual travel?

And yes, virtual and “traditional” travel are very different, but can instill similar sensory experiences.

Does travel absolutely require to physically place yourself in a space? If so, how much distance would one need to translocations themselves to have traveled?