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X. Michael Wang @drwxy.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

The broader idea behind this study extends beyond VAC. Rather than only building better hardware, we can model how immersive displays systematically alter perception and use those models to design computational corrections. Paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.com

Investigating a geometrical solution to the vergence-accommodation conflict for targeted movements in virtual reality

Virtual reality (VR) uses head-mounted displays to simulate perceptuomotor experiences in physical environments. However, this mediated approach alter…

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X. Michael Wang @drwxy.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

One result surprised us. The correction wasn’t equally effective for everyone. Some participants benefited substantially, while others showed little benefit or slight declines. Future XR systems may need personalized perceptual calibration rather than a one-size-fits-all solution.

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X. Michael Wang @drwxy.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

In a 3D pointing task, the shader improved movement accuracy by ~30%. More interestingly, we found that VAC primarily disrupts online visual control rather than movement planning. That provides new insight into how VAC affects behavior—not just that it does.

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X. Michael Wang @drwxy.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

We developed a geometrical model of how VAC alters binocular viewing geometry and used it to derive a lightweight shader that runs on existing commercial VR headsets. No eye tracking. No specialized optics. Just geometry.

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X. Michael Wang @drwxy.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

One of the biggest limitations of today’s VR headsets is the vergence-accommodation conflict (VAC). Most approaches try to solve it with new hardware. Our new paper asks a different question: Can we compensate for it computationally instead? 🧵

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X. Michael Wang @drwxy.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

Hi! Thanks for reaching out and your interests in our paper. Feel free to use the visuals from the paper.

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X. Michael Wang @drwxy.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

I’d love to hear your thoughts and discuss the work with anyone interested.

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X. Michael Wang @drwxy.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

More broadly, this work contributes to a larger question: Rather than treating VR as a simple digital copy of reality, how do properties of immersive displays reshape perceptual geometry—and, in turn, influence perception, action, adaptation, and skill transfer?

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X. Michael Wang @drwxy.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

After mathematically accounting for the VAC, the scaling between perception and action became comparable to that observed in the physical world. That suggests perception remains functionally calibrated to action once the optical distortion is taken into account.

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X. Michael Wang @drwxy.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

Using a geometrical model, we showed that much of this additional distortion can be explained by the vergence-accommodation conflict (VAC). Depth compression causes apertures to appear narrower than they are rendered, leading to an overestimation of the space required for passage.

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X. Michael Wang @drwxy.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

Part of the effect reflected increased sensorimotor uncertainty in VR. But that wasn’t the whole story. Perceptual judgments increased more than action boundaries, suggesting an additional perceptual distortion.

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X. Michael Wang @drwxy.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

We found that participants consistently judged they needed more space to pass through an opening in VR than in the physical world — even though their body size was unchanged. Interestingly, this effect persisted even after participants removed the headset.

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X. Michael Wang @drwxy.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

We used a classic affordance paradigm. Participants judged the narrowest aperture they thought they could pass through and then actually attempted to pass through apertures in both the physical world and immersive VR.

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X. Michael Wang @drwxy.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

I’m excited to share our latest paper, now published in Virtual Reality! Virtual reality alters perceived functional body size In this paper, we asked: Does VR change not only how we see the world, but also how we perceive ourselves relative to it? Paper: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

link.springer.com

Virtual reality alters perceived functional body size - Virtual Reality

Virtual reality (VR) introduces sensorimotor perturbations that may impact perception and action. The current study was designed to investigate how immersive VR presented through a head-mounted displa...

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