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by Toutouxc 1028 days ago
> But other than taking a few photos of holiday mementos and lens-flaring sunsets, what’s the point?

OT, but for me the point is not having my body absolutely panic from experiencing all kinds of rotation and sudden lateral displacement without anything happening visually. Honestly, I have no idea how people fly anywhere else, I wouldn’t be able to. The speeds and forces experienced even on a calm commercial flight are, as far as human evolution goes, total nonsense.
3 comments
dale_glass 1028 days ago
What you experience on a regular flight is a complete non-issue compared to what you can experience in a car, in an amusement park, or in VR.

And if you remove the direct comparisons, then people do things like say, war, parachute jumping, or underwater welding that are way more extreme.

Really like everything it's just the matter of getting used to it. As a kid flying used to be amazingly exciting. Then I got a job that involved flying twice a week and it very quickly got routine.

The weird forces also don't last very long at all. For the vast majority of the flight is just sitting in a chair, and feels exactly like that.

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Toutouxc 1028 days ago
> For the vast majority of the flight is just sitting in a chair, and feels exactly like that.

To me it feels like sitting in a chair that’s hurtling forward at 900 km/h and randomly rising and falling by a few meters. I’m not forgetting that for a second. It’s not that uncomfortable at cruise altitude, but I’m definitely very aware of what’s happening and how even tiny changes in pitch are tied to quite large and long acting G forces (compared to sitting in a chair, not to a rollercoaster).

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arthur2e5 1028 days ago
It's mostly the direction: you don't get a lot of vertical acceleration on land except on a bumpy road or a amusement part. Slight loss of gravity takes some getting used to.
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vhcr 1028 days ago
Same way I have no idea how people get dizzy so easily, do you get dizzy when on a boat, or when using a VR headset?
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Toutouxc 1028 days ago
Yeah, absolutely. Any VR game that moves the camera (me) without me commanding it is torture. Like, I bump the stick by accident, the character takes two steps forward and I immediately feel a tug in my stomach and a wave of dizziness and panic.
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quickthrower2 1028 days ago
Pilots can have the opposite problem: a plane smoothly banking at night can feel like nothing at all. So they have to trust their instruments not their inner ear.
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