2018] Law, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality 1055
Beyond AR, there is virtual reality (VR). While AR adds visible digital content
to a person’s perception of the real world, VR replaces the real world altogether.
Using goggles and speakers, VR places people inside a virtual environment, letting
them move around in it and interact with it as if it were the real world.
In some ways, VR is a competitor technology to AR: business meetings and
social interactions with remote parties could happen either via VR or AR,
depending on which technology evolves most quickly. In other ways, VR can be
complementary, with people using AR technology for adding to physical-world
interactions, and VR for creating entirely fictional worlds.
VR also got big in 2016. Four major VR hardware platforms were
deployed; so were many applications—mostly games, but also immersive
news reporting and social experiments.
6
And the technology, already
impressive in its realism, continues to develop at a breakneck pace. While
most applications of VR today remain games, before long we will interact
more and more in virtual rather than real space (especially as avatars become
realistic enough, and begin to reliably track user facial expressions). Work,
training, sales, social life,
7
education, exercise,
8
even psychotherapy: VR will
aect all these and more.
9
AR and VR both present legal questions for courts, companies, and users.
Some are new takes on classic legal questions. People will kill and die using AR
and VR—some already have.
10
They will injure themselves and others. Some
will use the technology to threaten or defraud. Sorting out who is responsible
will require courts to understand the technology and how it differs from the
6
See, e.g., Signe Brewster, Behind the Numbers of Virtual Reality’s Sluggish Debut, MIT TECH.
REV. (Dec. 30, 2016), https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603208/behind-the-numbers-of-virtual-
realitys-sluggish-debut/ [https://perma.cc/UP9Y-YPQA]; Darrell Etherington, Google’s Daydream
View Made Me a Believer Again in Consumer VR, T
ECHCRUNCH (Nov. 10, 2016),
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/10/googles-daydream-view-made-me-a-believer-again-in-
consumer-vr/ [https://perma.cc/56D7-ULMD]; PlayStation VR to Debut in October for $399, CNBC
(Mar. 16, 2016, 12:21 PM), http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/16/playstation-vr-to-debut-in-october-for-
399.html [https://perma.cc/L32K-RQAA].
7
See, e.g., Adam Thierer & Jonathan Camp, Permissionless Innovation and Immersive
Technology: Public Policy for Virtual and Augmented Reality 15, 22 (2017) (unpublished manuscript),
https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/thierer-immersive-technology-mercatus-working-paper-
v1.pdf [https://perma.cc/KYS7-X6DB].
8
See, e.g., Jamie Feltham, VR Health Group Is Rating How Many Calories Games Burn, UPLOADVR (Aug.
16, 2017), https://uploadvr.com/vr-health-group-rating-many-calories-games-burn/ [https://perma.cc/4YUW-
DKC3]; V
IRZOOM, http://www.virzoom.com [https://perma.cc/FL9L-23YT] (profiling a company that sells
stationary bicycles that interact with VR headsets to make exercise more entertaining).
9
See infra notes 48–53.
10
Charles Riley & Yoko Wakatsuki, Pokemon Go-Playing Truck Driver Kills Woman in Japan,
CNN (Aug. 24, 2016, 8:45 AM), http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/24/technology/pokemon-go-death-
japan/index.html [https://perma.cc/BU63-9UAE]; VR Glasses Blur Reality Leading to Death Blow for
Moscow Resident, TASS (Dec. 22, 2017), http://tass.com/society/982465 [https://perma.cc/V338-
NGW6]. The Moscow man apparently stumbled over a glass table while wearing a VR headset,
shattered the glass, and mortally wounded himself on the broken glass.