A little off-topic, but does anyone know if there's been good research about the long term effects of having a screen a few millimeters away, beaming photons to your retina continuously?
I wish most devices had a gradual fade option for volume and brightness, etc. I'd rather hit a button to increase the volume once an hour than realize I've had the volume way to high for the last hour, or realize I've been staring at a full brightness screen for no good reason.
A little late to answer, but yes, there is research suggesting that periodically looking long distances has health benefits, including preventing near-sightedness. One could reasonably expect mass adoption to accelerate rates of vision problems. Here's one high level summary/starting point: https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/looking-to-the-dista...
There may be a way for VR headsets to help with this, depending on why this occurs. For example, if the benefit comes from focusing on a distant object, headset screens may be able to simulate this. If the benefit comes from looking at physical objects, headsets may need to make it easy to quickly move the screen out of the way of the eyes.
What would be best, though, would be for us to figure out how to get past this glut of required information work and digital entertainment so we can spend more time away from screens--my opinion, of course.
