A revisit on ‘the virtual’ and ‘the real’ of ‘virtual reality’

With computer-generated spaces, VR is often represented as a technology that could provide an opportunity to transcend the limitations of physical embodiment. The controversy over whether this reality is fundamentally virtual or real has long persisted across disciplines. Previous debates, however, often remain confined to disciplinary boundaries, lacking a comprehensive historical dimension. This article seeks to revisit the relationship between ‘the virtual’ and ‘the real’ by situating ‘virtual reality’ within a broader intellectual genealogy. In the narrow or technological sense, the ‘virtual reality’ actually makes a ‘digital reality’ that provides a ‘constructed reality’ with its foundations in ‘natural reality’. In the broad or semiotic sense, ‘virtual reality’ created by VR technology is merely one of the many creations in the evolution of human virtual capabilities and numerous virtual phenomena. Therefore, the essence of ‘virtual reality’ should be interpreted in different conditions. From ‘imaginative space’, to ‘media system’, and then to ‘socio-cultural sphere’, ‘virtual reality’ transforms diachronically from ‘the virtual’ to ‘the real’. And the relationships between ‘the virtual’ and ‘the real’ in this developmental process always unfold through the mediation of interfaces, which not only negotiate the boundaries between the tangible and intangible, but also reconfigure modes of representation, interaction, and perception.