I find this an interesting argument. I wonder if it's a generational thing.

If we define immersion as "your vision focuses on what's inside the screen and you ignore the world around the screen, and you mostly ignore that your control of the player character is through a keyboard and mouse", then I've experienced immersion with every first person game ever, including Minecraft. I never considered that some people might need photorealism for that at all. There was another commenter that mentioned being unable to walk over a short wall due to character controller limitations as being immersion-breaking. I agree this is annoying but the qualia of it is more like a physical confusion rather than being something that actually breaks my experience of the game.

I'm also thinking this might be related to why I find VR to be, while very cool, not some revolutionary new technology that will fundamentally change the world.

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theshackleford a day ago | parent [-]

> VR to be, while very cool, not some revolutionary new technology

VR despite its limitations is the one thing I’ve ever achieved “presence” in, as in feeling if for a brief moment, I was actually there.

Elite dangerous, OLED Unit, HOTAS. For a brief moment in time my brain believed it was in the cockpit of a spaceship.

	▲	andybak a day ago \| parent [-]
		I had a similar experience in a a game meant to simulate regular city car driving. Most releveant to this comment thread however was the fact that the graphics were very crude and not in a good way. I absolutely dispute the claim that realism equals (immersion/presence - I'm not getting involved in the debate about the distinction between the two)