Murray asserts that digital environments are spatial, but her definition of that property more appropriately fits to an assertion that digital environments simulate spatiality. In her own words, these “environments are characterized by their power to represent navigable space” (96). That is to say that the “computer screen is displaying a story that is also a place,” which leads to the “challenge” of “invent[ing] an increasingly graceful choreography of navigation to lure the interactor through ever more expressive narrative landscapes” (100). In the sense that Murray describes, then, VR can represent this property at its most extreme. As graphics and motion tracking and field of view improve over time, there will be a thinner veil between physical reality and a virtual experience. However, to appreciate this potential fully, Murray’s definition has to be expanded.
Digital environments do not only simulate spatiality; they exist spatially. Computers and the devices in which they are embedded take up space. Digital environments crisscrosses the world in cables and satellites. These environments draw us into overly relaxed postures, shifting the way we take up space as well. Of course, digital environments do simulate spatiality, but this is trick, one we are acutely aware of. We can willingly suspend our disbelief and pretend digital environments extends beyond our screens. We can overlay useful digital environments onto our real world, the way we do with Google maps. We can also leave these simulations. In VR, these choices still exist, except there is much less, if any, need to suspend disbelief because the user is in the digital environment. Hence, VR takes the spatial principle from being a representation or a display to a truth.