Hi @Lisasals, I have occasionally had lucid or semi-lucid dreams correlated with VR, for example a few days after using Birdly VR (which remarkably captures the feeling of flying like a bird) I had a semi-lucid flying dream. Virtual reality has changed the content of my dreams – for example I have a lot more dreams in which I have some awareness that I’m in a simulation, which I often conceptualize as being in VR (although I would not characterize most of those as lucid per se). I think my dreams tend to be somewhat more bizarre or “creative” in some sense due to my day residue consisting of a greater variety of unusual (VR) experiences in waking life.
I’ve read accounts by other people online talking about having more lucid or bizarre dreams due to VR use. It goes the other way too – as when people create VR experiences based on or inspired by dreams (lucid or otherwise). Just being in VR with another person is, in my view, somewhat like being in a shared dream. (Especially true if you are both physically present in the same space while sharing a VR experience. NOTE: this is not typically possible with current home-based VR systems.)
The podcast episode I link to in the thread Lucid Dreaming & VR: How our waking life is becoming more dreamlike may be of interest; in that episode Kent Bye and I did a deep dive into these matters.
You may also be interested in some of the writings etc. of Jayne Gackenback, who has done groundbreaking research on connections between lucid dreaming and videogames. It is to be expected that virtual reality might have a greater effect because it is much more immersive (i.e. you feel like you are there, not like you are doing something on a screen).
Also, Jay Mutzafi interviewed her on his Lucid Sage podcast (~18 minutes).
Something I’m very interested in is using VR for dream training – either training to have lucid dreams or “OBE’s,” or training to have certain dream skills (in lucid or non-lucid dreams). Some people are working on this (e.g. @alexk) but nothing is commercially available as of yet. Between dream training and dream recreation I think there is much potential for VR and related technologies to transform dream exploration and possibly the nature of dreaming itself.
~ArthurG