Hollander - Thesis Chaper 1. An Exploration of Virtual Auditory Shape Perception 1. Our sensory systems evolved to process the types of stimuli important to the survival of our species.
Evolution is the process of accidental engineering.
There is no reason to expect evolved systems to be especially efficient or concisely suited to the environment. More likely the end result is an intricate contrivance of overkill and epicycles. With virtual environments we have the opportunity to optimize reality to suit our perceptual systems. Thus ultimate realism is not necessarily the ultimate state for virtual reality. Although realism is a particularly useful and familiar set of constraints, virtual environments need not be so limited.