For some reason, it's quite common to see in VRMMORPG novels that 1 hour in the real world is equivalent to 2 hours, 4 hours, or 7 hours etc in the game. I might've thought that was cool when I first started reading but now, I just find it ridiculous. First of all, don't people need to sleep? Or in cases where playing the game is a substitute for sleep, aren't there times when you need to go do real life shit? Maybe if you were some pro then you'd have to play it like 20 hours a day, but not everyone is a slave to the game. That means if you go to school for 8 hours, multiply that by 4 or something then you'd have been offline for more than a day's time. And in cases where the game supposedly boast realism, roughly half of your gameplay would be in night time. Even if it was technologically possible, I don't think it's a very good feature to implement. Maybe in single player games it's hella good, but not so good to implement in MMOs. Disregarding the ridiculous level of technology to achieve that, can the brain even handle that? Do the players need to be implanted some sort of brain enhancer just to play the game? Though I guess if that exists, everyone would need to be implanted with such a useful gadget whether or not they play the game. Even if the brain can handle it, what about psychological effects? Like you'd literally be living longer than your real age. Kids these days are already mentally more mature than they are emotionally, won't these type of games literally have 10 yos act as adults? (Quite ironic since the exact opposite happens in these novels, LOL!) This could literally cripple the psyches of the players. Seems like psychologists need to show up more in these types of novels if these people still want to have a functional life outside the game. Even plot wise, this feature would mean that the writer would have to sacrifice real world development of the characters since the MC is usually a grind freak who's on top of the scoreboard, or at least trying real hard to get there. I guess if the writer really wants to focus on the game itself then it doesn't matter much, but this feature just brings more bad than good. I don't think it's really necessary, nor does it have much more purpose other than making a plot hole. The only good thing I can think of it having is giving researchers more time to finish their projects, but that hardly matters in the novels.
just on the question of the time dilation yes our brains actually can handle it since technically time perception is variable based on alot of factors most of which can be induced under stimuli, and while not in all novels there are some novels that talk about disconnect between real body and mind when leaving an extended use vr device. i even remember reading about one that had insertion tubes for food/waste and anesthetics to ease the use of it in the novel i mean... though for the life of me i cant remember which one it was ive read alot of novels...
I think VR while sleeping came from the idea that we're not really doing much when we're sleeping from the perspective of an average person. From what I know, in reality, our brains are basically doing some necessary cleanup though. The difference in time between in-game and real life may not actually be an experience of several hours, but merely that several hours in the game day/night cycle correspond to one hour in real life. (ex. A whole day/night cycle (24 hours) in game may just be 30 min in real life. You experience 30 minutes of time, but the daylight changes much faster than it does in real life.) I think that the several hours in game corresponding to some lesser time idea is rather common in MMOs nowadays anyway.
In this webtoon I'm reading (not a novel but this is the example that led me to make this thread), a red player was forced to log out for one hour irl since he is past the playtime limit of the game. "After being forced to log out, he needs an hour in real life for his re-login. In Lucid Adventure (the game) time, he'll be back in seven hours." Spoiler: This particular episode, or whatever they call the chapters https://m.webtoons.com/en/action/hardcore-leveling-warrior/ep-18/viewer?title_no=1221&episode_no=18 This feature came out of nowhere and without prior set up, I don't think that they mean that it's morning now and one ingame hour later, it will be nighttime by the time the red player logs in again. It doesn't have any impact to the story whether it's daytime or not in this particular scene, so I'm fairly certain that it means they'd need to wait 7 hours before the player logs in again, which is equivalent to 1 hour irl. I've seen that particular feature in actual games that I've played but haven't seen in it novels yet.
Time dilation in VR is quite possible but it depends on the type of VR (depth and function) but it would also need failsafes and perhaps RL time limits so people dont game to death. The time factor itself would also probably depend on the game though. More freeform games wouldnt need to be as concerned with the time dilation between IRL and IG but something highly reliant on player progression to advance a story in a multiplayer would need a lot of consideration. OSO and GGO are pretty good views on how things could work. Itai no wa potentially as well as the devs in that story speed time up such that multi-day events can be held over a few real hours.