I think we're not talking about the same thing. I don't see how it could be a cause of simulator sickness, which I thought had to do with eye strain from focal points not being correct, and the inner ear.
Proprioception is a sense like the ordinary 5 senses, the perception or awareness of the position and movement of the body. It is what makes our body feel like our body. Dissociation, caused by dissociatives, can cause inanimate external objects to feel like they are part of us, which could be considered chemically hacking proprioception. The wooden arm illusion is another way to hack proprioception using touch to reinforce the sense of it. But VR should be able to do this without chemistry or touch, because visual clues reinforce the sense of proprioception.
VR can really be the wizbang killer app, but it isn't. Maybe they show you a virtual arm and you see yourself manipulate it, but it doesn't feel like your arm (I am not talking about the feeling of touch). That is how they are ignoring proprioception. And it doesn't have to be an arm, because in VR, you don't have to be human. It should be possible to blow the wooden arm illusion out of the water with VR, and have ten arms, and they all feel like they are distinctly your arms. But we don't see that, and no one is working on it. All we get is a stiff arm without natural reticulation.
So it is fair to say developers are ignoring proprioception, because they are unaware of their own sense of proprioception (like knowing where your hand is without looking at it). Proprioception should be of primary concern in Virtual Reality. They should toss everything, and start all over again with inducing proprioception as the prime driver of the technology.
> As for your question about distance, I suspect you're looking for "accommodation". Accommodation is the physical distortion of the eye to change the focal distance of the lens. Combined with vergence (the distance at which our binocular vision rays converge), the two systems work together to give you a sense of how far away something is (among other things, like atmospheric hazing, parallax, and trained memory of similar objects). Most modern VR systems lack the ability to account for accommodation, leading to what is called "vergence-accommodation conflict". It can be a source of eye-strain for some people, but it tends to be adaptable over time.
Interesting, but complicated. Should be called "apparent display distance," or something simple and easy to understand. Still, gives me more information. Appreciated.