“The goal isn’t for audiences to watch something—they should feel it happened to them.”
That’s how Félix Lajeunesse, co-founder of Felix & Paul Studios, describes the studio’s vision behind Interstellar Arc, their boundary-pushing new experience located at AREA15 in Las Vegas. It’s more than VR. It’s a “transcendent voyage” into the deep future, told with the sensory fidelity and emotional gravity of cinema—but delivered through spatial storytelling, immersive environments, and the uncanny feeling that you’re really there.
Felix & Paul Studios is an Emmy-winning immersive storytelling studio known for pushing the boundaries of narrative VR. Past collaborations include Cirque du Soleil, The People’s House with the Obamas, and Space Explorers: The ISS Experience—the largest production ever filmed in space. Their newest and most ambitious project, Interstellar Arc, debuts at Area15 in Las Vegas, offering a futuristic, space-themed experience unlike any other.
As a technological feat, Interstellar Arc is dazzling. But its power to generate “presence”—the psychologically convincing illusion of being in another world—also invites us to ask more difficult questions. What happens when this power is applied to younger users? What do children experience inside these hyperreal simulations? And are we prepared for the psychological, social, and safety implications when “being there” becomes too real?
This article looks at Interstellar Arc not just as an entertainment marvel, but as a lens to explore how children relate to immersive media, what harms might emerge, and how designers, parents, and regulators can better respond.
🚀 The Art of Presence in Interstellar Arc
Set centuries in the future aboard a generational starship bound for a distant planet, Interstellar Arc is an experience that begins with cryosleep and ends with audiences awakening 262 years later in a transformed world. Along the way, participants decode shifting relationships, cultural artifacts, and existential themes, all while moving through physical and virtual spaces seamlessly merged.
The experience is powered by:
- Practical set design and haptics from PHI Studio.
- High-fidelity VR cinematics from Felix & Paul Studios.
- A narrative structure that makes the audience central to the story, not just passive viewers.
- It’s an achievement in narrative presence—the feeling that your experiences in a virtual story are personal, consequential, and emotionally resonant. This isn’t “content.” It’s inhabited memory.
👧 Presence and the Child’s Mind: The Double-Edged Sword
Presence is what makes VR magical—but it also makes it
risky, especially for children.
Children process presence differently.
Developmentally, they’re still learning to distinguish fantasy from reality. Studies show that young users may:
Overestimate the realism of virtual events.
- Confuse simulated experiences with lived ones.
- Exhibit stronger emotional reactions, including fear or overexcitement.
- When a virtual character cries, a child may internalize that grief as real. When a virtual object hits them, they may flinch or even develop real-world anxiety responses.
👀 Physiological sensitivity
Children are also physically more vulnerable in VR. Research from vision and neurology labs highlights concerns around:
Eye strain and underdeveloped depth perception.
- Vestibular system confusion (e.g. balance issues or dizziness).
- Fatigue from prolonged use of headsets not designed for smaller users.
- Manufacturers like Meta and HTC typically advise VR use only for ages 13+, but enforcement is inconsistent—especially in the home.
🔒 Online Harms in VR: More Than a Glitch in the Matrix
While Inte
rstellar Arc is a carefully curated, location-based, single-user journey, many children interact with social VR platforms—open-ended, online spaces where presence intersects with strangers, avatars, and emerging social norms.
⚠️ The risk of unfiltered interaction
According to a 2023 NSPCC poll, 75%of respondents believe children are at significant risk of sexual abuse in VR environments and researchers at University of East London have shown that majority of children report being exposed to harms in VR. This isn't just alarmism. Investigations and academic studies have reported:
Grooming behaviors in child-oriented VR games.
- Harassment through avatars, gestures, or simulated touch (“phantom touch”).
- Exposure to inappropriate content due to weak moderation or age verification.
- Unlike traditional social media, VR adds an embodied dimension to these harms—what feels like a brush on the shoulder or a whispered comment can evoke visceral trauma in ways text never could.
🧩 Fragmented safeguards
Parents often
lack the knowledge or tools to monitor their children’s VR use.
Safety features like muting, reporting, or parental dashboards are either buried, confusing, or absent.
- Regulation lags far behind: most online safety frameworks were built for 2D platforms like YouTube or Facebook, not embodied, real-time 3D interactions.
- The UK’s Online Safety Act, for example, is a good start—but it still treats VR as a fringe case, not a core priority. That’s a dangerous blind spot.
🛠️ Balancing Presence with Protection: Design for Development
So where do we go from here? Can we champion wonder without surrendering safety?
Absolutely—but it requires a shift in how we think about VR for children. It’s not just content—it’s environment, behavior, emotion, and physiology, all in one.
For designers:
Age-appropriate mechanics:
Tailor interactivity, pace, and visuals to developmental stages. Avoid dark or ambiguous spaces where safety or navigation is unclear.
In-built moderation: AI-supported tools that detect predatory behavior, offensive gestures, or inappropriate interactions in real-time.
Opt-in embodiment: Let users choose when and how their bodies are represented or touched in VR, especially in multiplayer settings.
For parents and educators:
VR literacy:
Treat headset use like driving—a skill to be taught, practiced, and observed, not just accessed.
Time boundaries: Enforce healthy duration and break cycles, especially to avoid simulator sickness or overstimulation.
Open dialogue: Encourage children to share what they experienced. Emotional debriefing can help distinguish fantasy from reality.
For policy-makers:
Updated safety regulation:
Establish VR-specific standards for child protection, identity verification, and real-time reporting.
Research incentives: Fund longitudinal studies on VR’s effects on children—both cognitive and social.
Cross-sector collaboration: Bring together game studios, child psychologists, lawmakers, and young users themselves to co-create safer immersive futures.
What Interstellar Arc reveals is the best of immersive storytelling: wonder, beauty, emotion, and a deep sense of meaning. It offers a glimpse into what VR can be when it’s crafted with care.
But when that same sense of presence enters a child’s life—through headsets at home or social platforms with porous boundaries—we need to ask harder questions.
- Are we ready to support their wonder with wisdom?
- Can we let them travel to other worlds without getting lost?
- And do we, the creators and curators of these worlds, understand the depth of the promise we’re making when we say: “You are really here”?
Let’s make sure that promise is one we keep—with care, clarity, and courage.
