In XR, a dropped frame isn't a bug report — it's motion sickness

On a flat screen, a frame drop is a stutter. In a headset strapped to somebody's face, it is a vestibular event. The user does not file a ticket. They take the headset off, and a meaningful fraction of them never put it back on.

This makes 90fps a floor rather than a goal, and a floor changes how you design. It means the frame budget is fixed before the art direction is decided. It means you choose the interaction model — teleport, hand-tracked, seated — partly on comfort grounds, not purely on immersion grounds.

For Northwind Forge we simulated the robotic cell against real controller firmware, which meant the physics had to be accurate and fast. The temptation was to trade frames for fidelity. We didn't, and the rollout to eleven plants is the reason: technicians used it daily, because it never made them feel ill.

Every immersive project has this fork in it. The teams that take comfort seriously ship tools people use. The teams that chase fidelity ship demos people admire once.