Alternative realities still suffer from technical constraints

A PARIS CAFE basement, 1896. The Lumière brothers screen their 50-second film, known as “Train Pulling into a Station”, to an audience said to have been taken aback at the sight of a train moving towards them as if it might jump off the screen. That was the beginning of movie magic. But what if the train could jump off the screen?

San Francisco, the Presidio, 2016. Vicki Dobbs Beck, who runs Lucasfilm’s ILMxLAB, and John Gaeta, who was responsible for the stunning slow-motion visual effects of “The Matrix”, are showing off the future of “mixed reality” in the cinema. The most exciting possibilities are still on the whiteboards of the mind. Imagine a horror film in which, at a crucial moment, a creature leaps from the screen into the audience. This is not yet possible, and even once it is, spectators will still have to wear special glasses to experience the effect.

The problem with the technology of alternative realities—virtual and augmented—is that their science-fiction versions have been too impressive. Popular culture has fostered fantasies of being able to move through, see, touch and interact with a manufactured world that seems...