Thread: How good are your dream physics?

That is, how accurately does your mind reproduce real-life physics in a way that makes the dream feel real? How well does your brain keep track of physical objects (do things appear/disappear, or move around when you aren't looking, for instance)? Do things ever seem to "glitch out"?

I'm asking because my own experience with my brain's dream physics has been... pretty terrible. To begin with, things tend to feel a bit fuzzy and unreal, and a lot of the time I don't feel immersed. I can generally see, hear, and taste things, but touch is sort of vague, and I don't think I've ever smelled something in a dream. My sense of pain is FAR below what it would be in real life, which comes in handy since I get hurt pretty often.

Concerning physical objects, I've had a couple dreams lately where I was trying to arrange things, and it was incredibly frustrating because the objects wouldn't stay where they were placed. There was no sense of object permanence, which sucks when you're trying to, say, set up a chess board. This could simply be how dreams are; after all, quite a few reality checks rely on things being different the second time you look at them (clocks, writing, your own hands). But I'm curious whether my brain really is incapable of keeping track of a pile of chess pieces, and whether that's true of everyone.

Please respond with answers to any of the following:
1. Senses. Whether any changes to your five senses/sense of pain occur when you're dreaming.
2. Overall physics. Whether the physics (gravity, density of objects, momentum, etc.) of the dreamworld are an accurate mimic of real life.
3. Object permanence. How your mind handles objects; whether objects appear/disappear, whether text glitches when you look at it, and whether things are EVER entirely stable.

1. I've already covered my senses, so I'll skip that.

2. For me, the physics tend to be pretty solid; I've dreamed of driving a car a few times, and it always felt normal. Gravity's normal unless I make a lucid attempt to fly. Physically, other objects feel normal.

3. Generally, my mind's able to render other objects pretty well (although my perception of them isn't particularly vivid). It's only when I'm trying to arrange things in a meaningful way, and/or when there are too many objects being handled at once, that things start to glitch out. Text doesn't normally glitch for me, and I've had several dreams where I was reading and writing... however, my memory of what exactly I read doesn't stick around, which is pretty much how things are in real life as well.

Many thanks in advance to anyone who answers ❤