Something that has been nagging at me for a while is this. And I don't know if you can answer this, but here goes. When being tranced in SL, with a spiral, and text, how on earth do you read, AND drop and what exactly do you look at? Some HUDs let a 'tist feed you text that lays over the spiral, but it's still a puzzle to me.
Sorry I didnt see this till now. I focus on the text, everything else is secondary.
You mentioned HUDs, so I’m guessing you are talking about Second Life? The HUDs there work pretty well for me. The visuals that go with them are not too dynamic, and don’t distract. Once the trance is under way, all the other stuff - the spiral, the background picture - just gets ignored. Consciously at least. It might still be creating an atmosphere conducive to trance.
Some scripts aren’t well-prepared. They choose text that doesnt stand out from the background or spiral, which can be distracting, and make it harder to trance to. It’s still possible for me, but won’t be as deep.
Trancy stuff outside of SL is often much worse. Gifs with very dynamic images moving back and forth, words that dont match the imagery (like when people have copied scripts meant for spoken word and havent adapted to the medium: “close your eyes now - oh you’re reading text? oops!”).
But once you’re practiced at going into trance, even those kind of things don’t stop you. They just make the experience less satisfying than it could be.
I hope that helps :)
@tartlette1968