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The sentence is:

"Despite its ability to hijack your senses and immerse you in hyper-realism, the real power of VR may lie in its ability to foster quiet intimacy so realistic it’s unsettling."

I'm really confused with this sentence. I think there is an omitted part after "realistic" or something else. I assume it should be "so realistic that it's unsettling" without omission, am I right?

Ley Chung
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  • Yes, either a word(may be that itself) or a phrase is missing. – rohit raina Oct 09 '15 at 11:44
  • Is it legitimate to omit it in this sentence? – Ley Chung Oct 09 '15 at 11:51
  • Nothing is missing. A few things have been elided. But nothing is missing. And we are actually looking at two ellipses in rapid succession here: "quiet intimacy [that is] so realistic [that] it's unsettling". It is curious that you object to one but not the other, but rest assured they are both equally fine and indeed extremely common. So common, in fact, that "so X it's Y" has long become a set phrase and inserting the that back in would make you sound weird at best, wrong at worst. – RegDwigнt Oct 09 '15 at 12:02
  • @RegDwigнt Hmm, well whether there's anything elided in your first example,s debatable. However, if there was it would be part of a relative clause, where the omission of that is subject to complex grammatical rules. However, the that in the second case would just be a marker of subordination in a content clause, which is why there are no rules involved, it can just be omitted regardless of the structure of the clause. – Araucaria - Him Oct 09 '15 at 12:17

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