[dragontamer]

No.

I just know that nobody wants to actually do the Carlson dance in VR when they can instead push one button in Fortnight to do that emoji.

VR has some interesting games and interesting effects. Emulating reality is not it at all. We as a tech society are still trying to figure out what VR is good for.

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My best experiences in VR is and remains Beat Saber.

A few other games (Keep Talking and nobody Explodes, Super hot, the spaceship shooter game from the lab) are good and fun.

There is nothing like reality in these games. In fact, the closer things get to reality (ex: throwing objects in Superhot) the worse the experience gets.

In contrast, when you become a fantasy avatar who moves a spaceship around with your hand (space shooter from the Lab) and I can play that for hours.

The best experiences are honest about what VR does well and what doesn't work well. Real life experiences are best one in real life, not with expensive $1000+ goggles on a computer.

[kiazoz]

A synthetic reality would be amazing. People would figure out all kinds of killer apps in the first year. Wearing a monitor on your face though is not capable of creating a synthetic reality.

I always see people mention VR fitness. I would love a synthetic gym with every piece of gym gear ever made and then build our own new gear from there. The problem is there is no way to lift synthetic weights by just strapping a monitor to your face, obviously.

[throwaway4aday]

For you.

I'm with Carmack on this one, reality may be better than VR for you but there are a lot of people in the world where that may not be the case either all the time or for some of the time. A VR headset is cheaper and more attainable than moving to a new city/state/country. Meeting people in VR is easier than trying to make new friends offline. VR allows people to choose everything about their physical appearance, not just clothing but physical proportions and attributes, gender, etc. Is it escapism? To some degree yes but it does allow for real social interaction on a level not previously possible with a computer. That means a lot to people who aren't able to socialize with others offline for a whole host of reasons.

[dragontamer]

Look, if you can solve the latency on voice chat or video chat, you are a hell of a lot further on making virtual experiences feel more intimate than any VR headset.

We've been meeting up online since 2020 due to the pandemic. We all know the problems with online meetups, and it has nothing to do with the nonexistence of VRChat (which obviously exists)

Awkward pauses and slower conversations and a far less intimate feel occurs due to this latency. It's enough to hold a work meeting since most people talk one by one, but not good for say... an online prayer service where coordinating everyone's timing to the Our Father or Hail Mary prayers is completely impossible.

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You literally can't sing or pray together online. It's a very dull experience.

[throwaway4aday]

I've experienced a lot of what you're talking about in video calls but a fairly minimal amount of it when talking in VR. I've never tried singing together in VR and I'm sure it wouldn't be good but conversation flows much more naturally than it does in a video call. I haven't checked but I think video calls have much higher latency because you are also encoding/decoding video streams. VR only transmits headset and controller/tracker positions so it doesn't have to deal with that overhead. Honestly though it doesn't detract from it much, I can't sing and I don't participate in prayer groups so those two things don't affect me. Personally, I'd much rather (and do) spend hours talking to people in VR rather than talking to people in video calls which I also have to do on a regular basis. An hour long video call makes me feel like I want to throw my computer out a window and go live in the woods, an hour long chat in VR doesn't seem quite long enough.