[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.