I know a lot people hate on this, but when I gave VR workstation a try (asi in, using VR for your second+ monitor) on my Quest 3, it was pretty nice.

At one point I was just taking my laptop to bed, passthrough block on my keyboard, and could comfortably work with 3 larger monitors. Or just plopping in bed with a controller, stream a large screen in front of me, and play a game.

Also, it’s great for focus. Not having the rest of the world around you distracting you works wonders.

The Quest 3 was usable (the resolution sucked too much on Q2 to be able to use virtual monitors), but I can imagine it could get pretty tiring spending more than an hour or so in it - which is what I presume they could eventually solve. I’m excited for Steam Frame, assuming it will work as a standalone Linux computer. If I could just develop anywhere with my monitor setup, needing only the headset and a keyboard, it would be great.

Another thing are meetings. It’s something you have to experience with an open mind, because it has been shoved into our throats under the Metaverse label, which made a lot of people adverse to it. I did give it a try, and it’s such a huge difference between just staring at someone on a Zoom call. Just the fact that you have some kind of gesturing, along with the virtual dashboards that are easy to draw to (using the tip of the controller as a pen on your table, or just plopping a virtual blackboard agaist your wall), and it just makes the meetings and presentations so much better.

Again, you have the issue of the headsets being unwieldy for long term, but that’s something they’d probably solve.

Of course, the whole Metaverse bullshit, and the way it was marketed and shoved down everyone’s throat was stupid, but the technology in itself was pretty nice to use - I enjoyed the experience. It had it own problems, but that’s something that could be solved.

Also, once I got into FPS in VR, it’s really hard to enjoy regular flat screen FPSs. You need to have a magnetic gun stock for it to be playable, but once you get that, it’s so much more fun. Just the fact that you have to actually change mags makes the experience so much better. It’s something that is hard to describe, but just feels a lot better. In general, some of the best experiences gaming I had were in VR, but most of it was just a promise or tech demos, because the field didn’t have time to mature, and was too unafordable for studios to take it seriously.

So, yeah, I think it had promise, and it’s a shame the world has given up before it became affordable and iterated upon, especially since we traded it for bullshit AI.