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That depends entirely on your living situation. If you live on your own, a VR headset becomes just the opposite - you go from being isolated to being in a room

That depends entirely on your living situation. If you live on your own, a VR headset becomes just the opposite - you go from being isolated to being in a room full of people. Those people can be on the opposite side of the world, but you're carrying on a conversation and playing mini-golf with them. Or for local play, there are one-vs-many party games where one player wears a headset and interacts with a group of people in the same room who aren't in VR. Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes is a great example of this where the other players are referring to a paper manual to help you defuse a bomb. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqelfBKuiic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqelfBKuiic There's Acron: Attack of the Squirrels where one person has a headset and other people play against them as the squirrels with their phones. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP29BxhvHfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP29BxhvHfc Or Davigo, maybe a less social one because it's VR vs PCs and not likely to be in one room, where the VR player is a giant trying to swat at the tiny humans who are playing a 3rd person game where they team up and throw bombs at the giant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL7a63MMx6Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL7a63MMx6Q Even if you don't have a game where other people can be involved, you can still cast the headset view to TVs and tablets. It can be plenty of fun to pass a single headset around taking turns in Beat Saber if everyone else can see what's happening. I'm guessing none of that was the case in 1995, so I wouldn't be so quick to stick to a 25 year old judgement of what the technology can do.

wlesieutre 6y ago
And on the other end of the spectrum, sometimes you just accept that isolation for a while because you get to fly an X-Wing. A Quest V1 with Oculus Link is far from an optimal PC VR setup, but even with that Star Wars: Squadrons is an experience I’ve been waiting for since I first saw A New Hope. It’s hard to convey how cool it is to be sitting in a spaceship cockpit, dodging through asteroids and chasing down TIE fighters with the pew pew pew of four KX9 laser cannons on your wingtips. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE90KIBlWyk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE90KIBlWyk Would I play it in VR mode for hours on end every night and stop talking to real people? No. But not all my activities need to be social either. I can go for a four hour hike in the woods by myself and no one gives me a hard time for being too isolated. Or maybe they do, but I don’t care because sometimes that’s how I want to spend my time. To each their own. One other feature of the Quest that I should mention - you can double-tap the side of the headset at any time to turn the game world off and immediately switch to "passthrough" mode where you see through the headset's tracking cameras. This obviously works best with single player games that can pause themselves until you tap back in, but in those games it makes it no big deal to drop out of the game for a moment to interact with people and things in the real world. A bit weird to talk to you while you have a big headset on your face, sure. But this was added in a software update well after launch, and it's way better for staying available to the real world than needing to take the headset on and off.
jsemrau 6y ago
>That depends entirely on your living situation. If you live on your own, a VR headset becomes just the opposite - you go from being isolated to being in a room full of people. That is a really depressing and dystopian future that I am not sure if I want to live in. Yes, MMOs and games like GTA-O, Roblox, or Fortnite are in the same area already now available. But in my opinion this only increases the actual isolation and I would believe that the post VR experience emotional drop down could be severe. It also brings up the backdrop of Ready Player One, where everybody is occupied by the VR while living in decrepit containers seemingly without a desire to fix it.
- wlesieutre 6y ago
  Telephones increase my isolation compared to taking face-to-face but I’m still glad to have the option
yreg 6y ago
Even single player VR games can be fun in a party setting. In our group we sometimes let one person play VR and mirror it on a TV. The rest of us continue talking while casually watching and taking turns. The player is not isolated because they know they are being watched. Works good with BeatSaber, SuperHot, etc. It's basically the same as a group taking turns at an arcade machine — not solitary.

wlesieutre 6y ago

And on the other end of the spectrum, sometimes you just accept that isolation for a while because you get to fly an X-Wing. A Quest V1 with Oculus Link is far from an optimal PC VR setup, but even with that Star Wars: Squadrons is an experience I’ve been waiting for since I first saw A New Hope. It’s hard to convey how cool it is to be sitting in a spaceship cockpit, dodging through asteroids and chasing down TIE fighters with the pew pew pew of four KX9 laser cannons on your wingtips. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE90KIBlWyk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE90KIBlWyk Would I play it in VR mode for hours on end every night and stop talking to real people? No. But not all my activities need to be social either. I can go for a four hour hike in the woods by myself and no one gives me a hard time for being too isolated. Or maybe they do, but I don’t care because sometimes that’s how I want to spend my time. To each their own. One other feature of the Quest that I should mention - you can double-tap the side of the headset at any time to turn the game world off and immediately switch to "passthrough" mode where you see through the headset's tracking cameras. This obviously works best with single player games that can pause themselves until you tap back in, but in those games it makes it no big deal to drop out of the game for a moment to interact with people and things in the real world. A bit weird to talk to you while you have a big headset on your face, sure. But this was added in a software update well after launch, and it's way better for staying available to the real world than needing to take the headset on and off.

jsemrau 6y ago

>That depends entirely on your living situation. If you live on your own, a VR headset becomes just the opposite - you go from being isolated to being in a room full of people. That is a really depressing and dystopian future that I am not sure if I want to live in. Yes, MMOs and games like GTA-O, Roblox, or Fortnite are in the same area already now available. But in my opinion this only increases the actual isolation and I would believe that the post VR experience emotional drop down could be severe. It also brings up the backdrop of Ready Player One, where everybody is occupied by the VR while living in decrepit containers seemingly without a desire to fix it.

wlesieutre 6y ago
Telephones increase my isolation compared to taking face-to-face but I’m still glad to have the option

yreg 6y ago

Even single player VR games can be fun in a party setting. In our group we sometimes let one person play VR and mirror it on a TV. The rest of us continue talking while casually watching and taking turns. The player is not isolated because they know they are being watched. Works good with BeatSaber, SuperHot, etc. It's basically the same as a group taking turns at an arcade machine — not solitary.