I'm probably an enthusiast, so grain of salt, but... warning: discussion about guns > Half Life Alyx seems to me to suffer from the same problem, a fun game w

I'm probably an enthusiast, so grain of salt, but... warning: discussion about guns > Half Life Alyx seems to me to suffer from the same problem, a fun game with some compelling content, so great to try, but not a must-have. Exercise programs like Supernatural or Beat Saber fall in the same category, fun, cool to try, but not something without okay substitutes or alternatives. I think HL:Alyx is a game changer. Elite: Dangerous sold me on it initially. I regularly use Beat Saber to stay fit during the pandemic -- the recent addition of multiplayer is amazing. VR Chat is really awesome. I find it's not nearly as exhausting to hang out with friends in VR Chat than a Zoom meeting. HL:Alyx -- the fidelity, performance, and detail given to the content is amazing. But what was unique about it for me was that it made exchanges with guns actually harrowing and... more cinematic and believable. A lot of FPS' have to band-aid around the fact that the player character can soak bullets/zaps/whatever because the lack of spatial awareness of a projection onto a 2D surface means most casual players are going to be running into the middle of a fire fight and expect to have a reasonable chance to win. In one of the opening scenes a soldier catches you off guard and points a gun right at you. In VR, without even thinking, my hands went up. In any other FPS, unless that interaction was scripted, I would have just shot back or ran. Yet even because Alyx isn't a super hero or wearing some high-tech recharging shield, it still feels cinematic. I'm physically ducking behind walls, tossing items and using bits of junk as a temporary shield. And it does advance the story of the HL universe so there's that... I wouldn't say it didn't change anything. It raised the bar for VR content that was lacking original content from AAA studios. Elite: Dangerous. VR changed how I play completely. I was instantly better at flying. The added benefit of depth perception improved my reaction speed and spacial awareness. I play on a flat monitor now and again but it's too boring and awkward. Although you can't argue with the numbers -- it's not mainstream in the way that a Nintendo Switch or other game system is. But I wonder if that's not so much a content issue but if there were other factors involved like, say, how FB has managed Oculus or how it wasn't deeply discounted at first to gain adoption like most new hardware platforms are.