People have been envisioning virtual show rooms and virtual stores/malls forever... but I don't believe they serve an actual purpose. What function does it sol

People have been envisioning virtual show rooms and virtual stores/malls forever... but I don't believe they serve an actual purpose. What function does it solve? Unless you have fully realistic graphics and fully simulated senses (touch), why would a virtual store ever be better then just browsing a webpage? Things like "try your clothes on virtually", "buy furniture and upload your room schematics" have existed for decades, and have all been pretty much failures. I don't think most people care about a more "immersive" experience when it comes to commerce, a picture on amazon does the job. A product/review video on youtube does the job. I don't think people care about a more immersive meeting room, or a more immersive online event, because again those products have been tried for decades and have all failed. It honestly seems to me like the only actual feature of the "metaverse" is to force people into a gated experience, and to try and get them to stay there for as long as possible. Then you can advertise to them, then you can hook them into addictive behaviors (games, casino), then you can sell them worthless "pieces of the metaverse". The only function of the metaverse that I can see is to hijack 100% of a persons attention. In that sense, it is the obvious evolution of social media, yet as an evolution of the Internet as a whole it completely misses the point. Of course, I am likely completely wrong, and leaps in VR/AR could change everything, and what you are doing is very cool. It just seems like and updated VRML is just promising the things people 20 years ago said would exist. At the end of the day, there is still no Virtual Mega Mall, because amazon.com beats it in functionality by a long shot. Give me the best VR available, I still think amazon.com beats it by a long shot. The day I can't distinguish VR and real life, well maybe then you got something, but we are many moons from that sci-fi dream.