I live in 350 sq ft. with my wife, daughter, and two dogs. It’s nice to be able to zone out and be in my own space without having to be tethered to the PC and the Samsung HMD Odyssey. I’ve even used it outside in a camping chair.

My current usage patterns suggest that it’s a replacement for using Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Flipboard, and so on on my iPhone X. I set up a couple of web based Google Mail accounts too. It’s remarkably usable for these things. I have bookmarks set for all of them, so they’re just a click away.

As far as VR experiences, there are several things I keep going back to. Wonder Glade has several mini games. For some reason, I really enjoy the basketball and mini-golf.

Proton Pulse is a great breakout/bricks type game apparently made for Gear VR as it uses head motions, not the controller. I expect that’ll be updated, but it’s well worth the $2.99.

A couple of other interesting things: Mondly (interactive language practice) and MelodyVR (360° live concerts with multiple camera positions).

I also love that Altspace is here. That brings the promise of social VR to an untethered, inexpensive headset. I haven’t tested all of the games, but being able to play with others, cross platform, is intriguing.

I haven’t test the party feature yet. I have a few friends with Go, but if you’re ever online at the same time I am, I’d be happy to give it a shot.

Of course the consumption experiences are great too. Hulu, Netflix, Amaze, Gala… they all do exactly what you expect.

There are some things that would make the experience better, but they’re certainly not show stoppers. Copy and pasting text, a “right click” somehow in the browser, pairing of other Bluetooth devices (keyboard, mouse, headphones), and a way to view a computer’s screen interactively. Think Bigscreen, but two way.

Imagine setting up a virtual server at Digital Ocean with Ubuntu, and being able to control that machine from your Go, anywhere with WIFI. I’d love to use this for work, but like with VR in general, this is still a wide open area for devs to tackle.

More soon.

You can pick one up at Best Buy, or follow this link to Amazon. It is an affiliate link, so if you make a purchase there, Heather and I will receive a small percentage of the sale.

The early days of VR were research (funded by the military), big business, health, and science. The latest generation is about intense immersive gaming – sweat, fatigue, adrenaline, and anxiety all present. The experiences are as genuine to your brain as they need to be.

As we move toward the future of VR, it’s important that we recognize its strengths and weaknesses. The immersion is real, the interaction is real, and the relationships are real, too. Affordability is no longer the barrier, with incredibly immersive HMD (Head Mounted Display) experiences starting at $276 and VR ready PCs at around $719 (less if you build your own). If you’re on a budget, Google’s Daydream platform is a good starting point, as is Samsung’s Gear VR platform– each under $100.

So what’s the opportunity? Here’s a fact: I haven’t seen a VR native spreadsheet, presentation software, or a word processor. No calendaring, time tracking, coding environments, email, you get the idea. In fact, I’ve seen very little in the productivity space that isn’t a simple github proof of concept done over a weekend to prove it can be done.

This isn’t to belittle the efforts of pioneers, to the contrary. It’s to point out that many of these were built before Sony sold 2 million PSVR systems, and Microsoft threw their hat into the VR ring with Windows Mixed Reality.

The opportunity is now.

Opportunity 1) games don’t require much in the way of input. In fact, many of today’s use cases don’t require a keyboard at all, and this is a good thing. Getting text into VR is a slow process: a) you learn to touch type, b) use a virtual keyboard with the same level of patience (and time) it took to learn the physical one (sometimes decades), or c) wait until dictation isn’t awkward in a shared physical space.

Opportunity 2) In the same way that the web changed what it meant to compute (“The network is the computer.” John Gage, Sun Microsystems, 1984), the web can change what it means to experience work. All of the major technology companies have web based versions of the basic productivity suites, and they’re all solid implementations. What does it look like to combine these with WebVR, an open, web based graphics library for virtual and augmented reality?

What’s stopping you from building TextEdit or Notepad for VR, using the WebVR A-Frame as the framework? Companies building VR tools for work today are going to be the Apple, Microsoft, and Google of the future. It’s an open, green pasture, and no one is on the field.

What do you think? Are we ready to start thinking about what it means to work in VR? Are you ready for meetings in a virtual shared space? Does VR allow home office workers to feel like a part of the team?