I don't think anyone saw this VR problem coming

I've blogged quite a bit about how unimpressed I am with VR, and why. From simulation sickness, to the unsolved problems of navigating VR spaces and interacting with the objects in VR environments, to the prohibitive cost of the hardware, to the simple fact that there's just not much that VR is actually good for, VR just has too many issues that need to be solved before it can achieve mainstream acceptance... and it probably needs to see widespread adoption before its remaining problems can really be solved.

Even if we can sweep all of that out of the way, though, it now looks like VR, especially in the form of VR arcades, has a new problem: public health. Specifically, ocular herpes. Yes, apparently that actually is a thing.

From GameRant:

Virtual reality hasn’t quite completely taken the games industry by storm, due in large part to the high price of entry associated with other headsets like the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive, but many industry watchers have said that Sony has a real opportunity with the more affordable PlayStation VR to get a lot more people interested in virtual reality. With the PlayStation VR also starting to pull in positive reviews following its launch two weeks ago, things appear to be going really well for Sony and VR fans in general right now.

So in other words, this is a really bad time for virtual reality to be associated with a major health scare. But that’s exactly what is happening if a screenshot originally posted by YouTuber Drift0r is to be believed.

The Daily Dot reports that the screenshot features a conversation between two anonymous VR developers who are talking with each other about an ocular herpes outbreak among individuals who have been using VR headsets. It seems that the disease is being passed from gamer to gamer at places like trade shows and demo booths where multiple people share the same headset. 

Yikes.

VR's precarious position is particularly vulnerable to headlines like this, simply because of the barriers to entry that it presents to the consumer. Apathy already abounds, and for VR evangelists, the cure that's often prescribed is for doubters to strap on a headset and give it a try... which requires the sharing of VR equipment. Which would now appear to pose a public health hazard.

Even if the risk is low, the disgusting possibility, added to VR's existing barriers to entry, could be enough to discourage people from even trying the technology, which is potentially crippling for tech that needs to be experienced in order to win badly-needed converts. Microsoft just announced partnerships with five different third-party vendors, all aimed at bringing $299 VR headsets to market next year, but that might be just in time for them to all fail completely because VR has already failed to catch the public attention, except in negative ways.