The first thing you notice about trying to do actual work in virtual reality is that a host of minor irritations caused by the fact that the real world aren’t there.
It’s surprisingly hard to find and use the mouse and keyboard. You probably think you can touch-type. I certainly did. I even have some evidence of that, based on the fact that I used a blank-keyed Das Keyboard for a few years. But it turns out that there’s a difference between being able to type without looking at the keyboard and being able to type without being able to see your own hands, even in your peripheral vision. The latter’s quite hard, and it gets even worse the first couple of times you lose the mouse.Immersion is a double-edged sword, it seems. He continues:
The saving grace is that it’s really helpful to have an excuse to remove the headset every now and again, because the crippling pain in your face will quickly leave you wanting a lie down.
When you put the Rift on for the first time, you’re faced with message warning you to “stop use if you experience any discomfort”. The accompanying health and safety guidance goes further, advising you to “take at least a 10 to 15 minute break every 30 minutes, even if you don’t think you need it.”
For someone used to ignoring games consoles’ plaintive cry to take 10 minutes every hour, it’s tempting to ignore this advice too. But they aren’t exaggerating. As I headed into my third consecutive hour using the headset, I was keenly aware of pain in my eyes from the strain, in my head from the light and in my face from the headset. I also felt vaguely nauseous, and actually had a brief moment of panic when my forehead went numb, which I don’t think it’s supposed to do.
Other problems include clunky interface issues (simply closing a window is an issue), illegible text (because VR has generally worse image quality than a simple monitor), and the simple fact that there's not much that you'd want to do in VR and yet can't do outside of it:
Unless you can do 100% of your work within one app, a virtual desktop proposition is still the best option for getting stuff done in VR: multitasking between apps is nonexistent, and even rapidly switching apps isn’t really possible today. That means that, for instance, a floating browser window with some visual reference to help you accurately model in Tilt Brush, or a text-entry box alongside your fancy 3D visualisation, require the app maker to serve your specific needs.
That’s trickier than simply fixing VR so it doesn’t leave you in pain after extended use, although admittedly not as urgent. It requires a fundamental re-imagining of what the job of a VR platform actually is, and it will also lead to multiple abortive attempts to come up with some sort of user interface standard for this before someone cracks it.
Like I've said before -- there's a reason why purely virtual workspaces are so often a feature of sci-fi dytopian nightmare visions of the future. Only someone whose income is tied to the success of VR, or someone whose workday involves lots of meetings and very little actual work, could think that this is a good idea.