Well, it would appear that those sci-fi dystopias are pretty much spot on, according to Andrew E. Freeman from LatopMag:
When you boot up a Windows 10 Mixed Reality headset, you land in the Cliff House, a serene ranch flanked by a lake on one side and a mountain on the other. Birds chirp. You could stay awhile.
On the walls are a bunch of Windows 10 apps. I thought that would be enough to get me through my workday. I thought I could work in the Cliff House. But I was wrong: It was 8 hours in hell.
Before I go any further, I should tell you not to try this at your workplace. Keeping yourself in virtual reality for that long at a time, especially without frequent breaks, can be taxing on your eyes and possibly even your mental health.The problems Freeman goes on to describe are all pretty much the ones I'd envisioned: horrible ergonomics, increased mental and physical stress, inefficient work-flow, and reduced productivity that only got worse with time, rather than improving. And those are just the technical issues:
Besides all of the technical issues, there were social problems. We have an open office, and I sit among all of my colleagues. While I could hear their voices with the headset on, I couldn't see them, and I felt isolated from the rest of the team, trapped in a dream-house-turned-prison. I was lonely. I didn't dare put headphones on, lest I lose my grip on reality entirely.
[...]
Speaking of the time, it's tough to hit a deadline in VR. The Cliff House is like a casino — it has no clocks — so it's hard to tell how much time you've spent there. My options were to hit the Windows key, which brought up a version of the Start menu; open an empty desktop to see the task bar; or, in my descent into madness, frantically type, "What time is it?" into Google.The symptoms being described here are not unlike those that Michael Stevens of VSauce describes experiencing in his isolation experiment, as documented in this Mind Field episode:
This is way beyond the problem of social VR not being a thing -- prolonged isolation can permanently alter your brain, doing damage that you'll never recover from, which is a serious problem with solitary confinement in prisons, and why advocates are trying to have the practice banned entirely as a cruel and unusual human rights violation. Goggling in for 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, risks causing permanent neurological and psychological damage to those who are forced to spend their work weeks in these virtual solitary cells, in addition to the RSI.
And then there's the public humiliation Freeman endured, on top of it all:
Unable to see the outside world, I opened myself up to all sorts of practical jokes. Many colleagues took photos of me working with the headset on. Senior writer Caitlin McGarry posted one on Twitter (have you ever been on Twitter in VR? It's awful), which was then retweeted not by other colleagues, but Tom's Guide itself.The few positive aspects of the experience ("there were fewer points during the day when [co-workers] bothered me unnecessarily") were offset by related negatives ("I would've welcomed the interruptions, considering the loneliness thing"). There were no actual benefits at all, just physical and mental stress, with a high risk of permanent physical and mental damage with prolonged exposure, all to achieve a reduction in productivity. Why does anyone think that this is a desirable future?
In short, Freeman's one-word description of the VR workplace, "hell," is not hyperbole. This is, literally, hell, a cruel and unusual practice that we must not allow buzzword-addicted corporations to force onto defenseless employees. Seriously, if your employer ever announces that they're exchanging your office's desks for VR headsets, unionize immediately.
And the biggest problem here, for the VR industry, is that these issues are all fundamental to VR. It's a lot like the problem of VR/simulation sickness, which is caused by human physiology and thus can't be fixed purely by iterating on the tech; these problems simply aren't going away, which means that any potential VR applications have to take them into account.
People simply can't be required to work in VR for any prolonged period of time; it is not, and cannot be, a productivity tool. Which makes for one more thing that VR just isn't any good for.