Headsets still look and feel weird to wear.
Since V.R. hardware started hitting the market about seven years ago, headsets have shed some weight. At 20 ounces, the PlayStation VR2 is an ounce lighter than its predecessor and five ounces lighter than the Meta Quest Pro. But all the goggles still felt too heavy. In my experience, I could wear them for no longer than 30 minutes before starting to feel neck strain.
Case in point: The PlayStation VR2 fell off my face and hit the ground when I was playing the Star Wars game and bent over to pick up a tool from the floor of a virtual space station. The wire plugged into the console also made the device feel more cumbersome than wireless headsets, and it created a tripping hazard in the living room.
And like all the goggles that came before it, the PlayStation VR2 looks pretty ridiculous. My wife couldn’t resist shooting videos to mock me as I wore a headset that made me look like a character from the movie “Tron.”
For storage, Sony includes a charging station to hold the motion controllers, which is convenient. But along with the headset, the product takes up precious space in a living room — and unlike a laptop or smartphone, V.R. goggles instantly make a tidy room look cluttered. For single folks, I fear that the sight of the goggles would kill the chances of a second date.
The metaverse is lonely.
For the concept of the metaverse to succeed, we need to be able to connect with our loved ones in that space. In its current state, V.R. is still a mostly solitary experience. When you wear the PlayStation goggles, you block out your view of the real world. What you’re doing in the game is shown on the TV screen that the PlayStation is plugged into. That lets others in the room follow along, but it’s not very social.
Which brings up another issue: To have friends to play with in the metaverse, they must buy the same headset — and the tech is still expensive.
This content was originally published here.
