What It's Like To Spend 40-50 Hours In VR Every Week

Technologist, physicist, and virtual reality professional Paul Tomlinson shares what it's like to spend 4,500+ hours "banging away at real work on virtual screens." Slashdot reader Keighvin shares an excerpt from his report, with the caption: "Portions of the 'metaverse' have leaked into 2021 from the future." Tomlinson writes: I float in space, surrounded on all sides by a grand view of the Milky Way Galaxy. A movie-theater-sized screen hangs before me, gently curved, everything at the perfect viewing distance. Eight different panes glitter with code, facets of a technological jewel granting views into the brain of a system responsible for moving tens of millions of dollars a day. A communications console canted like a drafting table at my fingertips holds a workshop of quick-fire exchanges with my colleagues, my meeting calendar, various API references, and camera feeds of the 'real' world. To my left, abutting the mammoth array of code, a two-story tall portrait display shows the specifications for the task at hand atop an ever-present Spotify playlist. I crank the tunes and get into my flow. But this isn't an excerpt from some Ernest Cline novel -- this is my every-day experience. I'll spend 40-50 hours in Virtual Reality this week, like I did last week and every (work) week for the last 2 1/2 years. It's not just fun and games -- there are plenty of those, along with exercise, meditation, creativity, socializing, etc. -- but for this article, I'm only focusing on (and counting) the work. [...] It's not a stretch to say I'm in the top few percent of VR users on the planet; I've spent much time watching developments in the field and extrapolating future possibilities. I don't insist on my version of the future, but I hope what I've seen is worth sharing. Keighvin asks: "How close are we to ditching screens? What would it take for you to work in VR or AR? What are the deal breakers?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.