I spent a week working in VR. It was mostly terrible, however… – Cointelegraph Magazine

I just spent an entire week working in virtual reality using the new Meta Quest 3. While the experience still mostly sucked, I came away with some renewed optimism for VR in the workplace.

As I took Ron’s outstretched, virtual hand for a handshake, my actual hand — in the real world — clumsily whacked into the side of my desk.

Ron started laughing, his avatar’s animated facial expressions mimicking his real face thanks to his device’s eye and facial tracking technology.

A project manager at Microsoft, Ron tells me it’s something I’ll get used to. He’s been working in the metaverse for over a year.

Days later, I meet Heather, a mother who’s been working in virtual reality for a couple of months. She likes to jump into the metaverse to work when her kids are at school and the house is quiet.

Then there was Miguel, a recruiter at Netflix, an “OG” user of the virtual reality app Immersed, who’s been using it to work for the last two years.

The big question is: Why would you want to?

Only two hours in, my eyes are burning

As impressive as it all sounds, after working in the metaverse for a week myself, I’m not sure how anyone could do it for longer.

I spent most of the seven days clocking in and out through the virtual coworking app Immersed, which can be found on the Meta Quest store but can be downloaded from other platforms, too.

Most days, I would be joined by as many as a dozen other VR users, depending on the time of day and which public workspace I chose. (The “Cafe” setting seemed to be the most popular.) 

Initially, I was going to spend the week using Meta’s home-grown Horizon Workrooms, but I quickly switched to Immersed after realizing Horizon Workrooms didn’t support public workspaces and also lacked important quality-of-life features, such as the ability to move and adjust screen size and distance.

The setup wasn’t too difficult in either case. When you first strap on the Meta Quest 3 headset, the device will scan your surroundings to understand where you are within your room (in my case, the office) and where certain obstacles are, such as bookshelves, desks and chairs. This is so it can warn you if you’re getting too close to a wall or obstacle when you’re immersed in VR.

To be able to interact with your computer in virtual reality, there’s a companion app that needs to be installed on your PC, which will then allow the app to retrieve the necessary information from your computer and beam it into your headset via cable or WiFi in the same way most remote desktop apps work.

In Immersed, your virtual screens can be rotated, resized and moved anywhere you want. You can even choose to work in mixed reality, allowing you to superimpose virtual screens among your real-life surroundings.

But it wasn’t much help. At the end of each day, I was left nursing a splitting headache and trying to rub the immense strain from my eyes. My neck always felt stiff, a side effect of being weighed down by the bulky headset.

And for what? Most days, I struggled to achieve the same level of output compared to a regular day in front of the PC.

My experience is far from unique. In 2022, researcher Dr. Jens Grubert at the Coburg University of Applied Sciences in Germany gathered 18 people to participate in a study of the effects of working in VR for a week.

Two dropped out within the first few hours due to nausea, anxiety and migraines, while the others who managed to finish the week reported increased levels of frustration and anxiety.

They also reported a significant decrease in their own perceived productivity compared to working in the real world. All suffered eye strain, though this seemed to diminish as time went on.

In April, research firm Forrester found that, while there’s a lot of hype around the possibilities of working in VR, there’s not a lot of it happening in reality… virtual or otherwise.

Forrester’s research found that only 2% of respondents said they preferred to use a mixed-reality device for work. The…