As mentioned in my previous post, I’m especially bullish on VR during this COVID-19 scare. People crave human interaction and VR will help deliver that in a new experience.

I bought an Oculus Quest as I wanted to put my money where my mouth is.

I didn’t just stop there, I had my weekly catch up call with my manager today through VRchat. We were both new to it and were trying to figure out how to set up a private chat room. We entered into a regular chat room with a few other people and quickly realized that there was no way we were going to have a private conversation about work in this room.

There was this person in a tomato soup avatar that was eager to hang out and have a conversation with me but unfortunately didn’t have the time. Tomato soup person, if you’re out there, I promise I’ll hang out and chat for a bit next time.

My manager and I finally figured out how to create our private chatroom and honestly, it was really easy to catch up and talk. I was quite impressed with how clear the dialogue was. You can even do hand gestures like a fist pump or point in a certain direction.

I certainly don’t know what the capability of VRchat looks like, but it was a great first start into seeing what the future could look like. I’m honestly not a huge fan of large zoom sessions as its typically one-person talking. If you want to replicate hanging out with a group of friends, you need VR. If you want to replicate the ability to have side and group conversations in the same interaction than you need VR.

The future of social conversations and experienced could take off. I will say that it’s a lot of stimulation and you get quite tired after a short interaction, but certainly, something that will improve as the technology continues to accelerate.

I never count against exponential technologies.