I wanted to document my first time trying VR because, holy cow, I was in a video game. It was humbling to watch my mammalian brain get so fooled.

Almost immediately, it felt as though my senses had been dropped into a state my body fully believed was real. The first thing I saw, merely the lobby, was a futuristic, slightly cartoonish city, and it completely caught me off guard. I wasn’t expecting anything close to that level of immersiveness.

And I was surprised to see I wasn’t eager to jump straight into games. What pulled me in was the medium itself. I wanted to explore. I wanted to exist inside a new world and understand what this kind of experience could further feel like.

This was unexpected to me because I’ve always been an avid gamer. New tools usually excite me. But VR never had. Watching VR on YouTube never did anything for me... seeing someone else play through a flat 2D screen stripped away whatever magic was supposed to be there. Even those interactive videos where you can move your phone around never struck a nerve. VR just didn’t resonate at all.

...Until today I guess!

I was walking through a mall in San Diego when I passed a store - Let’s Play! VR - and thought maybe today’s the day I give it a shot. Why not? =)

I started with Minecraft.

At first it was frustrating. The gap between what I wanted to do and what I actually was doing in game felt too wide. The bandwidth between thought and action was limited and constantly reminding me of the interface. But then I switched to creative mode and started flying. Flying was exhilarating. More than once, when I looked down while moving through the air, my brain genuinely believed I was floating midair. My heart would skip a beat.

Still, that gap never fully disappeared. As nostalgic and immersive as it was to see Minecraft envelop me in 3D, the friction between intention and execution kept pulling me out of the experience.

Wanting something built more purely for exploration, so I switched to Google Earth.

I visited the Golden Gate Bridge first. It was cool... but what really shook me was space. The eclipse mode. Floating in darkness, suspended among stars and galaxies. It tapped directly into my love for space. I stood there in awe for a good 8 minutes.

Beep, beep, beep... my 30 minutes were up. The longest 30 minutes of my life. I immediately chose to continue for another half hour.

But before starting again, I chatted with the staff member working there and asked about the current state of VR. He mentioned that Valve is working on a standalone headset which sounded promising. He explained that all the headsets in the store were tethered to PCs, each running a GeForce RTX GPU. We talked about limitations. I mentioned the discomfort (neck strain, dry eyes). He agreed. In many ways, the tech still has a long way to go.

Then I jumped back in.

This time I wanted something intense.

Five Nights at Freddy’s... lol.

It was unsettling exactly as I’d hoped. The laminar, ambient atmosphere translated incredibly well to VR - far more immersive than the desktop versions. The retro horror aesthetic felt especially effective when experienced at human scale. While the gesture mechanics were often finicky, the overall experience worked. I played FNAF 1 and 2, but I was too scared to continue with FNAF 3 in VR. The jump scares in 3D were terrifying in the best way.

It’s hard not to notice that VR has taken a backseat amid the current AI hype. Still, this tech feels special. While it’s not something most people would use 24/7 today (I could definitely be wrong about this), the potential is obvious. There’s work to be done - shrinking the gap between thought and action, reducing latency, and making gesture based interaction feel truly organic.

Once we get there, it’s going to be incredible.

See you on the other side.

Are you Ready, Player One?