Writing a blog post in VR

For a very long time, VR has been “almost” ready for mass adoption. Tonight, I am doing an experiment by writing this blog post in my VR headset. It works, kind of, but so far it isn’t really a pleasant experience. I am sitting on some kind of platform, floating in infinite space, with a huge virtual computer screen in front of me. So far, it is just a gimmick and not really useful. But quite fun anyway, to try out.

I would guess that the screen is about 100” big. And it feels just as awkward to write on such a big screen as you might imagine. In VR, all I have to do is to grab it and pull it closer and resize it. Now it is about 42” on a 1 m distance. Much better, but still a bit too big. I grab it again and make it as small as I can, and apparently it doesn’t seem to get any better than this.

I am using an HP reverb G2 WMR headset. The resolution is crisp enough to see details sharply. But for some reason, the desktop passthrough looks extremely bright. I wish I could dial it down. It is as if all the controls on a computer monitor are turned to 100% brightness. Major annoyance right there, and I can’t find any easy way to dial it down.

The keyboard I am using is a small Logitech K400+ in my lap. The layout is challenging as some of the keys are in a slightly different place compared to a “real” keyboard. But it is always a good practice to type without looking at the keyboard. It works okay.

When Microsoft designed WMR (Windows Mixed Reality), I think they had an idea to make a VR operating system that would fully integrate with regular windows. However, it never caught on (not too surprising) and now it has been killed off completely. When updating windows 11 to the current version 24H2, all support for WMR will be gone and the headset will become ewaste. This is very annoying, and I really regret buying it now. I naively thought that HP and Microsoft would be a safer bet for a professional use case. Three years from premium product to ewaste is pathetic. Lesson learned, I couldn’t have been more wrong and won’t be making that mistake again. Next time, I will just check which VR HMD that has the biggest market share and go for that one. I think it is the Oculus?

I will stay on windows 23H2 for as long as it works until this autumn and then I will attempt to install 23H2 on a USB stick as a Windows2go installation and let it run the EOL version of windows just to play around with the VR headset. It might work, but it does not belong in any kind of professional or sensitive use case because it won’t have any security updates. So it’s a somewhat risky business and I do not recommend it if you don’t know what you are doing. But if I am only using the windows installation for SteamVR for example, and run the operating system without access rights to the other system drives (encrypted) and zero-patch, I might be fine for a while at least. However, it’s not a long-term solution. The only way for me to keep using VR is to get a newer headset that is still supported.

I feel very much as an early adopter still unfortunately. It is a shame. In the right use case, VR is as amazing as it gets. For certain applications, it is unbeatable. Like 3D reviewing of buildings. It is also extremely impressive to look at Google Earth or to take a scenic flight in MSFS2020.

But for writing a blog post like this one, it is significantly more cumbersome than just flipping up a laptop on your lap and get going. It is at least 10X better in all ways. And 10X cheaper too. But it was a fun experiment at least.