Lawnmower Man 2021

During the after-Christmas sales last year I managed to gab myself a virtual reality headset. Specifically, I got the shiny new Oculus Quest 2, an entirely self contained, wire free VR headset. No need for a beefy and expensive PC to process the games. Everything is done on board the headset itself. 

There are limits to this freedom. There is a curated storefront, so I can’t simply buy games on Steam to play on the Oculus right away, though with a link cable and a built in feature, you can use the Oculus as a pass through headset and play the greatest VR game ever made to date, Half Life: Alyx. But that would require the afore mentioned beefy and expensive PC, which I do not have. 

It’s also made by bookFace, and intrinsically tied in to the Facebleag infrastructure, requiring an active Facebukk account to log in and start using. 

However, although I only ever otherwise use it for messaging my local Pokémon Go friends, I do actually have an EffBee account. So, good to go, I did a little research. 

VR is a total body experience. Most games have you standing up, moving about, looking around, ducking, dodging, and swinging arms and hands about. This is a lot more than pressing joysticks and buttons on a traditional console. I have a full body tremor, mostly centred on my arms and legs. Would I be able to get into VR at all? 

It turns out VR, and VR exercise in particular, is really great for Parkinson’s. Basically something, something, something, distraction, something, blood flow, something, something, music, fun and tah-dah! It has been shown to have overall positive mood and health benefits. 

So I got in to the VR space focusing on that. All my first apps were fitness forward, such as the phenomenal boxing simulator Thrill of the Fight, and the rhythm action games Beat Sabre and Pistol Whip, my personnel preferred gmae in that genre. I really enjoyed playing all of these, but they were exercise games, and kinda started to become a chore to turn on. Over time, with a narrow focus on just those games, I lost interest in VR entirely. 

It didn’t help that I had no one to share the experience with, both in person and online. With Covid being very much an ever present threat, I couldn’t have friends over to show of my shiny tech to and share challenges with. And I made no effort to find friends online, largely because last year the Oculus was difficult to get hold of, so very few of my friends had one. 

But now a few of my Twitter buddies have one, and I’ve broaden my library thanks to discounts throughout the year, most recently the Black Friday sales. I now have a wonderfully fun, stunning looking, very real feeling mini-golf game, Walkabout Mini Golf. I’ve been having a lot of laughs with that one, and it allows online multiplayer with avatars and in game voice chat and sounds like a whole lot of future fun, because several of my friends already own it! 

Virtual Reality is here, now. Yes, unfortunately the cheapest, easiest entry, beginner friendly, expert featured machine is owned by a very, very evil mega corporation that willfully pushed lies and mistruths and corrupted millions of users opinions on governments, elections, science, vaccines and more. Sigh. But they really are the only horse in the race at this level. 

It is a thrilling experience to put on a wireless headset and discover you can freely move about within a generated environment, interacting naturally with objects and characters. It is equally thrilling to watch a friend try it for the first time and wave at a robot friend, then pick up a can and throw it at the robot, entirely without formal tutorials. 

I’m really enjoying my time in VR. My tremor rarely causes me any issues while I’m exploring my digital world. I can’t wait to see where this goes. 

I also can’t wait for the first time Ada and Connor try it themselves. There will be video. Dear Reader, I promise you, there will be video.