“Hey you should try this really cool thing that lets you look at a room in a headset in 3D. Or space, you can look at space too. You can even go underwater and look at fish, but you’re sitting in your chair so you can breathe, obviously. But trust me, you’ll feel like your underwater. It’s awesome.”

It took me awhile to figure out why no one got as excited as I wanted them to when I told them about VR. How could you not think getting to experience a new world in realistic 3D, while being able to move your head and look around all from the comfort of your own chair was the most amazing thing you’ve ever heard?

Yeah, the people I talked to about VR thought it sounds cool, but it no one seemed particularly ecstatic about it. It was interesting, but they weren’t going to go out of their way to try it out or do some research. I thought that maybe I was just bad at explaining it. Or they just really didn’t care as much as I did about new technologies. However, the problem wasn’t with my language or my friends, the problem lies within language as whole.

There are just no words to describe VR that can do it justice.

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Though you can see what she sees, the full immersive experience is more exciting.

Virtual reality is a very hands on experience. The reason I got so excited when I heard someone talk about a new demo for the Oculus Rift was because I had used one before. I had experienced VR and could fully appreciate how amazing some new environment would look in the head mounted display (HMD).  Building this excitement in a person becomes much more difficult if they’ve never seen what VR can do.

It seems that the VR industry has a problem. In order to get more people interested virtual reality, you can’t just talk about it. You can show videos of other people playing a VR game and that may help a little, but it still isn’t quite enough. You need to sit a person down and strap them into a HMD and put them in a virtual ocean in order for them to understand.

What this means is that VR evangelism has to shift its methods. Yes, keep making youtube videos, keep talking to people about VR, but don’t just stop there. Let them actually experience this technology for themselves and then you’ll see the excitement grow.

Though challenging, I think the hands on nature is what makes VR so fun. Personally, I love talking about virtual reality. I love telling people about all the amazing things that VR can do. But in the end, nothing compares to watching someone actually experience being inside the Oculus Rift for the very first time.