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Author is bashing VR but what if conferences in 3d environments are a better solution than skype? People use 3d / metaverse solutions for education for example, because it's a compelling solution. A gaming environment may in fact be more productive than looking at 100 thumbnails of participant faces.

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video conferencing is appealing because we communicate as much through body language and facial cues as by voice. We evolved to communicate face-to-face and end up missing out on a lot of information if we only represent ourselves with our voices and a visual avatar.

A large part of the body language component is reproducible today with hand trackers + head orientation. In terms of facial cues there have been some interesting demos with gaze tracking being reproduced onto the visual avatar.

but have we gotten past the uncanny valley yet? I've seen this attempted previously but it always seems very "off" in a way that engenders distrust. When we could just fix video streaming, it seems redundant to try to accurately replicate body language in a 3d avatar.

If the cost and cumbersome nature of VR can be reduced to bring it in line with just putting on a set of headphones and still be aware of the outside environment, sure.

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