Ready Player One is the Steven Spielberg adaptation of Ernest Cline's seminal novel about a future in which virtual reality is the real world. In the opening scene, Wade Watts climbs around a ramshackle trailer park before placing a headset on his face. The Oasis is a virtual world of possibilities where everyone can do anything they want.
If you asked me if we were close to Ready Player One a year ago, I would have listed all the objections my more skeptical colleagues had noted. On a recent Saturday afternoon, my husband put on the Meta Quest 2 virtual reality headset to play Puzzling Places, a 3D puzzling game, while our children played with their stuffed animals and I sorted laundry.
A half-hour after lunch, my 6-year-old daughter was allowed to use the app to create a scene of snowmen and falling snow, complete with Lisa and Tom. My 4-year-old was watching as the headset cast to the screen. My husband put the headset on again after dinner. I told him to charge it because I was going to try a few new games with my coworker.
Being the parent of a still-unvaccinated 4-year-old in the middle of a rainy Oregon winter has sucked. We have canceled swimming and gymnastics classes for my kids because they go to school and daycare. Virtual reality isn't perfect, but it has allowed us to stay indoors until my son gets a vaccine. I kind of like it.
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A new hope.
It didn't start out this way. I got the Meta Quest 2 as a loaner in November to try out with my colleagues and experiment with briefings. For work or relaxation, the headset was not good. If I want to meditate, I will take my dog on a walk; if I want to blow off steam, I go for a run.
We reinstituted strict social distance to protect older family members in the middle of the Omicron surge after both sides of my family visited. I downloaded Puzzling Places when I was trapped in my house. Meditative music plays as you manipulate small pieces of landmarks, clothes, and places in a 3D space around you. The click and glow as I put each small piece into its place was addictive.
I downloaded more games. Then a few more. It wasn't easy to get used to the headset. The headset is light and easy to use, but still heavy and awkward. Getting plopped down into an empty space with no legs is still hard to comprehend; I bought myself a bag of the same ginger gummy chews I used to fight nausea during my pregnancies.
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