 I'm here in the Verge offices playing a fun little murder mystery game called Dead Secret. That thing on my head is the Gear VR, and unlike the Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive, it's the first big virtual reality headset that people can actually buy and use. You might notice another difference there too. There are no wires, because in theory, the Gear VR is totally portable. But is it really? I decided to put it to the test. I probably spend more time playing games on the subway than I do anywhere else. And technically, I could do the same thing with the Gear VR. Just think of it as holding the phone really, really close to your face. Instead of Candy Crush, I'm checking out a shooting game called Eve Gunjack. Well, in theory, I'm checking it out. In reality, I'm thinking about how easy it would be to fall off the platform or get my bag stolen. Commuting is probably the least pleasant part of the day for lots of people, so escaping it makes sense. But virtual reality isn't really the same as escaping. You're incredibly vulnerable, totally isolated in a crowd. And that's when things work perfectly, which they don't. The thing about VR headsets is that they can't tell whether your head is moving because you turned it, or because your whole body is going around a corner. Eventually, wearing a Gear VR in public just turns into a complicated mind game. Everyone can see me, but I can't see them. But then I turn on my pass-through camera, and I'm the one secretly watching them. Until everybody's wearing headsets and secretly watching each other. At which point, society will probably just break down. I used to do a lot of work in coffee shops, so it makes sense to try to have a little fun there too. I can fire up the extremely chill puzzle game Land's End, which doesn't require me to use my hands at all. I can just stare at things to select them. Which is good, because I don't trust myself to drink this tea and tap a trackpad at the same time. There. The great thing about coffee shops is that it's socially acceptable to get lost in your own world there. Nobody thinks you're an asocial loser for not talking to them. Sure, they probably think I'm weird, but it's a polite kind of weird. The bad thing is that coffee shops are designed for sitting very still. Land's End is a totally 360 degree experience, but I can't actually turn around. So what's otherwise a calm stroll through a mysterious island is more like an extremely uncomfortable yoga session. The first Gear VR was a huge pain to carry around. Whatever problems I might have using the new one outside the office, though, it fits in the bags I carry around every day, even if I am constantly scared of breaking it. The only thing I have to worry about is keeping the lenses clean, because there's nothing more miserable than playing with a blurry headset. Well, except maybe for motion sickness. I've had some sort of bad experiences using headsets in cars. It turns out that if you're making frequent turns in the car, games are unplayable. But if I boot up a 360 degree movie and decide I just don't care what I'm looking at, it's sort of pleasant. Actually it's more than pleasant, it's bizarrely comfortable. So now we're putting this to the ultimate test, which is just doing circles around a parking lot. So this is like the worst situation you could be in with a car. What I think is more interesting is I'm actually more motion sick right now than probably you are. I'm actually pretty motion sick. Everybody else in this car is incredibly motion sick. Scientifically, I have no idea what is going on. But I'll take it. It's reasonable to expect that I can't play VR headsets perfectly when I'm on the train or in a car. But what if I just want to sit at home? What if I don't even want to play games, just watch a VR movie? So I'm going to watch Waves of Grace. I'm watching a progress bar. It's a really immersive progress bar. The really awkward thing about this, just waiting for it to load, is that one of the things I really like to do on couches is drink. Is there whiskey over here right now? Okay, it's 3pm. Thank you. I feel the dimensions of this glass. Yes. Unfortunately now, everything's happening behind me. So this is the big problem with the Gear VR. It's an entertainment product that can't do the one thing we expect from entertainment products, that they'll be there when we get off work and want to relax. It requires totally rethinking the way we fit games and movies into our lives. So how about the other end of the spectrum? How about I pick the absolute nightmare scenario for people who think we'll replace the best parts of the real world with VR? Like say finding a park with a beautiful view of the Brooklyn waterfront, going there just before sunset, and completely ignoring it. The really funny thing is that I think a flight game is actually the absolute best idea because I can feel the wind on my face. It's actually really fantastically immersive. The nice thing about this game is that it's really pretty. It has that sort of low-folly aesthetic. The big lesson from the Gear VR is that it's not actually very good at overwriting reality. In Neuromancer, cyberspace is called a consensual hallucination, and that's exactly what the Gear VR offers. It gives you a wonderful illusion if you put a lot of work into keeping it up. Is that the sign of a good entertainment system? Not really. But until we get something better, it's at least a chance to live out some real-life science fiction.