Social interaction in video games is second tier because it's vastly lower bandwidth than real life social interaction. 3 senses - taste, touch, smell - are completely missing. Audio is present, but often sounds distorted, disconnected, or ethereal - i.e. "off". Meanwhile, visually you only gets to experience the virtual space you're interacting in which is rife with limitations. In particular, body language from those around you is either missing entirely or is very rudimentary.

Though I'd say interaction in games can easily beat "talking on the phone".

You can get very good body language through, but... it will cost you quite a bit in additional hardware (trackers and add-ons). The demand is clearly there and the supply is catching up (various competitors). I think competition will drive down the cost.

Audio is likewise a matter of cost. And manufacturers not cheaping out on components, I'm looking at you HTC (and the notoriously horrible Rift S too).

I'm looking forward to programmable smells based on a combination of basic smell cartridges. That's totally a thing people are working on.

Touch is a hell of a lot harder to solve. More could be done to provide good haptic feedback. Haptic vests and facial interfaces already exist (at additional cost, of course), but the problem is the more crap you have to add to your body the more inconvenient (and sweaty) VR gets. I believe providing better VR touch interfaces is key to the development of the technology.

And I really, really don't want to taste anything in VR!

If we get good body and face and eye tracking all built into a headset I think social VR will have everything it needs. I’m pretty sure all tracking can be done purely with cameras, maybe even only with cameras on the headset and controllers though I think having a single wireless base station studded with cameras would make it easier. Touch is great but not really necessary in most cases.

Your point is very culture-dependent though. Due to sound orientation and voice chat, playing Pavlov VR does feel like a very social activity, probably more so than just going to a bar with the same friends.

I don't usually touch, taste or smell my friends either.

> In particular, body language from those around you is either missing entirely or is very rudimentary.

That one is fair game.

> I don't usually touch, taste or smell my friends either.

It would be very out of the ordinary to not touch or smell your friends quite frequently.

While some people prefer not to, hugging, patting on the back, nudging, passing objects back and forth, and even less common things like holding hands or touching each others' hair are very common social interactions.

Smelling just happens passively when you're spending time with biological creatures who have perfumed clothing, armpits, and hair, and sweat to boot (among other less desirable odors). This isn't necessarily a great thing but experiencing the biology of other human beings is personally important to me.

To not taste things with / alongside your friends would also be out of the ordinary.

They do, but most people also live with other people. If you're immersed in VR, you're isolated from those you're with in real life. It's harder to keep immersed, if your g/f, wife, or kids hit you up every couple of mins.

So unless they also have headsets that are interacting with you, it's likely, that both you and they want to spend time with each other in real life, and when you go into VR, you're isolated from them.

Same goes for playing games or browsing on a computer. Most people aren’t capable of keeping up active conversation while immersed in a game or even just reading an article. VR can include other people that are present physically but it really should be treated as a separate activity. You should make time in your day for your loved ones outside of VR.

It's not that you can't have social interactions in a (VR) game, but someone with VR goggles on is extremely unapproachable for other people in the same room.