Mmm … ‘How realistic is VR’? (this is me trying to be relevant. I must be getting too pc! Not a good sign. 
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I think the key word for me would be ‘immersive’ and not necessarily ‘realistic’. I don’t think that the VR graphics are sufficiently good enough yet for me to feel that I’m yet in an alternative environment.
It’s good and a great experience but we are a bit of a way off as far as true realism goes.
@Kayembee370, but closer than any of us think, I think. Does a double think cancel each other out?
Yes, agreed and we are getting fairly close
Not for us Homo Sapiens Sapiens 
This board needs a HAHAHA this post button.
Last night I flew the TBM around Cuba in MSFS VR, and was about to land. It’s so real that I could not help starting announcing to passengers like a real pilot would have done.
Then suddenly (never happened before) my VR view started to shake frantically. I felt embarrassed and “announced” like “Sorry there seem to be some technical problems here but don’t worry …”. Eventually I had to “ESC pause” and unpause the simulation to get VR back to normal. My virtual passengers must have been really scared. 
It’s quite close because calculation power seems to be the only true limitation left. Quantum computer is already on the horizon, but even without it, we will still have room to exponentially increase the calculation power for our CPU and GPUs.
I think humans, being the arrogant folks we are, always overestimate our capabilities. If you look at nuclear fusion power plants, they’ve been promised in a decade or two since the 1950’s and '60’s. We’re still just a decade or two away ( 
) from achieving commercial nuclear fusion. If you look at detailed serious critiques of Google’s supposed quantum computing breakthrough, it’s still not very reliable statistically, was overhyped to begin with, and the actual situations that you can employ quantum computing in are a limited spectrum of the full range of useful computational tasks. Just like Elon Musk preaching that we have to take great care to avoid the singularity, there is some truth in any claim - we have to be careful not to program human prejudices into our AI, etc., but given the average human personality, there is often a lot of terrible overhype in any technological direction we are heading, e.g., we’re all going to be shortly using VR and AR in our everyday lives and it’s going to make everything MORE BETTER! 
I wonder if, when the Wright brothers were talking about flying, people were lamenting about how long it was taking them? Probably
It may take time, but if it is in anyway possible, humankind will solve all of the challenges you mention and more.
It may not be immediate or even that soon, but they will get it done. Well, providing they figure out how not to cook the planet first.
It’s also an arrogance to always UNDERESTIMATE human’s technology advancing pace without acknowledging simple facts.
Yes, in some scientific fields we are extremely slow. My major is physics and in 1980s as a university student I visited one of a few Tokamak fusion reactors in the world. After 30 years when I checked online, the best devices for fusion research still looked similar! However, in other fields such as internet or smart devices, even 1980 SciFi movies failed to imagine what we have already achieved.
AI is another area that human is now doing way better than we expected. If you know the game of Go and have followed the AI development history of mind games, you should have known that up to a few years ago no one expected an AI program could beat best Go human player in 20 years. Actually some scientists believe that’s one of AI’s Holy Grails that human may never make it before say singularity! Now not only AlphaGo soundly beater best human Go players, but the way how it played this ancient game actually overturned thousands years of Go theory developed by human! The impossible has been achieved, right before us, right in our life time.
It may be hard to explain why AI and internet advanced so fast while Tokamak didn’t. One reason I can think up is the engineering challenge itself required to tame enormous fusion energy. We may already know how to do it in theory, but cannot even make a working prototype due to engineering challenges.
That’s why AI or procedurally generated world or VR now looks more promising: first their theories were already proven; second we’ve already surpassed the prototype stage and first generation products were already amazing ; third they need computing power which we are still quite good at developing more. Yes, in VR we may not be able to develop something good for senses other than hearing and sighting due to inadequate theory or engineering capability. However I don’t think they face challenges as daunting as taming fusion energy.
Quantum computing is a wild card, I must agree. It’s still in the pre-prototype stage and facing serious engineering challenges. However, my gut feeling is that it may come sooner than we think, and probably much sooner than controllable fusion energy.
I have another explanation for the lack of advancement in developing fusion energy: this is threatening the oil industry interests, and ultimately the ability to controlling populations dependent on energy supplies. I can’t measure this, and I doubt anyone can fully, but I’d bet if all the money invested in R&D around the oil applications for the last 30 to 40 years (extraction, refinement, distribution, exploitation, car engines optimizations etc…) would have been spent on sustainable energies, we’d had solved by now a lot of energy questions and pollutions problems. Maybe not, who knows…
As for quantum computing, it is not meant to replace procedural computing as we know it. It is meant first and foremost for 2 applications AFAIK: cryptography (due to its non deterministic nature) and problem solving (due to the Bayesian nature of its computations).
True enough.
I think in the sixties some people were actually convinced that it was only a matter of a few years before robots would do all the household chores and then some. I think the closest most people actually got to that was a dish washer appliance which of course had to be stacked and unstacked by hand.
Ah, the height of luxury and laziness, two dishwashers, alternating between being a dishwasher and a cupboard.
Ha … I know.
The sort of things dreams are made of
Very interesting thread!
I received my HP Reverb G2 a couple of days ago. Today I flew online on Vatsim IFR EKCH to EDDM with the FBW Airbus.
It was absolutely stunning. After 18 years of simming it is unbelievable how far we’ve gotten. Today I found my hobby extremely rewarding. Even though we’re just at the beginning of VR it is clear where this is heading. It is the future, that’s for sure.
The flight today was so much fun. You have much better control of the aircraft, even taxiing is easier. Especially landing is such a satisfying experience. And the weather is so nice to look at. Things have improved so much with MSFS 2020.
I will now start tuning my experience. I’m running a GTX 1080ti and an i7 8700 processor. Looking forward to the next flight tomorrow!
I’m so glad I bought the G2.
Fully agree and you can‘t explain this feeling to someone who never has experienced this. Wish you lots of nice flights with your G2!
Thank you. It´s becoming a little addictive. 
Well, we do have “robots” that will vacuum your floors for you!
Yes, I was quite surprised too.
I find it quite easy now to locate the airport/runway from up above and landing is definitely a lot easier and much more intuitive.
Yes, I agree with you. VR for gaming and especially sims is definitely the future. We just need a bit better PC hardware, more optimised software and a slightly better HMD for it to start becoming a bit more mainstream.
Yes, but unfortunately I have to get up from the sofa and walk around with the damned thing for it to work properly. If anything that makes me feel like a ‘robot’