I spent a week working, exercising and relaxing in virtual reality. I’m shocked to say it finally works

I ’m writing this from a room that’s slowly orbiting the Earth. Behind the floating screen in front of me, through a giant opening where a wall should be, the planet slowly spins, so close that it takes up most of my field of vision. It’s morning in Australia to my right; India and the first hints of Europe are dotted with lights up and to my left. The soft drone of the air circulation system hums quietly behind me.

I spent a week doing everything that I could – working, exercising, composing – on my virtual reality headset. This was the year virtual reality threatened to go mainstream, with prices becoming more attainable and Apple entering the market, and so I wanted to see how far VR has come since I first tried it in the mid-2010s, when the main experiences on offer were nausea-inducing rollercoaster simulators. I used a recent model from Meta, called the Quest 3, and the conclusion was clear: this thing now works. It feels a little unfinished, but we’ve reached the point where VR could at last become genuinely useful.

The biggest surprise was working in VR. I cannot recommend this highly enough. Donning a headset, you can summon multiple screens, all connected to your computer, make them as large as you want, and place them anywhere in your environment. “Passthrough” – the ability to see digital objects superimposed on the real world, made possible with cameras built into the front of the headset – means you can carve out a window from the virtual environment to see your keyboard. And you can choose between any number of environments to work in, from minimalist cafes to mountain lodges, switching between them at will. I’ve rapidly got to the stage where, if I’m working on my own, I’d rather work in virtual reality than in reality.

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