Back then, people thought gloves were going to be really important. Much effort went into making gloves that would faithfully record finger motions. Manipulation in 3D space without firm tactile feedback turned out to be like trying to do precision work wearing an oven mitten. It's not impossible, but it's really slow, and tiring. If you've done tweezer work under a microscope, you know the feeling.

Autodesk had a VR ping-pong demo, with the paddle position reporting to the computers. It took a small rack of 1980s PCs and, I think, Matrox graphics cards. Matrox had one of the few graphics cards of the 1980s with hardware geometry support, the 4x4 multiplier unit. Nobody bought it because it was so expensive. There wasn't enough compute power in the 1980s for general collision detection, let alone game physics, so you couldn't align things by pushing them against each other. Various kinds of "snap" were tried, but now there was a mode problem. In VR, you don't have a keyboard, and doing keyboard-like things is hard. Mode controls are a problem.

The '90s brought all sorts of 3D input devices, from robot arm like devices for input to magnetically levitated trackballs. All that stuff has disappeared. There have been real improvements in 3D GUIs driven by a mouse with a thumbwheel. (Try Autodesk Inventor or Autodesk Fusion, both of which have free trials.)

Newer VR systems don't use gloves; they just give you a sort of game controller for each hand. OK for gaming, but not for fine manipulation. Good for shooting, not for putting a nut on a bolt.