>And not being able to enjoy your friend/partner's reaction, facial expression, or simply what they're doing

Err, you could see your friend/partner in the VR world trivially, facial expressions and everything.

Besides, when you're looking to escape, this could include seeing your partner 24/7. Not everybody has just fallen in love yesterday...

>No, looking at an avatar mimicking your partner's movements doesn't count.

Yeah, like exchanging texts with friends as opposed to hearing their voice on the phone or going to hang out with them "doesn't count", and yet everybody does it to the detriment of the former activities...

Besides, if we're making arbitrary "laws", then I say it counts double!

Sounds like you've never played a multiplayer video game before. Sure, sound alone is not even half the emotional communications bandwidth, but people can work around those limitations. We already do in text, and in video calls, and it mostly works. With VR, you get to also have low-bandwidth body language, like movements of the head and limbs (and nothing is stopping the tech to slowly incorporate more and more cues).

VR ain't gonna be a perfect simulacrum of the real world, but it doesn't have to be. It only needs to be good enough to let people express themselves somehow, and people will figure out the rest.

But right now people who interact with their own partners/housemates in MMOs, chat, etc. when in close proximity to each other are a tiny minority (although probably a heavily overrepresented one at HN). I don't see why that would change with VR.

You also can't conveniently eat, drink, or go to the bathroom while using VR, and those are very common things for people to do in the midst of a period of social interaction. Imagine in how many households any given night the following happens in a group of friends or a family: people are watching TV or a movie, someone gets up, maybe goes to relieve themselves, stops by the kitchen to grab a snack or a can of pop, asks if anyone else wants anything, grabs what was asked for, comes back, hands over the item, sits down, and resumes watching.

Because TV and movies tend to be designed to be comprehensible with partial attention, that person very well have kept track of what was happening. Maybe they have to ask "who's that guy?" This kind of thing might happen multiple times a night. This doesn't have to be a planned or organized event -- it's a totally casual domestic interaction.

VR as it currently exists, and as far as can be reasonably predicted based on our understanding of the technology, is something that requires a great deal of physical and mental focus. That will necessarily limit its reach, unless it manages to fundamentally rewrite human society. (And I don't think I, for one, am eager to see what that new society would look like.)

I think there's a lot of interesting opportunities for VR technology. But should I live another 4-5 decades I doubt that I will live to see VR attain anything close to the social pervasiveness of video games, much less TV.