Oh! you're not the captive audience of a strangers unwanted small talk then? That's been an undesirable part of traveling solo for a lot of people. The shoulder tap will still work fine if you need to get past somebody to stand up.
To be fair I’m not regularly on planes/trains so maybe I’m just not annoyed enough by it.
I have a set amount of hours I can be social every day, I prefer to use those towards the people I care about. Not someone who's bored on a flight and wants to chat.
Literal blindfolds are standard travel gadgets though
You can also adjust your "immersion level". As in, have the screen floating in front of you and still see the space around you, or have reality totally blanked out. Seems like at a low immersion level you'd have no problem turning to address someone trying to get your attention. The worst part might be how ridiculous you look talking to and addressing someone normally while wearing these. (though perhaps like the AirPods, the perception of it being a goofy look will fade with time)
The presentation showed AirPods in the flight scene. Presumably noise canceling on for a flight.
Similarly when when showed up close to you while you are in fill apple vision pro VR impression mode they will reduce it see this person slightly blended with your VR world
Getting to avoid the typical in-flight entertainment would be worth that price, IMO.
I don't want people talking to me on planes.
Also, I remember TotalBiscuit talking about using an Oculus headset to watch films on a plane and it being a better experience than the screen in front for him (I don't quite remember why). So it's not a new concept and this device just makes it less cumbersome, I guess.
Many such system (that I've used anyway) play very low resolution movies, on bad screens, using the laggiest Android tablets you can imagine. And you have all the other things in your eyesight distracting you.
I don't think it would feel too much worse than waking someone on the aisle up.
Not $3500, but a lot.