They're not.

Think of them as a spectrum. VR + stereoscopic image passthrough gets you an AR-like view of the real world around you. These overlays allow you to pick up coffee cups, see when your kid is poking you, etc.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9938332

Valve is solving walking into walls by showing you a holodeck-like barrier inside the headset, so something like that could work with moving objects like kids or the dog over time too. Still, you are quite disconnected from the world that's actually around you.

In terms of making technology more human, I see VR as a stepping stone to Augmented Reality, which will eventually allow us to interact with our hands and instead of being in another world, you'll see things brought into your own world. That is an improvement over a screen too.

But VR can also transport you to places you've never been through 360 video, which is a powerful opportunity to create empathy through journalism and documentaries that can help us better understand how people live halfway across the world. I'm rather excited for that.

While any technology has the potential to further divide or distract us, VR has made me feel things that no other technology has even come close to feeling.

But if you look 5-10 years out, I wouldn't be entirely surprised to see drastically miniaturized components, perhaps a headband of sorts, a Glass-like eyepiece with a projector, maybe contact lenses, or something that provides a strong level of immersion without hiding the face.

In terms of recording the space, the Kinect is able to determine an astonishing amount about a physical space that I imagine would go hand in hand with this.