I managed to get my head into an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset this weekend at rAge, at Rectron’s huge stand, and I was simultaneously blown away and underwhelmed by my experience.

I know that sounds contradictory, but bear with me.

The virtual scene I was walked through was the bit that blew me away. I glided down the street of some sort of future city, passing slowly between several futuristic soldiers in slow motion as a running battle with a huge mech unfolded all around me, powered by some version of the Unreal Engine going on the logo that was shown in glorious 3D at the start of the demo.

Cement shards flew everywhere as the concrete jungle around me was torn to shreds by bullets and explosions, a car blew up and barrel rolled slowly overhead, a trash can tumbled past me and an empty soft drink can headed right for my face.

It was so convincing that I wanted to reach out and touch things that weren’t there, and the grin that spread across my face as I took it all in had the headset riding up uncomfortably as my joyously puffed-up cheeks pushed it up my face. The VR goggles and the headphones I was wearing made me feel like I was there, in the middle of that scene, and it made me giddy with joy. It was glorious.

The demo culminated in me reaching the scene’s antagonist, a huge hulking mech that pointed its lasers at me and fired as the demo faded to black. It took no more than three minutes to go through the whole thing, and by the end of it I was still grinning like a fool.

But despite that euphoria, I couldn’t help but notice that the “screen door” effect that was so evident in the first VR headset I donned – the Oculus DK1 that took me for a ride on a virtual rollercoaster back in 2014 – was still there, and quite pronounced. Sure, the 3D managed to immerse me nonetheless, but the graphics I saw weren’t anywhere near as sharp as I had hoped they’d be by now.

My dream has been that the huge $2bn investment Facebook sank into Oculus, Inc. meant that by this late stage of its development – the Oculus Rift headset is expected to be out sometime in 2016 – the visuals of VR scenes would be as smooth and clean as, say, games played using NVIDIA’s 3D Vision tech that turns games from 2D experiences to ones with three-dimensional depth.

If you’ve experienced 3D Vision you’ll know it gives games believable depth, all without that screen door effect or fuzzy edges, and I’ve been hoping that VR would offer the same sort of visual fidelity. Going on what I experienced on Saturday, it would appear that’s not yet the case.

So yes, as of right now I am both really impressed and underwhelmed with the state of VR, but I’m also hopeful that the quality of the visuals is something that’ll improve as the technology matures.

[Image – I. Pienaar by permission]