VR's Dirty Secret

I traveled a lot in the past few weeks. All the hotels I stayed in had something in common: they had clean towels and fresh bed sheets.

But what if they didn’t? If the towels were dirty or the sheets looked like they were slept in, I would had complained.

But what if the hotel said: you are right: these are the old sheets, but we vacuumed the bed; these are the towels that the previous guest used, but we sprayed some Fabreze on them. Would I be happy? Of course not.

How about VR? Using a VR headset in an arcade after a stranger sweated in it for 30 minutes does not sound so appealing either. I’m not particularly interested in sampling the sweat, makeup, lice or whatever else the previous user had.

Hygiene in VR, and particularly in public installations, is an important issue that needs to be addressed. To me, that is VR’s dirty secret.