Enthralled. Image credit: Jay McGregor

As I slide the Samsung Gear VR up over my head and look up at the excited, expectant faces of the VR experience demo team, I can’t help but crack a reassuring-but-clearly-underwhelmed smile.

The kind of smile you give the child whose crudely drawn picture of a rocket looks like a strangely accurate penis. You’re uncomfortable enough for it to be unavoidably visible on your face, but not brutal enough to say so. What I had just witnessed was a VR experience that was high on promise and low on delivery.

Let me rewind. I’d been invited to see how the Marriot Hotel chain was incorporating virtual reality into its hotel experiences for guests staying at its London or New York chains.The idea was simple: guests could request to borrow a Samsung Gear VR for 24 hours at a time to do with as they please. I wasn’t exactly sure why, other than just because. To give it more legitimacy – and relevance, I guess – Marriott funded three VR experiences called “VR postcards” (because you know, hotel+holiday=postcard) that were the focus of my demo. In essence, they were three people talking about a destination they love at that destination. And that’s pretty much it.

Watching someone talk about their favourite place in all of its low-definition fuzzy glory isn’t my idea of entertainment – especially if I’m on holiday. I was assured about the potential of what this means for future stays at the Marriott and VR in general, but I walked away unconvinced and far more entertained by the top-hatted men who opened the door for me as I left.

This is my main gripe with affordable, mobile VR (the big-rig stuff might a different ball game if you’ve got the $$$). Every time I get a demo, the experience is tempered with ‘it’s not quite there yet’, or ‘there’s a lot of future potential’. Because, whoever is hawking the latest VR tripe knows too well that saying ‘this is the final, finished product’ will leave customers uninspired. And I assure you, I am uninspired. Practically every VR app I’ve used – videos and games -have been show home grade. There just to showcase the technology and not to be actually entertaining or fun to use.