I had my grandma try VR for the first time. This is what she thought of it:

A short preface

Wait, wait: before that, I need to set the record straight, right? Even though I may have sounded like I was bashing on the Quest Pro in my review, it wasn’t doing that. I think that the Quest Pro is a really solid piece of tech with a huge flaw: the price point didn’t match the expectations that it set.

But here’s what’s more important: my opinion on the headset hadn’t impacted my grandma in any way. English wasn’t a very popular choice in her day and it’s one of the languages that she doesn’t actually speak, so she isn’t reading my articles and reviews.

Which was, in all honesty, perfect for this experiment! I wanted her to put on the headset, turn it on and let me get her honest reaction. Not only to the quality and depth of the picture, but also about the user-experience of the entire thing.

Because here’s the deal: I believe that we’ll be able to say “VR is there” only as soon as most of us are confident that we can get our grandparents a headset, which they can set up and use on their own, without any issues.

Adjusting to the situation

So here’s how this went: I left the box on the table and said “Well, here it is then!”, and just did nothing from there on out. She smiled. Waited a bit. Then got the memo, stood up and lifted the lid off the box. She examined the contents and decided that the only thing she needs would be the headset itself.

Later, when I asked her why she didn’t pick up the controllers too, she said:

So I guess Apple’s call to market the Vision Pro as a controller-less headset was absolutely on the spot for people, who aren’t just interested in VR for the games.

But here is where my plan reached its first pitfall: headset and IPD adjustment. I tried to tell her about it, but even without seeing her eyes — since those were already obscured by the Quest Pro’s visor — I could totally see that she’s not getting any of it.

And why would she? The headset was there, she had it on: she did the thing! Why wasn’t it doing the magical part yet?

Man, these things really do need an automatic adjustment system, right? I mean, some of them can fix the IPD range for you, but that’s a process that you still have to initiate. What if it was automatic, checking every time when the headset was turned on?

Food for thought. Oh, and bonus points if we can at least get a warning, letting us know if our viewing angle is right or not.

As you can imagine, I had to step in and help out. One short discussion on the topic of “Which one of these is the right button, because both feel almost exactly the same”, the headset turned on and my grandma smiled.

The little blue logo that just appeared had depth to it!

Getting in touch with another world

So, my grandma wasn’t surprised by this, but I was. The Quest Pro didn’t start crying for its controllers right away! Hand-tracking kicked in almost instantly and she was amazed that it could replicate her hand movements pretty flawlessly.

I was amazed at how natural this all felt to her. I mean, why would she expect anything less, right? It was yesteryear’s huge selling point to me, but to someone new to all of this, it just feels proper. So I guess we’re headed in the right direction then, right?

Unfortunately, the boundary nation attacked and ruined fun for us. Ugh.

Here’s the gist: all of this wasn’t happening at my place, but at grandmas, therefore we had to draw a new boundary for her. The headset wanted her to do that with the controllers. But that meant a whole slew of new challenges for her:

• How could she possibly get back to the box to pick up the controllers without taking the headset off, after she spent so much time adjusting the thing?
• What does this headset thing mean when it says “press the Meta button”? How could one know what button is the Meta button and why would they need that knowledge?
• More importantly, why couldn’t she just point to draw with her hands?
• And most importantly: why did she have to draw anything in the first place?!

TL;DR: I had to step in again and take care of the boundary situation. And now that all of that was done with, since hand-tracking worked great before, we wouldn’t need the controllers again anymore, right?

Right?...

Well, no. Because next up was connecting the headset to WiFi. And I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity for my grandma to check out typing with hand-tracking on the Quest Pro. This is how that went:

So the keyboard popped up and she positioned her hands to gently float above it. She tries touching the buttons, but nothing seems to work. She tries “pressing harder” at which point I start to notice a “hmmm” expression on her face.

She would’ve never, not in a million years, figured out that the headset wanted her to point at the letter she wanted and then pinch the air. And how could she possibly figure something like that out? It makes absolutely no sense when you stop to think about it!

After I explained to her what the headset expected, she had a short little tantrum, where she couldn’t possibly understand why that would be the case, but then she moved on to attempting to achieve the task. She found that to be impossible.

In fact, we both did. Hand-tracking is so jittery, that when you attempt to pinch, the cursor often moves, which leads to you making a lot of errors. Now throw trying to type out a complicated password into the mix and you’ve got yourself a recipe for frustration.

So how could this be so backwards, huh? Meta nailed this entire effortless thing at the start, but now something that should literally be as easy as pressing a button turned into a nightmare.

I mean, if you have to stop and concentrate on achieving something through a given method, it’s no longer exactly seamless now, is it?

Once again, I had to step in and lend a hand. After that was done — finally! — the frustration was airing out and getting replaced by excitement again.

For better or for worse, finally: VR

About 1,200 words — or two cups of tea and an entire dinner session — later, grandma was finally in VR and able to view the Horizon Home locale. I had the ski lodge set up, because I find it to be really cozy and neat.

And man, the look on her face. She just sat there, looking around. I reminded her that she can stand up and walk around too, so she did just that, taking the environment in. You could really tell that this was amazing to her.

But, unfortunately, it really didn’t take long for the smile to disappear. She tried going further in one direction, but the headset didn’t let her. It wasn’t a boundary thing, mind you: the developers just never intended for you to be able to go there.

She tried to pick up a book off a shelf, but it wouldn’t let her do that. She wanted to pick up a cup, but that wasn’t possible either. Every one of her attempts to interact with the environment turned out to be a failure and you could see how it was bumming her out.

Even though she didn’t say it, this isn’t what she expected.

“But it’s just the home menu!” I hear what you say, but so what, I ask back? This is the first thing you see: the thing that will set the benchmark for the immersion you can come to expect from this point on.

And it should feel just as special as that “First Contact” demo that Meta likes to flaunt with.

So what can I do with it?

Once I told grandma that I can bring a headset for her to try, she expressed her biggest VR-related wishes immediately, without me even having to ask:

• To explore the world
• See if it can inspire her to paint or if she can paint while in there

So after she was done exploring the home environment, I expected her to start thinking about ways to achieve her whims.

But instead, she said: “Is this all of it?”

Now, what followed was me trying to explain what she could do. But she found all of it unintuitive in a way that she really struggled to put into words. It took awhile, but she finally found a way to express what she meant:

And that makes sense, right? When you’re using a smartphone, you just tap the thing that you want to happen. In VR, on the other hand, you need to do all of these spellcasting movements just to navigate menus.

I mean, it’s not that hard when you’re an active techie. But it’s not hard to see what grandma means and why she said it, right?

It soon became clear that grandma wouldn’t be able to figure out where she’d want to go, because the UI didn’t feel all that familiar to her. So after some discussion, I assisted her to get a hold of some immersive videos.

And just like that, we were in for another rollercoaster of emotions.

Keyword: Immersion

Here’s the thing: a VR experience should be all about immersion. But when talking about immersive VR videos, all it takes for you to break immersion, is to try and walk in the opposite direction of the camera man. Or — God forbid! — trying to interact with your environment!

And that’s pretty much what happened with grandma. At first, she was smiling and enjoying this entire immersive-world-tour-from-the-comfort-of-my-home-thing so much. But then she wanted to go to a place, where the camera wouldn’t let her.

And to her, that didn’t make sense. The video claimed that it would offer her the ability to walk around some really impressive sights in India. But she couldn’t really walk around there, now, could she?

And I can hear you say “Well, yeah, that’s a video, what about an app or game?”, but those are limited too. Some are way more advanced than others, sure. But how many let you truly explore as you could in real life?

Here’s my — or rather, our — gripe: it’s been years since VR has been around, yet the very pillars of the technology still feel shaky.

Weird, right?

So, VR videos is the most that my grandma got out of the experience, because pretty soon after that, the nausea kicked in and it was time to stop. What made matters worse is that she couldn’t really fit inside the headset with her glasses.

After it was clear that the experiment was done with, I asked the question that you’re probably all waiting for me to ask:

“So? What did you think?”

Of course, after experiencing so many new things, the response was a discussion. Hence, I’ll have to paraphrase, but I’m totally confident that I’m saying is exactly what she’d want me to say, if she had found the right words herself:

Food for thought, now with a side-dish and desert. #JustGrandmaThings

I offered her the chance to try again in order to check out how painting in VR felt, but after it became clear to her that she’d have to use those “weird controller things” instead of her own hand that can grab a virtual paintbrush, she declined, accepting that VR isn’t really her thing.

Re-learning the same lessons time and again

Listen, I know that VR has come a long way. We’re making strides year after year and the technology is becoming more accessible with each iteration. I mean, take a look at the Quest 3: it can figure out your room’s layout automatically just by having you look around.

But that’s simply not enough.

Here’s what I mean: I don’t have the confidence to leave my grandma alone with the Quest 3. “Better” isn’t “there”. What I am confident of is that the Vision Pro has a real shot at changing a lot of things, but only time will tell if that’s really the case.

If anything is clear from this entire experiment, it’s that Zuck should test Meta’s future headsets with grandmas instead of with tech YouTubers. Unless we’re talking about us, then I’m totally in.

So long as Meta lets me bring my grandmother along, that is.

By the way…

… If you enjoyed the story you've just read, you might want to check this one out too. It’s about how my colleague Iskren introduced his grandfather to his first smartphone. Saying that his story inspired me would be an understatement and I’m sure you’ll get why when you check it out.