Virtual reality is probably going to be one of those fads for a while.
I've tried VR in some places and it's pretty poor. Many years ago Alton Towers used to have a VR headset game where you put these glasses on and sit on a motion chair and off you go as a knight fighting people with a sword in your hand. The game wasn't included in the AT ticket price so you had to pay extra to play - I think it was about £5 extra or something. I thought lets do this. I paid my money, put the headset on and tried to play.
It was awful, the headsets over time had been scratched, the screens were all dirty, and barely even focusing on the eyes. I could only just about see the screen as the screens were totally out of alignment with where they were meant to be.
I was really disappointed, tried playing the game but couldn't 'cos most of the time couldn't even see where I was supposed to be going.
The VR set also was big and awkward to wear, you only got to wear it for about 2 minutes, but after the 2 minutes I was glad to have it off.
I've also been on a motion master ride when it used to be at Granada Studios Tour in Manchester. That was a much better VR experience as with that one you were watching a big cinema screen, so you didn't have to try and view through tiny screens. Although as you weren't fully immersed in the screen I guess that doesn't really count as VR.
I have also tried the 3D TV's - one of my friends bought an LG when they first came out and we played a few games on that in 3D. After a while I just found it more annoying that actually immersive, and the 3D effect seemed to start to wear off. I seem to notice that with a lot of technology. When you first set the technology up it's like an amazing experience, but after a while you start to not notice it as much. I have Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound both on the TV downstairs and my PC upstairs (I bought 2 Kenwood AV receivers at a local pawn shop for just £100 each and had a number of speakers kicking around doing nothing). When I first set up Dolby Digital 5.1 and watched the first few films in it I was quite amazed at the difference, but now it seems totally normal and I don't really notice 5.1 as much, and actually now when I go round to friends who just have the standard stereo speaker TV's I notice the stereo effect more than the 5.1.
You can get to a stage that it becomes too natural and you stop noticing the effect, so if VR was introduced to everything you'd soon get to a stage that you'd stop noticing it.
For me though the most immersive experience I have ever had which wasn't VR but it felt pretty close was watching Batman - The Dark Knight (Blu-Ray) on my Optoma Pico PK302 projector, going straight onto a 6ft blackout window blind with the lights down with the full 5.1 Dolby Digital system activated, and the lights down. I had previously seen that film when it was in the IMAX, but even though my 6ft screen is nowhere near as big as an 89ft IMAX screen, because I was much closer to the screen and in a much more confined area the combination of the 5.1 and the large screen size made it feel much more intense than the IMAX experience. I still remember the bit where the camera pans over the top of Gotham city, and I don't do heights, even though it wasn't real and it was only on a screen it certainly felt scarily real.