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"You also have the important of gaze. Eye gaze is not only an outward expression of an emotion, it is used as a communicative device – as a tool to interact with others. People turn towards to each other to make eye contact and initiate a conversation."

It will be interesting to see physical body cues (or body language) become "photoshopped", as it were.

At the most basic level, one could simply record oneself saying something really genuine and honest, and then replay the resulting body language when lying to someone in VR.

Many more subtle body cues could also be either recorded/replayed or simulated.

In the physical world people often seek to look in to each other's eyes to determine whether the other person is lying or has something to hide. In VR, of course, what the eyes express will be entirely under the conscious control of their operator.

It will be interesting to see how human interaction in VR changes as a result of these expanded possibilities, which will not be limited by the muscles of the human face, or even the limits of human shape, or physics.

Many new ways of expression are likely to occur in VR in the future. One could argue that this is really not that new, as such things are possible in, say, Second Life, or many MMORPGs today, or even that things like the use of emoticons in text chats are an early instance of this. But I expect VR has the potential to take this to the next level, and seeing where that leads in one or two hundred years would be pretty interesting.

You're not a cynic, that's literally their business.

Ad revenue and tricking others into thinking that all that data is inherently valuable.

Don't forget that last part.

You could say the same about billboards, newspaper full page ads, and just about anything!

Tell that to an app developer that pays $2-$5 per install of their app through Facebook. You may think your data isn't valuable, but I guarantee you that many many peoples data is very valuable to Advertisers.

Well they're not the only ones trying towards this. See what we're doing at Mimesys by using depth cams to stream people in 3D in the world. See the vision we have for Skype in AR in a few years : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P37DVcPHGNY I agree with you that the importance of physical space is something we realize more and more every day building Mimesys ; that would where VR could lead to new representations of information (see for instance Bret Victor's insights on the topic : https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fvimeo.com%2F115...) There will be ways to collaborate and share information, even remotely, that will go far beyond the casual whiteboard

One aspect, and I sure many already realize this, is it seems FAR more simple and natural to be able to communicate via text/chat/forums etc when you have had physical interactions with them outside the computer and are already comfortable talking to one another - aside from groups of friends who have never met. It have spent a great deal of time doing something together of common interests...

Like gaming together or sharing whatever on IRC or Reddit or some such.

If you're trying to randomly talk to a new person with not a common-ground of topic interest it's easy to see how visual cues and body language feel like they are truly lacking.

Also the problem with VR is on any other platform I'm not consuming my entire field of view and immersing myself... so I can't keep a periferal view of my child to make sure she doesn't help her self to yet another yogurt in the fridge among the the many other thousand of small perceptions we need to make about our environment around us....

For all of us who frequently have to attend conf calls... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_tiqlBFjbk

Indeed, I think it's very what is lacking (online empathy) and I am glad that VR is intended to address some of the challenges we currently have with online communication.

Main problem is multiple people starting to talk at once. VR could help but also school system where you have to signal if you want to talk and the head of the meeting gives you the voice could help.

Surprisingly there's no real pressure to introduce any solution

I wonder about how eye contact will function in VR - cameras inside the goggles tracking eye direction? I suspect that eye contact is the kind of problem without a lot of room for error. Get it only slightly wrong and the effect could be very disconcerting.

I'd bet on cartoonish, stylized avatars being the most successful (at least initially). Cartoons work for a reason, we're very good at taking a cue and filling in the blanks. But the more information an image carries the deeper you go into the uncanny valley. For realistic VR avatars to catch on, they'd need to be nearly perfect.

Michael Abrash gave a great talk later in the presentation about future directions in VR. He talked about retina tracking in the context of foveated rendering, which he said has a higher accuracy requirement than avatar eye direction. He seemed confident we'll get there.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv_eIRv1Vk4

I agree with everything you've said, including the negative sentiment towards Facebook, but they aren't the first. There are actually several social VR apps out and/or in the works right now, perhaps the most popular of which is AltspaceVR.