A friend of mine recently put on a pair of virtual reality goggles, and was lost to the rest of the world for five hours straight. And with one VR announcement after another coming out of E3 this week, such as Valve's technology which enables people to avoid real obstacles while in VR, I've been spending a lot of my hours wondering just how typical his experience will soon become.

Here's what Blair Erickson thought after spending 5 hours in VR:

"By the end of it all, the regular world was so... Regular. Even with the currently limited resolution and somewhat heavy device, you can immediately see how powerful this medium is going to become... it already works its magic on the brain pretty damn well." (Blair, by the way, is a VR pioneer himself, directing the first feature film to be displayed in the Oculus Rift.)

Blair stayed in virtual reality even when he sensed outside intrusion happening beyond his goggles: "When an outside experience occurs, you usually ignore it or flip to Pass Through mode which allows you to see outside the headset through a camera image displayed on your vision."

"How's it feel to have to cut out of the VR experience to see what's going on in real life?" I asked him.