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I’m at the bottom of a tall coral reef, surrounded by a school of jellyfish. I look up to a turtle floating above me, but he’s just out of my reach. Scanning the area for other sea creatures, I spot a little fish swimming my way.

I run toward it with my hand out, but instead I collide into a wall.

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“You gotta watch out for that,” says the virtual reality attendant, who noted earlier that the dents in the wall came from unsuspecting gamers such as myself.

I’m at Colony VR, Ottawa’s first virtual reality studio, and I’m trying out theBlu, an ocean simulator and VR demo.

For about two-and-a-half years, virtual reality goggles have been on the consumer market, and the technology has developed into a booming industry. In 2014, Facebook purchased Oculus, a leading VR tech company, for $2 billion. As investors pour money into the technology, it is becoming a little more affordable.

“You can get (the goggles) for about half as much as we originally got them” two years ago, says Stefan Scherer of Colony. At the time, Scherer paid around $1,400 for the goggles I wore. Now, HTC Vive, the goggles and controller setup Colony uses, costs around $800 in Canada. And that’s just the gear. With a computer powerful enough to smoothly run the games, Scherer says the setup I used costs around $6,000.