I'm about halfway through the first episode of Amazon's The Peripheral, and I'm really struggling with suspension of disbelief. The problem is, VR is already more advanced than is being depicted on the show. You can't buy a BCI headset yet, but working prototypes have been around for a few years now. Project Galea already had a partnership with Valve and announced another one with Varjo this year; there will be BCI headsets on the market within a few years. Certainly well before 2032. Gabe Newell said in an interview last year that the only reason he hasn't already put one on the market is that the tech is advancing so fast that a product would already be obsolete by the time it hit the shelves.
You can already have a sense of touch in VR now, there are two three haptic vests you can buy today and another releasing next month, there are forearm and hand and feet and face options. If you're a business customer with $20,000 to spare you can have a full-body electrostimulation haptic suit, just like the one in Ready Player One, now, today. Albeit through haptics, not BCI.
Which brings me to the other problem, that non-invasive BCI can only ever read the brain, not write to it. It could not impart a sense of touch--or sight or hearing, for that matter. Project Galea's headsets still have lenses and speakers. You can move, perform actions, manipulate objects, control a tail/wings/lekku or any other virtual body part... but you can only send data out, it can't come back in. To get the full sensory Matrix-style immersion you need a brain implant. This is AIUI a hard limit, there is no conceivable way to ever write data to the brain though a device that stops outside the skull.
I'm trying to tell myself it doesn't matter, I can accept FTL and magic anti-grav in Star Wars and Star Trek after all. But it's not working.
