VR is a bit like an inside joke. You have to be there to get it. YouTube videos and poetic descriptions can do their best to describe what it’s like slipping on the googles, but until you’ve had your brain straight-up bamboozled by two tiny screens attached to your face, it’s hard to really understand why Facebook bought Oculus Rift for $2 billion, or why HTC is putting millions of its own money into the HTC Vive.Having just done a 20-minute demo HTC Vive myself this afternoon, I can vouch that it’s quite the experience. One second you’re standing in an empty hotel room in downtown New York, the next you’re suddenly feeling very small while staring into the eye of a very large blue whale, walking around the deck of a sunken ship 200 feet under the ocean. It’s weird. It’s slightly unsettling. It’s also intensely, intensely cool. If you’d like to check it out for yourself (and I highly recommend you do), HTC is doing a tour this summer around the U.S. and parts of Europe with three demo bays where you can check it out for yourself. The dates are:July 17-19, Forecastle Festival, Louisville, KY, USAJuly 21-23, Navy Pier, Chicago, IL, USAJuly 25-28, specific location TBD, Kansas City, KS, USAAugust 2-8, The International, Seattle, WA, USAAugust 5-9, Gamescom, Cologne, GermanyAugust 13-16, specific location TBD, San Francisco, CA, USAAugust 20-23, specific location TBD, Portland, OR, USAAugust 28-31, PAX Prime, Seattle, WA, USASeptember 4-9, IFA, Berlin, GermanyOctober 28-November 1, Paris Games Week, Paris, FranceHTC already did a weekend of demos out at ComicCon, and apparently lines were three or four hours long, so maybe bring a book or a fully-charged phone to pass the time. But if you have the time and you live somewhere where HTC will be passing through, you can see what everyone has been getting so worked up about.Jake SwearingenDeputy EditorJake Swearingen is deputy editor at PopularMechanics.com. Previously he worked at The Altantic and was digital director at Modern Farmer. He lives in Queens and really wants to talk to you about what’s going wrong in his dwarf fortress.
