It didn’t sink in fully till my native guide—Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe—suggested I look behind me. As I turned my head to look over my shoulder, and the viewpoint tracked accordingly, I kept expecting to get to the edge of the frame…but there is no edge. You’re all the way in. The circle of the world is complete. The goggles followed my head movements smoothly—I noticed no glitches. I looked up, straight up into the purple sky, and saw snowflakes sifting down from directly above me; I almost expected to feel them settling on my face. At that point my brain said no más. It surrendered to the illusion completely.

Caveats? It’s disconcerting looking down and not seeing your own body in the game-world with you—there’s a definite moment of dude where’s my torso. I’ve also heard reports of people getting nauseous or disoriented in Oculus Rift, but they may have been using earlier prototypes that weren’t precise enough to pass your inner ear’s bullshit test. It may just be that I’m a good test subject for this kind of thing: I’m one of those people whose inner ears are easily fooled, and I have a stomach of iron—I don’t get motion sickness.