In my opinion we're actually a lot closer to it than most people may realize. I think virtual-offices are going to be a reality in 3-5 years. This will be driven by a few key technologies that are coming out in that timeframe:
Oculus Rift - fully immersive digital environment
Leapmotion/Kinect - natural UI for interacting in 3D
Google Fiber - high-speed bandwidth networks
Modern GPUs - can already produce movie-level graphics in realtime.
In fact, I could see the first prototype virtual offices being released within 18 months.
I agree with you that this is certainly going to happen soon-ish, but 3-5 years is wildly optimistic, particularly when it comes to the Leapmotion/Kinect (which are cool, but a long way away from resulting in realistic 3D interaction) and Google Fiber (only applies if we all move to Kansas City -- I know Google plans to roll this out to other markets, but in 3-5 years I wouldn't expect significant progress, maybe 1 or 2 other metro areas max).
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In my opinion we're actually a lot closer to it than most people may realize. I think virtual-offices are going to be a reality in 3-5 years. This will be driven by a few key technologies that are coming out in that timeframe:
In fact, I could see the first prototype virtual offices being released within 18 months.I agree with you that this is certainly going to happen soon-ish, but 3-5 years is wildly optimistic, particularly when it comes to the Leapmotion/Kinect (which are cool, but a long way away from resulting in realistic 3D interaction) and Google Fiber (only applies if we all move to Kansas City -- I know Google plans to roll this out to other markets, but in 3-5 years I wouldn't expect significant progress, maybe 1 or 2 other metro areas max).