There is also the fact that a great deal of development and advancement is required in the area of communications as well as processing before we can even begin to imagine a Ready Player One experience.
There's a lot in your article that resonates with what I've seen in power production. The "Ready Player One" statement you made is just one example. Companies try to do more with "less" and achieve 100% efficiency, with minimal additional steps.
In one example, you have high risk activities that could put someone in high radiation areas or other high safety risk areas. I was tasked with making a program that allowed someone to tour high risk areas without being subjected to that risk. The Ready Player One concept is what I tried to apply, but the technology wasn't exactly there and the cost was in the hundreds of thousands to millions of USD to enact.
And then technology took a step forward. Instead of complicated photography and imaging equipment, technology reduced the size of the camera, for example to within the size of the palm of your hand (i.e., Go Pro Max, etc.). The cost of the virtual project got reduced from potentially millions to less than $25,000. The cost for creating a sharepoint site and making the virtual tour available to all approved company computers was just a drop in the bucket. Add in drones and other UAVs and the risks to humans dropped to almost nothing.
The metaverse connected it all into one seamless project.