With experience your bs detector gets better at differentiating between hype technologies and those that are technologically developed and ready to go.

Many of these technologies are already in use ---yes they cost millions or are prototypes, but I've been involved in technology for long enough I understand when something is ready to flash and when it isn't. Once all the enabling technologies have been researched and the any kind of prototype works, the inevitability and exponential drop in cost are assured. Market penetration flashes over at certain price points--witness cell phones, flat screens, etc. Those technologies were available (for a high cost) long before being generally available to the public.

Teleconferencing is now an inexpensive option to travel for face to face meeting daily occurrence through simple interfaces and packetized through the net. High end teleconferencing is now fairly phenomenal and if you saw the last election reported on CNN, then you saw the unveiled holographic projection of a person. This already exists and is in use. Yes, it is currently more expensive than you or I could afford individually, but it is still a lot cheaper by a factor of 100 or a 1000 to sending someone off world. My main point is that video technology is starting to be dominated by processing power--witness the availablity on the web of video now compared to even 5 years ago. VR's most compute intensive issue is simply the visual scene. That is really not going to be a compute problem for much longer. Look at the improvement of animation capability as an example. Ironically, projecting directly onto the eyes or small screens in front of the eyes is even cheaper and simpler than creating large rooms, so I do expect that technology very soon to be available.

I haven't been to Disney world in Orlando, but I'm sure they have some high end abilities to transport you to other worlds and environments. Cheap flexible displays are on the horizon and with graphic chips exponential improvement and multicore processor chips also dropping in price, the ability to have cheap "surround screen" environments is coming soon. If I took a few minutes, I could research new gaming interfaces and I'm betting I would find a wave of VR interfaces coming down the pike. Once they start, the improvement will be rapid (like from pong to current gaming environments).

Right in NASA they have fancy display rooms with super high resolution that in effect puts you there. This is with yesterdays technology not tomorrows. The key is that you've got to launch some very high bandwidth communication satellites to relay the data received from the moon. They were supposed to be testing some laser communication for that purpose, and it is already proven technology but needs to be vetted for space use.