Three-dimensional "virtual reality" experiences have often been suggested as the ultimate goal of the digital medium, but I've been dubious of their value. In particular, the notion of making the e-commerce experience similar to shopping in a physical store never has made much sense to me, and I figured the notion had long since been abandoned. Having seen a prototype of yet another attempt - and quite a good one from a technical standpoint (highly mimetic, seamless interaction, etc.) - I still predict that this approach will be a complete failure.
I mention graphic quality and load speed because those have been the straw-men of those who advocate 3D virtual worlds - they maintain that the concept is good, and the fact that people don't share their enthusiasm it is simply due to technical problems with the presentation: if they could make it less fake-looking and choppy, all the other complaints would go away.
Computer technology does a very poor job of simulating real life - or even providing ample evidence to overcome the willing suspension of disbelief for many users. It does this fairly badly, as it works with only two of our senses - however well it mimics the look and sound of a real environment, it offers nothing to smell and taste and touch. No matter how it good the audiovisual elements get (and they're remarkably good even today), it's still lacking. This is the chief reason that the Internet has not been a good venue for selling products that appeal to those senses. This was an obvious issue that was not overcome by the prototype, as it presented a very well-crafted audiovisual simulation of merchandise for which tactile sense is critical.
But even beyond that, the experience of shopping in a 3D environment is ill-suited even for products that sight alone, or even when just the product name without an image is sufficient. The reason for this is that one of the chief values of the Internet is overcoming the tedium of physical space, and virtual worlds bring that tedium right back to the fore.
An example might help: consider the experience of shopping in a bookstore. Even if you eliminate the need to travel to the store itself, the shopping experience involves navigating physical space: you have to walk through aisles and browse the shelves to find what you're looking for. If I want a cookbook, a reference book, and a novel, I have to go to three separate locations inside the store, walking through aisles of things I am not interested in buying, then visually scanning the shelves for the precise item I want - and picking up items one at a time to read the jacket copy and perhaps flip through some of the content. Im the real world, it's a tedious and time-consuming process.
Contrast that to shopping for a book online online: if I know the title or author, I can navigate to a specific item in seconds. If I have a topic in mind, I can run a search and retrieve a list of matching titles. Where I want to read a description or excerpts, it's a click away. Where I am not certain which of three similar books best matches my interests, I can open them in tabs or side-by-side windows for a detailed comparison. It's much faster and less tedious than real-world interaction.
In that sense, the 3D virtual store brings back the tedium of having to travel through a (simulated) physical environment. Even if the site is designed so that I could "warp" from one location to another, it's far more work than I am accustomed to doing. The "gee whiz" factor runs out very quickly, overshadowed by the tedious necessity that has been copied from reality, in a channel in which I have grown accustomed to doing things in a much less cumbersome manner.
This is why I still maintain that 3D virtual reality will continue to fail as a medium for merchandising, no matter how technology and design improve the graphic quality or reduce the load time - and even if they can bring back the senses that are currently muted.
What's more, this is a problem that I do not believe can be overcome. I'd love to be proven wrong by a clever designer who can create a virtual experience that eliminates the tedium ... but I don't think that will happen. While the advocates of 3D will focus on the technical issues, as they seem to have been doing all these years, they will likely continue to ignore that the task of interacting with a 3D world is a simulation of an inconvenient experience.
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