Video conferencing solved a real problem for support groups: it let people join from anywhere, without traveling to a physical location. What it didn't solve — and, by its basic design, probably can't — is the sense of actually being with other people, which turns out to matter enormously for the kind of vulnerable, emotionally significant sharing a support group depends on. A growing body of practitioner experience and early research suggests multi-user virtual reality closes that specific gap in a way video calls structurally cannot, which is why healthcare and mental health organizations building remote support group programs are increasingly looking past Zoom toward VR.
The Problem Video Calls Never Fully Solved
Anyone who has run or attended a support group over video has likely felt the specific flatness of the format: a grid of faces, competing background noise, the awkwardness of not knowing where to look, and a nagging sense of watching a screen rather than being present with a group. Researchers who study remote communication call this a presence gap — video conferencing reliably transmits information, but it doesn't reliably create the felt sense of shared space that in-person interaction naturally provides. For task-focused meetings, that gap barely matters. For a support group, where the entire value depends on participants feeling genuinely seen and connected to others going through something similar, it matters quite a lot.
What Multi-User VR Does Differently
Multi-user VR environments give participants a shared spatial world rather than a shared screen. Each person is represented by an avatar with a body and a position in space — they can look around a room, orient toward whoever is speaking, and experience the group as something they're inside of rather than something they're viewing. Practitioners working with VR support groups report that this spatial, embodied quality produces a meaningfully different felt experience for participants — closer to being physically present with a group than a flat video call ever manages, even though no one has left their own home.
This isn't just a subjective impression. A completed study of transgender and gender-expansive youth using a multi-user VR support group platform documented strong session attendance (92.5% average, with every participant completing five or more sessions) and high usability ratings — outcomes that suggest the format is doing something genuinely effective at sustaining engagement over multiple sessions, which is often where video-based support groups see attendance fall off.
Specific Advantages Multi-User VR Offers Over Video
Spatial presence and nonverbal cues. In VR, participants can orient their avatar toward a speaker, use gesture and body language, and experience a sense of shared space — cues that a video grid simply cannot replicate, and that matter for the nonverbal communication support groups often rely on.
Reduced self-consciousness through avatar representation. For many participants, being represented by an avatar rather than their own live video feed reduces the self-consciousness that can make video calls uncomfortable — no worrying about how you look on camera, what's visible in your background, or being stared at by your own video feed the way video conferencing tools often display it back to you.
A genuine sense of "elsewhere." Being inside a VR environment, rather than looking at a screen from your usual physical space, can create psychological distance from daily-life distractions and stress, similar to how physically going somewhere for a support group creates a mental shift that dialing into a video call from your kitchen table doesn't.
Identity-affirming customization. For populations where self-presentation carries real emotional weight — transgender and gender-expansive individuals, people with visible illness or disability — avatar customization offers a degree of control over how they're seen that neither an in-person group nor a video call provides.
Reduced video call fatigue. Many people report a specific kind of exhaustion from sustained video calls — sometimes called video call or Zoom fatigue — related to the cognitive effort of processing a grid of faces and managing self-presentation on camera; VR's different interaction model appears to sidestep some of that specific fatigue.
When Video Still Makes Sense
None of this means video calls are obsolete for every use case. Video remains simpler to access, requires no special hardware, and works well for shorter check-ins, one-on-one conversations, or groups where the participants already know each other well and don't need the added presence VR offers. The clearest case for multi-user VR is specifically the scenario where presence and connection are the whole point — a support group whose value depends on participants feeling genuinely together, not just informed.
An Honest Note on Adoption Barriers
Multi-user VR does require participants to have access to appropriate hardware or a compatible browser/PC option, and some people find headset-based VR uncomfortable, especially for longer sessions or with certain vision or vestibular sensitivities. Strong platforms address this by offering flexible access options — headset, PC, and browser-based participation — so a single hardware requirement doesn't become a new barrier to the exact kind of access video calls were meant to provide in the first place.
The Takeaway
Video conferencing made remote connection possible, but it didn't make remote connection feel the way in-person connection feels — and for support groups specifically, that felt sense of presence is often the whole point. Multi-user VR is emerging as the format that closes that gap, giving people the practical accessibility of a remote meeting with a sense of shared presence that a flat video grid has never quite managed to deliver.
Foretell Reality is a multi-user virtual reality platform purpose-built for facilitated support group sessions, offering real spatial presence, avatar customization, and flexible access across headset, PC, and browser. Schedule a consultation to see how it compares to your current video-based approach.