Video-wise, the A9 can shoot 4K (3,840 x 2,160) with full-frame capture and 1080p at up to 120fps, in case you’re looking to record some slow-motion footage. The body itself resembles a number of Sony’s latest Alpha shooters, such as the A7S II, A7R II and A7 II. Its looks are so similar to these that a few people at the launch event tried to snatch my A7 II thinking it was the A9. There are three physical dials on the top of the camera (exposure, scene and shooting mode), as well as two SD card slots and an Ethernet port. Meanwhile, Sony claims its new Z battery will last you for more than 500 shots.

Sony says its new flagship full-frame is “half the size and weight” as the DSLRs it wants to dethrone, like Canon’s 5D Mark IV or Nikon’s D5. If you’ve ever held one of the Alpha shooters mentioned above, you’ll feel right at home with the A9’s ergonomics. On that note, Sony revealed today that it is now the number two seller of full-frame interchangeable lens cameras in the US, thanks in large part to the A7S II and A7R II. With the introduction of the A9, the company’s hoping that this momentum continues.

Unfortunately, while Sony let us shoot briefly with the A9, we weren’t allowed to use our own SD cards to see what the full-resolution images looked like. That said, stay tuned, as we’ll be spending more time with the A9 before it hits stores May 25th for $4,500 (body-only). And if you want the new $2,500 G Master 100-400mm telephoto lens to go with that, you’ll have to wait until July.

Facebook Spaces was announced at the social network’s F8 conference as a way of blending social media and virtual reality. If you own an Oculus Rift (and Touch controllers), you and four friends can enter a virtual world and hang out together.

Unfortunately, hanging out mostly constitutes of chatting, taking “selfies*” and enjoying the virtual world around you. Oh, and it’s not you, per se, but a cartoon caricature that you control; a dead-eyed digital mannequin that smiles blankly at everyone in the desperate hope that you won’t find it creepy.

Unfortunately, Spaces falls into the same trap that so many other platforms have over the years, assuming that people want the digital world to be a surrogate for the real. And that people have the time and energy to sit around talking to a cartoon with their friend’s voice through thousands of dollars worth of equipment.

Whenever a high-minded tech company makes proclamations about the future of social interaction, I’m reminded of Second Life. Founded more than a decade ago, the title was an open world platform that enabled strangers across the world to come together. It was touted as a digital utopia, a place where you were free to create whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, however you wanted. Your digital avatar could even fly around the Second Life universe, interacting with people from across the globe.

But in reality, this utopianism was misplaced, and the environment, even during its boom years, was stale and empty. People weren’t all that into into communicating with each other, and the platform gradually became a space for people to develop weird forms of architecture. It became little more than a proto-Minecraft, a gallery space or weird and wonderful designs that few would ever notice. Second Life itself still exists, of course, with around 600,000 monthly active users.

A big part of the internet’s job is to bring people together in ways that we wouldn’t — couldn’t — have conceived a few generations ago. We can now learn so much from people all across the globe and share their experiences, dreams and knowledge. Real-time chat platforms, from IRC to FaceTime, have enabled us to gradually bridge the physical distances that separate us. Still, none are a substitute for real human interaction, face to face, in the real world.

Facebook Spaces, on the other hand, places two more barriers between us and our friends: the bulky VR headset and the digital avatar. Then there are the constraints that Facebook places upon its users. At the moment, Spaces users can’t express sadness or anger. The likelihood of this becoming the new normal for social interactions is about as likely as Disney’s recently shuttered Club Penguin becoming the new Facebook.

Facebook is asking us to take a chunk of our most precious commodity — our attention — and give it entirely to its virtual world. But that world is one step removed from that of the internet, full of (literally) fake people in a fake place. In the demo video, friends gather together a surprise birthday party to take a selfie of themselves on an imaginary boardwalk.

But where is the reality and authenticity in you, and three other people, taking an image of some cartoon avatars in a virtual world? Will you expect that future historians will unearth these images and marvel at the experiences that you pretended to have?

I wonder if I’m wrong, and that people will embrace this in the same way that they have taking pictures from inside video games. But then that, at least, shows a journey that you’re going on — and an appreciation of a particularly engaging sight that’s been created within the game. Imagine the reaction of your friends and family when you show them your vacation shots from the Grand Canyon that you didn’t visit.

Even Mark Zuckerberg knows that Facebook’s Social VR demo, as it is, not the future of how we’re going to interact with one another. Both this year and last, the CEO showed off a rough idea for an augmented reality platform that could work in a pair of glasses. There, you’d never need to buy a TV, just use the AR overlay in the lenses on conjure one up on the wall of your otherwise sparse living room.

Unfortunately, that idea is nowhere near ready for the real world, and Facebook VP Deb Liu told the AP that the journey to that hardware was “just one percent finished.” Imagine, rather than exchanging time-sucking pleasantries with a cartoon avatar while standing on a fake mountaintop, having someone sitting on your couch next to you.

You’d be able to speak to them as if they were in the room, despite being on the other side of the world. But with this (almost) real interaction, you would have real eye contact, real body language and all of the other things that we, as humans, need in order to feel comfortable interacting with one another.

The software and hardware just isn’t there for this sort of platform, and probably won’t be for a very long time. But that, not Facebook Spaces, is the vision of social VR that I can get behind.

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* Technically not a selfie, since it’s not the person taking a photo.

The researchers hooked subjects up with a medical-grade eight-channel muscle simulator (EMS) installed in a backpack. That’s controlled over USB by a VR simulator that works with Samsung GearVR, hand-mounted trackers and a motion capture system. “The major potential here is that this is something you can have with very little hardware,” Lopes explains.

They attached electrodes to users’ forearms and biceps, which automatically apply a mild electrical shock when they touch or lift a virtual object. That tenses the activated muscle, repulsing the users hand and making them feel they’re pushing against a wall or picking up a heavy cube (see the video, below).

It took the team a while to create a realistic simulation. At first, they applied a current to the users’ muscle proportional to their force, “just strongly enough to prevent it passing through [a wall],” the team wrote. However, one participant said that it “felt like a magnet pulling the hand backwards,” in a not-very-realistic way.

Eventually, they arrived at two different simulators. In the first, they cut off the EMS intensity at a certain limit. That allowed users to penetrate simulated objects by about 10cm, a good simulation for foam or other soft things. In the second case, they used a short EMS pulse that actually propelled the user’s hand backwards, never allowing them to push through the wall or other object. (The shocks aren’t intense enough to hurt users, by the way.)

The technology isn’t exactly new, as it has been used for physical therapy and exercise stimulation for years (think of those janky ab stimulators). There are even some companies trying to develop it for entertainment purposes, like the team behind the Teslasuit, which also uses electric muscle simulation. However, Lopes thinks it should be very low profile tech that can even be integrated into regular textiles. “There’s a need for physicality in VR,” he told Fast Co. “The next step is bigger force, more physical sensations.”