Having played multiplayer Quake in a CAVE, I don't think VR gaming is necessarily an isolating experience, but I agree that it's not likely to become a widespread thing anytime soon. I predict another hype->inflated expectations->letdown->everyone forgets about VR for another decade cycle. The VR experience people imagine and expect is always going to be better than the one the technology can deliver.
Yeah, LANL built one of those back in 2000. Nobody used it, it was a pain in the ass, and they decommissioned it in 2008. Think that sucker was built out of command & control multipanels. Think it cost in the millions. Think the novelty is exciting, but think the utility is marginal at best.
Some friends and I built one with displays dumpster dived from a theme park and some old SGI boxen dumpster dived from the engineering department. LANL's was probably much nicer than ours, but they don't have to be that expensive to build, bored college students can figure out how to do it for almost-free, you just need to dedicate a lot of space to something you'll rarely have a use for.