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Organizers of Burning Man, now in its 35th year, have called off the physical event in the Nevada desert due to Covid concerns. In its place, they have created Virtual Burn Week, which ends next Tuesday.

Instead of camping in the desert, participants use virtual reality headsets and computer screens to replicate the real event in as much detail as possible—even the hourslong traffic jams.

Last week, cyber RVs began lining up at the gate to virtual Black Rock City. In normal times, a community of camps, pop-up bars and fanciful art displays rise out of the alkali dust for one week every August on a pancake-flat playa surrounded by jagged mountains 100 miles northeast of Reno.

The Virtual Burn can’t replicate everything about the traditional Burning Man, such as hugs and drinks that flow freely on the desert. The digital world’s designers have also taken advantage of the possibilities of virtual reality to create experiences that in the past may have only been possible with the aid of hallucinogens.

“Do you see this port-a-potty in front of us?,” Andrew Barrett, a creator of some of the virtual worlds, asked during a tour of virtual Burning last week as a large blue image of the receptacle came into view. “If you look up, there are all these Porta Potties with art inside.”

Organizers say the purpose of Burning Man is to build a city out of thin air where participants live in a utopian society that follows principles of “decommodification,” or avoiding all money transactions, and “radical inclusion.” Art and music are featured draws; so are nudity and sex. The event has ballooned to tens of thousands of people. Each year, the organizers pick an art theme; this year’s: “The Great Unknown.”

There are new rules of etiquette. “Though there is no official Orgy Dome, responsible community members can create adult-only events,” reads a notice on the website of BRCvr, an online community which helped build many of the virtual worlds.

Virtual burners create an avatar that can walk, fly and even teleport via a headset and controllers—although not always successfully. “You’re sort of falling a little to the right,” Mr. Barrett warned a visitor whose flying avatar with a ball cap approached a digital art piece a bit off kilter.

The first virtual burn, in 2020, was pulled together in a month and experienced some technical glitches. Some people couldn’t figure out how to enter its multiple digital worlds.

“We’ve improved on the technology because we’ve had a year and a half,” said Colette Crespin, director of Virtual Experiences for Burning Man Project, a nonprofit which organizes the event.

The climax of the event, as at the real one, is the torching of a giant wooden effigy—the burning man. This year it will take place on Sept. 4, both digitally and in real life at an undisclosed location from which it will be live streamed.

Daisy Shaw, a horse trainer from Manchester, England, stayed up all night last year to watch the burn on a VR headset and plans to do the same thing again this year, while her fedora-wearing avatar stands on the digital playa.

“You really do feel a sense of presence,” the 57 year-old said. “I once kind of bumped the chair in my room, and I turned to the person next to me in VR and said ‘Excuse me’.”

At her home in Indianapolis, Sara Pugh donned her VR headset Sunday just as she did a year ago. She said she loved going to the real burns in 2018 and 2019, but finds this one just as stimulating. One of her favorite attractions: the virtual dance parties. “If I am standing in my living room with a box on my face and making weird body movements, I know I look ridiculous,” said Ms. Pugh, a 42-year-old nonprofit manager whose avatar wears a cowboy hat.

Her husband, Josh Cook, has peeked at her screen to try to understand the appeal. “I see her friends in California and around the world come up and approach her, these cartoonish characters with no legs, arms hanging loose, and hear human voices coming out of these characters’ mouths,” he said.

The first virtual burn drew an estimated half million attendees—more than five times the 80,000 who went there physically in 2019—and just as many are expected this year, organizers say. Unlike the real burn, which costs about $500 per person, this one is free with a requested donation.

Still, some die-hard burners insist on a real-life experience.

Several thousand have descended on the playa this year, as they did last, to hold an unauthorized burn. “Those (virtual) people have their conclaves and groups, and that’s cool,” said Larry DeVincenzi, a bar owner in Reno who has decamped to the playa 100 miles away. “But it’s not the same thing. Here, I can go up to a bar and get a free shot.”

Mr. Morris, meanwhile, is feeling some pressure because he volunteered to organize hours of programming by a group of Aussie DJs this weekend. He barely had time to master his VR headset which had just arrived. “There’s a little bit of nervousness,” said Mr. Morris, who joined the first day of the burn in two dimensions using his laptop.

He and thousands of others encountered an hourslong delay getting in Sunday, after the organizers programmed a rainstorm to replicate one a few years ago that left the playa a mess.

Mr. Barrett said virtual burners weren’t told beforehand, so they could “hang around and rely on each other to figure it out. Radical self-reliance.”