Stories featuring that kind of virtual reality became a sub-genre of SF in the mid-80s... William Gibson is generallly acknowledged to have started it with his novel Neuromancer. I've never read any of his books, though, so I can't comment on them.
Read 2 of Gibson's books, but don't remember their titles. They were a little stilted, actually, though well written. Was one of them about storm chasers? I'm pretty interested in weather, so would have picked it up even knowing the writing was kind of stiff.
One thing I like about Otherland better than Gibson's books is that it's not so relentlessly "with it."