Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality in its present form would fail utterly in giving a satisfactory sensation of transformation. What immersive virtual reality is was shown quite well in the movie trilogy 'The Matrix'. While in virtual reality, all your senses would be supplied virtually. There would be absolutely no way to tell it was not real.
You would be fitted with a device that interrupts your spinal column and feeds that data into a powerful computer. (The creation and implementation of this device might be made to coincide with the genetic method.) That computer would then (from analyzed recordings from a similar system on a different organism) simulate with nearly perfect (and constantly improving) quality what it feels like to transform. Any difference in the layout of the various nervous systems involved would be compensated for by your brain's adaptive learning capabilities. (The same capabilities allow you to drive a car without thinking about it, though you weren't born knowing how to.)
Alternatively, your spinal cord's impulses and input could be transmitted to a real subject of the kind you want to be, while vice-versa on the other end. In that way you would have a real transformation. However, this would put a someone else's mind in your body and we do not know what problems that might cause.
The impediments to this method are one: we need more computing power. (see mass-to-energy conversion) and two: we need a way to tap into the spinal cord without destroying it, and keep it in contact with the host (be that host a computer or another organism).
Tapping into the spinal cord would not be that big of a problem, some success in this field has already been attained by neurological scientists: they have done things such as making a monkey able to control a computer mouse with its mind, and being able to view video using a horseshoe crab's eye as a camera. This is because, like computers, our nerves communicate with a binary code. All that is required is a link to the data and a translation algorithm. Another possibility would be wireless connection by inducing the small currents needed into the nerves with magnetic forces. Small bits of metal might be implanted into the targeted nerves to facilitate this.
The implications of this method are mildly profitable. People would pay quite well to be able to experience whatever their best imagination of utopia is, especially if we find a way to non-invasively connect to the spinal cord. Back to 'The Matrix' analogy: (if you are interested in this method, I very much suggest you see that movie.) It would be just like the matrix, except we, not some robotic AI would be in control of the virtual world. We could make it as Utopian or as realistic as we wanted, or we could have parts of it that were either.
