So what don't we have now? We have hundreds of VR games. We have headsets ranging from free to $1000 with all kinds of differing levels of quality. Occulus Rift is apparently coming out with their own standalone headset that is only going to cost $80- $100 more than the cases used for cell phone VR. You think this might be that affordable standalone device that breaks through. I'm telling you that clearly is not feasible for a variety of reasons.
I have no doubt that there are all kinds of companies working on inside out tracking solutions and they have been for decades. They've had tracking solutions similar to whats being proposed for decades for use in robotics. I actually developed my own stereoscopic object tracking solution in university for a project. The concept is not the problem. It's not vaporware and never has been. It's clearly well beyond the proof of concept. The problem is the implementation of such solutions. They've very expensive, both physically, and system resource-wise. When you introduce learning into such solutions to improve your accuracy and limit calibration, it becomes that much more resource intensive. So these companies have been investing in how to come up with much more economical solutions that are "good enough" for VR. That's not an easy nut to crack, and I'm not convinced that they've solved that issue in such a way whatever that solution is, it'll be as good as say motion tracking in PS VR (which isn't great) in a $200 system.
Your verge article states the inside-out tracking headsets you're pushing like likely going to be just as expensive as the HTC Vive. That just means they've swapped one motion tracking soluton for another one (that's likely better), but is also equally expensive. Inside-out tracking hasn't shaved hundreds of dollars off of the price, and it probably won't in the future. And again, this points to this OR $200 VR standalone headset not being a very compelling VR experience.
Yes, it will take a little longer, and that affordalble OR headset fails at the positional tracking requirement.
Anyway it's cool to see what's already possible using only a cell phone camera
uSens mobile SLAM
Apple ARKit repurposed for inside out tracking
There's obvious lag, maybe good enough for AR, not for VR. And who knows how much it taxes the phone to achieve that. I'll be following the developments with the mixed reality headsets and remain cautiously optimistic.
