Unfortunately what they are talking about are tech demos. The same stuff could have been done without the headset with a Wii remote or the Move, also the Kinect. Unfortunately for the most part none of that has been done. The Kinect had great potential, but very little of it actually came to fruition. Till it actually does, I'm most certainly holding back any excitement. I know it seems like I'm hating, but I'm just being very skeptical because we have all been burned with all this before. Actually, we are burned almost every time we see a new trailer for a game that is going to be released. They all end up falling quite short of what they portray. I fear this will be the same. 

Those are both something that could have been done very well with either the Wii Remotes/PS Move or the Kinect but none have done that. Those are still on rails, I don't think there will be much of a difference. 

It could easily be argued that this is exactly what people want.  Every PC gamer I've come across in real life has been introverted and spends a hefty bulk of their time immersing themselves in front of that screen with a headset on; my little brother does this and it's sad.  

I have to ride public transportation 5 hours to and from work each day because of a DUI. Once again, If I actually get off my phone and look around everybody else has their head down doing things on their smart phones, not saying a word.  We live in an era of disconnect. The population is too dense in many areas and nobody wants to put up with some strangers bullshit. VR will have massive appeal to MMO players.  VR will have massive appeal to asian countries.  VR will have massive appeal to introverts.  Pretty much anyone who wants to escape their real life and be someone or something else.  Now I'm not saying this will make up the majority of VR players but the novelty is broad and has potential to appeal to literally everyone.  You could use it for games, for real estate agents trying to demo houses out of town, for people wanting to travel but don't have the income, for training in the work place, education.... literally everything.  

The one thing I find is that as technology advances, we gradually build up barriers higher and higher. It's become so easy to be someone you're not; We have the clothing, the makeup, the medicine, the surgery and the mentality to change anything we want about ourselves. That's a serious sense of false confidence and it's almost like humans have become desensitized over time leading up to this point.  In theory VR could do a lot of good.  In practice, should it become popular, I believe it will just do harm and progress us toward our ultimate self destruction.  

I absolutely agree. Still a lot of sceptics I see though, most of whom haven't actually tried VR and just assume it's gonna be a boring fad like 3D was (even though they're completely unrelated). Some of the comments here make it quite clear that people are speaking from a point of complete ignorance.

It reminds me of people who didn't "get" the concept of smart phones or tablets when they first started hitting the mainstream consumer. Now everyone has a smart phone/tablet... and candy crush is one of the most played games in the world. In around 8 years time, I see VR hardware being nearly as ubiquitous as as smart devices are now.

You know there are full games with VR support added into the experience? War Thunder for instance feels like a completely different game in VR. I nearly didn't recognise it when I played it normally on the PS4 vs the Oculus version I played. The simple act of turning your head to locate the aircraft shooting at you completely changed my immersion and experience of the game.

This isn't just a gimmicky tech for video games. This is a whole new medium for art and entertainment in which video games play a part. We're eventually going to get movies (both real footage and graphical) designed for VR, virtual skype meetings, educational experiences etc.

That's my point, they could have been done with controller as well, so it would have been a dual control scheme, that's nothing new. Nintendo has done it a quite a few times with the balance board and the wiimote-nunchuck. As I said, Kinect was harshly under utilized and if they had used a control scheme to incorporate both it could have been something great.

I'm not sure why move had more potential than the wiimote, they are virtually the same thing and one is a direct copy of the other just reversing the infrared source so as to not get sued lol. 

I agree, VR will have serious limitations if there isn't controllers used just as Kinect did. MS really should have given some sort of finger/glove controller for the kinect. Something simple, the likes of pressing your fingers to your thumb to move different directions. pointer to thumb to move forward, middle to thumb for back, pinky left, ring right (with left hand, could be reversed). A small controller like that could have made a huge difference for play, but they mostly ignored the kinect and gave up on any viability. He was using two moves during the demo, they are an essential part of the experience. But that also brings up how viable it is to use the game for something that isn't in the first person perspective. 

There are quite a few games that utilize similar technology that the headset does. All it is, is a gyroscopic screen that sits on your head. The part where he is in cover and then decides to grap all the mags for the gun, that is very tech demoesqu and could easily have been done before with the kinect. Do you not remember the 'game' that was in the works for kinect where you could grab VR/AR things to incorporate them into the game for immersion? It ended up being a tech demo, similar to this. This is was with giving the character on screen a virtual apple or photo or something, can't remember, was a long time ago. Mags could easily be done the same way right now, but they just aren't due to different limitations. 

My room is so small that I would be hitting the walls while playing, we need VR like SAO.

I think it might at best reach maybe half the sales of Kinect, if priced right. But it will represent an important first step into alot of new ways of playing games. Personally, Hololens is way more fascinating at the moment.

First off, gimmicks are not bad things like so many are lead to believe. They are selling features and every part of gaming that we love today has started as a gimmick. 

I'm not worried about the head turning for the VR stuff, that is a fundamental of VR, plus it's already done with different systems. The 3DS uses this same technology in a bunch of its games, even the Wii U does this as well. 

The problem with something like a 'virtual skype meeting' is that it's virtual, so avatars are going to be used, especially with the likes of VR. That's extra money that will need to go into it, I'm not saying it won't happen cause it likely will, but it won't be viably used in business. A huge part of business is seeing the other people directly, seeing their reactions, seeing how they are dressed and their composure. Many businesses at times uses skype (or the like) for interviews. A huge part of an interview is body language and how people are dressed. Using a virtual avatar would remove that completely. It's also similar for business meetings especially when it's meetings with other companies. Everything you just said can already be done, just without the headset and the headset adds nothing to the experience. Unless of course you want to watch a perspective movie with a helmit. You aren't going to be able to look around at the world around you in a movie because it's a movie, you will move your head but it won't change the perspective of the movie at all because there is no 'world' around you. It's generally a set with mic booms, directors, coreographers, stunt people, other actors, skips and of course a warehouse or area that doesn't have the set decorations in it. It would be completely unviable and unrealistic, certainly cost wise, to attempt something like that especially with how much movies cost already. 

It will definately have it's place with the likes of google earth, or google maps street view and museum tours ect, it will be very much like that, the pros and cons that go with it because that is where technology is at so far. This is not a new jump in technology, it has been around for a long time, it has only just become more economically viable but it's uses are still quite limited. You can already experience much of this on a Wii U. Grab it, put the gamepad up to your face and go to Google Street. You can turn, walk around, look up and down and all over the place. It's essentially the same technology, just with a much lower resolution screen and the controls are built into it. 

That actually brings me to my next point. Screens so close to the eye... This has been tried again and again but there is often the same result. Long uses cause massive eye strain, and can cause permanent damage. It has nothing to do with the resolution of the screen, it has to do with such a close focus. Even when there are lenses to make it look more distant that only provides a slight improvement. Put you hand up to your face, 3 inches from it, and focus on it. You will almost instantly feel the strain of it. 

~300 grams mounted in front of head's centre of mass, nausea, possible issues with skin of face and cornea after prolonged use, needs powerful PC to work, potential to ruin your eyesight even more than regular displays did, gamechanger... it's not. It's a gimmicky head mounted display with integrated TrackIR and little software support.

I would kill for a 3D monitor which would realistically collimate different objects at different ranges though, for eye exercise.