This would be why I am not, and probably never will be, up for VR.

3D augmented reality a la HoloLens, on the other hand, sounds great.

Indeed - that is very true.

There's a multi-part documentary about it that goes into quite a bit of detail.

They should re-release that in a VR format.

I just don't understand the appeal of VR. Not to mention the cost, system requirements and potential health issues.

I'm sure it would be neat to try for a few minutes for free, then i'd want to get back to real gaming.

Yes, that's what I meant. My apologies. I thought it was excellent. The screen resolution and refresh rate are stellar. Even with the Rift DK2, I could only use it for so long before I started feeling sick. With the Vive Pre, I felt like I could have worn that headset all day. It's much lighter and more comfortable on your face than the DK2 as well.

The positional cameras and the motion controllers really help to enhance the overall immersion. I love being able to actually move about in space rather than having to use a controller to move. The fact that the controllers are always being tracked by the headset is also really cool. This means, no matter what, once you put that headset on, you can find where the controllers are in the room. To sweeten the deal, the headset has an outward-facing camera on it that you can activate at any time with the controller, thus giving you a window into the real world if needed.

Job Simulator definitely helped to sell the positional tracking and the "controllers as hands" concept. The physics in the game, combined with the responsiveness of the controllers, make it possible to do almost anything...even juggle. Space Pirate Trainer is far and away the best Vive Pre experience though. Your area of movement combined with the independent tracking of each hand and your head make that game so much more fun that it would probably be otherwise. If I didn't have needs and responsibilities, I'd probably still be playing that game. :P

From what I understand the consumer version of the Vive will not be markedly different from the Vive Pre, but what is there is really impressive. It's unfair to compare it to the older Rift DK2, so I am curious to get some time with the Rift CV1 so I can see how these two headsets really stack up.

not this generation, but i do plan on getting on board eventually. i’ll be assembling a new computer later this year, and while i also look at VR-ready builds for general reference, it’s not going to be a PC made for VR, and i’m not likely to be getting myself a headset at this point.

price is too high for me right now to pay in addition to a PC, and while i also have a PS4, i see VR to be more at home on the PC. i’m figuring there’ll be other details that benefit from another generation of hardware.

as for which approach looks better to me, oculus vs vive, i’m more team oculus. while i find it very interesting what you can do with even mild sensory input plus room scale tracking (like having people walk on ~2cm fibreboard and make the edges look like chasms in VR), i’m more interested in sitting down with the headset. that seems to be more practicable for everyday use. (that said: having to choose between valve and facebook is like choosing between the plague and cholera. if this is going to be a shitty vendors’ club, how is apple not on this yet?)

i’m also fairly uninterested in motion controllers – naturalistically replicating input situations works demonstrably well with limited spectrum inputs like joysticks/HOTAS or steering wheels (or the VR pinball controller someone at tested.com built), but i don’t see naturalistic replication as a good approach for something as broad as ‘everything we do with our hands’. kb/m and even gamepads are highly abstracted from pretty much every activity, yet have been successfully adapted to do all kinds of things.

other than that, i do believe VR is here for good, this time. we’re at a point where appropriately good hardware for affordable prices is in reach, and with existing venues for small dev teams to experiment without risking AAA budgets. i believe we’ll be spending a good while just getting to the bottom of what can be done with VR besides the obvious – just as we did with increased storage capacities, 3d acceleration, non-dialup internet, etc.

i’m also really looking forward to non-gaming applications. educational use seems super fascinating right now. i can imagine a lot of things that would be very compelling with VR presence. (off the top of my head: napoleonic campaign, any kind of interesting architecture, deep sea, coral reefs, spots on earth through a few centuries time, historic technology) also, applications like digital painting or sculpting. (now that i think of it, sculpting could benefit from motion controls)

also, vr minecraft.

I'm thinking of buying Google Cardboard...

https://www.google.com/get/cardboard/

virtual reality hmmm, so basically: experience porn in a new dimension? the whole vr thing is about porn? or did stallone lie?

Already have one. It's great for showing where VR was around 20 years ago.

Not interested. The technology's quality does not justify the price tag in my viewpoint and there is not enough support for it.

Also, I predict the biggest buyers will be porn buyers. There is already support for it from the industry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLqVxC6JWIM

Are there any new virtual gloves to go along with these new VR products.

A while ago there was the P5 glove which looked good but only had optical tracking and could have done with the same kind of sensors in the Wii plus. One of the reviewers claims the drivers have been open sourced and the bugs ironed out.
http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Reality-P5-Gaming-Glove/dp/B00007JNFE

Already did it in 1995.
Meh.
(who am I kiddin' I loved the Virtual Boy, I swear).

VR devices other than the fakebook one? Sure, I'd like to test 'em.
a racing game, without the need for 3 displays (I'm poor), just for the kicks.
Beyond that? Nah. Buying? 800 usd aka 30.000.000.000 zimbabwean dollars? wuuuut? ;P

edit: I played some puzzle game on it and Mario. The 1995 me felt amazing, nothing besides that ;P

There's all sorts of new VR peripherals, also gloves, but I think those are all third party (not entirely sure, though).
Oculus officially has the Touch controllers, though, which only track hand movement but additionally give you access to buttons and analogue sticks which is arguably better. From what I understand Sony is sticking with its Move controllers and will also track the movement of the Dualshock 4.

For $15, that doesn't sound half bad... :)

If porn gets behind VR, I may have to change my stance on getting ready for it. No, not because I want VR porn, but because every major new media format that has been a success was first adopted by porn.

Photography - First nude photos appeared less than a year after the invention of the daguerreotype.
Film - One of the earliest versions of the film camera, the zoopraxiscope, was used by its inventor to make short nude filmstrips. The Super 8 home film camera probably wouldn't have existed if it weren't for "stag films".
Videotape/VCRs - VHS killed off Betamax, despite the superiority of the Beta format, simply because the home video market exploded on the cheaper VHS format, starting with porn (Sony prevented the porn industry from using Beta).
Pay/Cable TV - The first public cable tv system in New York more than tripled its viewership (less than 100K viewers to over 300K viewers) after they started airing a show featuring real people getting naked on the streets of Manhattan.
The internet - Do I really need to explain this?
Blu-Ray - Sony learned from the Betamax debacle and allowed porn on Blu-Ray, which the porn industry picked over HD-DVD as the default format, thus ending that format war.
VR - Only time will tell...