I wasn't that excited until your last sentence. I FOR ONE WELCOME OUR VIRTUAL REALITY FUTURE.
There is nothing that has changed about VR in the past 30 years that will increase its penetration over what has come before. We're still assuming that people want to be completely isolated from their friends in a world without relative perspective. Oculus and all the rest are going to be the Guitar Hero of 2016. Lotsa people will buy it, lotsa people will go ooh aah, lotsa people will realize that they'd much rather play Madden from the couch where their friends can watch.
This is definitely a problem I keep on hearing more and more frequently about. Many, many people just can't afford to isolate themselves from the world around them for very long stretches, which is what the setup and fantasy of VR suggests. As I get older I find that I spend less and less time marathoning games or being able to at all without needing to get up or check my phone or respond to emails or finish cooking or whatever else video games have traditionally not been so demanding to ignore just by the virtue that we can easily put down a controller and walk away. I think if VR's going to stay, it needs to have some real-life integration - some way to view your phone, a way to browse the web easily, maybe even a way to work within the space - instead of being a totally confined, singular gaming experience.
There is a very large growing gaming market for short-ish games (2-3 hours of gameplay) to mid-length games (12-ish) that are all about immersion on various levels while being first person. I think VR will head in that direction since most of those stories are about screwing with your head anyway. Games like SOMA, Firewatch, and Alien: Isolation, for instance. Hell I'll even throw in the Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay in that mix. I think these types of games will be the real drivers of VR gaming markets, not just another Wii or Guitar Hero like it is now. Those game can also be made in dual compatibility with flat screen support, so they can sell two interfaces to it. Much like 3D movies have a 2D version, which seem to be lasting much longer than I expected. Also, it could play off of 3D movies and end up with a way to play 3D movies without buying a ridiculous TV and player for it, making them last longer. I've always wanted to pause a movie and walk around the set. You could turn your living room into a digital theater, shakespeare style. Pause, walk around, etc. See live concerts streamed to your living room stage. Obviously I'm not buying one now, they are ridiculously expensive with little payoff at the moment, but if they do things right they could take off.
I definitely don't see 'COD:BLOPS INFINITY OPERATIONS - The Beginning' as the market for VR. I think that looking for that kind of mass-appeal with this tech is dumb and impractical. However, I believe that there is a growing niche for people like myself who want the experience that the tech is able to provide.
You believe it because you've been hyped into believing it. Speaking as a former member of the Society for Information Display I can say with no quaver in my voice that the compelling reasons for VR are no more compelling than they were in 2000, in 1990, in 1980 or 1970. VR is cool. For about half an hour. Then it's wearing, isolating and fatiguing. Always has been, always will be. DARPA pushed this shit as hard as they could back in the early '80s. There was no impediment to their progress. Yet they abandoned it by '86 because no amount of miniaturization or refresh rate addressed the fundamental problem with VR: we don't really see in stereo. We interpolate from mono, with heavily-lossy processing, because binocular vision gives us depth cues only to within what we can reach with our arms. Everything else is head position. Every VR setup you've ever seen (except one) uses binocular vision for the sum total of your stereoscopic experience. As a result, every VR setup you've ever seen forces your brain to do things it can't do. That's not going to change until we ditch the immersive glasses. Period. Full stop.
Eh. I've used a Vive. I've used a DK2 for an afternoon. It's not something I wanna do all day every day, but I can say the same thing about Overwatch or Kerbal Space Program, or basically any other game. Don't forget that for all its one-hit-wonder-ness, Guitar Hero was FUN. (To its target market)
Having played multiplayer Quake in a CAVE, I don't think VR gaming is necessarily an isolating experience, but I agree that it's not likely to become a widespread thing anytime soon. I predict another hype->inflated expectations->letdown->everyone forgets about VR for another decade cycle. The VR experience people imagine and expect is always going to be better than the one the technology can deliver.
Yeah, LANL built one of those back in 2000. Nobody used it, it was a pain in the ass, and they decommissioned it in 2008. Think that sucker was built out of command & control multipanels. Think it cost in the millions. Think the novelty is exciting, but think the utility is marginal at best.
Some friends and I built one with displays dumpster dived from a theme park and some old SGI boxen dumpster dived from the engineering department. LANL's was probably much nicer than ours, but they don't have to be that expensive to build, bored college students can figure out how to do it for almost-free, you just need to dedicate a lot of space to something you'll rarely have a use for.
Yeah, I'm not really into VR at all. I really don't want to spend another $400 - $800 to upgrade my computer to use an $800 pair of glasses without wanting to throw up. Plus, I'm lazy when it comes to peripherals, so I'd probably use them once, go "Wow, that's a major hassle to play like 2 games," and never really touch them again. I haven't seen a VR game I'm interested in, nor do I think any game I currently play would be helped by wearing a giant pair of glasses to make it my whole vision. Yet, it's supposed to be the next awesome thing that's going to revolutionize gaming. Really, I'm upgrading in hopes of either getting a 1440p monitor, or a 1080p 120hz display.