I think some Steve Jobs-ian thinking about the experience as a whole is called for at this point. VR/AR equipment needs to be friendly to the social experience and to social experiences, otherwise it's going to be out-competed through network effects by other equipment that has an advantage there.
Current VR "room-scale" equipment seems to be optimal for 1) god-like player experiences, where you can survey a world, teleport within it, and command/change/tinker/destroy what's within it or 2) the highly immersed "stage." By "stage" I literally mean it's like you are standing on a stage. It's about the same amount of space, and the immersive feeling is very much like being on the set of a movie or show.
the social nut in VR is going to be the hardest one to crack. It will be big when the solution appears. But we're not close to one yet.
The approach we're taking now is the "avatars and voice" approach, where you interact with other people through VR puppets, essentially. These puppets can mimic your body language and facial expressions and are supposed to increase the depth of human communication through nonverbal cues. The truth is, after experimenting heavily with this, I've found most of it to be pretty gimmicky.
It seems the human mind naturally gravitates to such ideas (e.g. second life), but it never pans out. I'm not sure what the right answer is, or if theres even one.
I personally think the things that have the biggest potential in VR are games like Tabletop Simulator, where both the game itself and the context of "being with other people playing a game" are part of the experience.
When people can have the sensations of sex in VR porn media, without needing to interface bodily fluids with pieces of hardware, then porn VR will, in the words of Dennis Miller, "make crack look like Sanka." Or perhaps, when porn media makers figure out how to work the current forms of immersion to their advantage, there will be an uptick.
Right now, the increase in the quality of experience of VR porn over a screen and a pair of headphones is still marginal.
Being at the same table with others playing a tabletop game is like being gods in a competitive pantheon playing with a world. I think we're essentially talking about the same "thing" -- it's just that our culture's level of understanding of it is still nascent. Most of our experience of this thing is through tabletop games. Now, we are just getting into the possibilities of VR for the "thing."
I wanted to get into VR but it's too cost prohibitive right now.
You need a powerful computer. That means either buying a very expensive rig from a brand name seller (Alienware or Razer), or building one on your own.
The former is cost-prohibitive. The latter is skill-prohibitive.
A smartphone, on the other hand, is cheap and requires no technical know how to buy and use
The Playstation 4 VR is rather in-expensive and has a good selection of high quality content.
And I too think AR (augmented reality, known from Pokemon-Go) has higher potential/adoption rate. We will see it in our every day life soon, everywhere. And everyone has a smartphone, no need for a helmet.
(And for VR a "CAVE" is very cool. It's a special purpose small room where projectors point to 3 or 4 walls and the floor and you can just carry light&inexpensive 3D red-blue or shutter glasses and walk around eg with your friends. That's something we will probably see more and more in public locations too.)
VR right now is still targeted very much at gamers, many of which already have a capable enough system, or could get there easily enough with a few upgrades. As a side effect of putting together a good gaming PC I have everything I already need for VR save the actual headset. It's still expensive, but it's a good deal less than the total cost of a good gaming PC.
Current VR "room-scale" equipment seems to be optimal for 1) god-like player experiences, where you can survey a world, teleport within it, and command/change/tinker/destroy what's within it or 2) the highly immersed "stage." By "stage" I literally mean it's like you are standing on a stage. It's about the same amount of space, and the immersive feeling is very much like being on the set of a movie or show.