The fundamental problem with the VR headsets has been mentioned by Kim...
...most people couldn't use them for more than 30min at a time.
Part of the reason that these VR headsets are on the brink of coming to market now rather than eighteen months ago is because of the motion sickness issues encountered in development. Recent advances in technology with displays, processing power, motion tracking and miniaturisation made the prospect of cheap, effective VR a commercial prospect. There was a huge push to get products into development after the public response to the Oculus Kickstarter campaign. All of these development efforts revealed that motion sickness was still the problem it had been twenty years earlier but the available technology was on the cusp of eliminating several of the now identified factors that induce VR sickness. Much of the work on bringing these headsets to market has been on getting the units manufactured to a specification that makes nausea free use possible. Users that struggled with the first development kits report that they can wear the consumer models for hours.
Now that the hardware isn't guaranteed to induce nausea the software developers are able to operate with a much clearer framework of what is immersive, what is spectacular, what is a bit icky and what is the equivalent of grabbing someone by the ears and shaking vigorously. Many of the established characteristics of FPSs that promote immersion on screen turn out to be disastrous for VR. Apparently, wandering down a staircase in a Tuscan villa as a disembodied head is unsettling, add a realistic bob with each step your virtual self takes down the stairs and you're likely to hurl. Sit tethered to the controls of a starship during a dizzying dogfight as the universe rotates every which way around you and you'll probably be happy as Larry.
The benefit of all the big players having to overcome the problems of motion sickness means that the first headsets on the market are going to be of a much higher spec than anticipated. The HTC looks as if it will have the potential to overlay elements of the real world via a forward facing camera. I think this is anticipated to function as more of a benefit to hazard perception than an opportunity to augment reality. The greater freedom of movement it allows increases immersion and removes several motion sickness cues.
There are all sorts of discoveries developers and users are going to make over the next few years. I've done some work in motion capture studios and VR headsets now make some mind blowing things possible. Working face to face with someone who's in a separate studio in a fully detailed representation of an alien world and they and yourself are rendered in real-time as hobbits, dragons, orcs or what ever, six inches to a hundred feet tall.
