A bit of topic. But why is VR been spoken of as a new thing recently? Or what is exactly new is the push for a more standardized VR medium? Of course i do understand it is also related to the technology been mature enough to have this at a more mass market price.
There are really two things that happened recently that allow VR to finally approach the term "Virtual Reality", which hasn't been possible until recently. One of those is the huge cost decrease and improvement of high quality motion-detection sensors - just a few years before the Wii, accelerometers with the same accuracy/frame rate as its controllers cost thousands of dollars. As well, processors and visual motion tracking technology have improved enough for high framerate position tracking. The second important requirement has been the ever shrinking video displays, with higher resolutions and higher framerates - the Oculus DK1 had a 720p screen, and that was considered really low resolution for VR (but it was enough to get the VR sensation). It wasn't long ago that a cell phone screen was considered high resolution at 320x480!
But really, a lot of it has been Oculus' work. Like the lenses they use to warp the displays into a more rounded shape, that makes a HUGE improvement over each eye looking at a flat screen in terms of it feeling real. And all their research into what makes for the best experience, like maintaining a high framerate that never stops reacting to the tiniest head motions. Just in the time between DK1 and DK2, the ability to experience VR without feeling sick improved dramatically, as did the sense of really "being there" in the virtual reality.
In fact, that's the next thing to be solved, that Oculus is working feverishly on: the ability to move around in a VR world without feeling sick. Lots of people here are hoping for Half Life 3 on Steam VR, but first person shooters are currently horrible in VR, one of the worst sources of VR Sickness. Half Life 2, for example, I can play it for a while on DK2, but a feeling of sickness slowly builds over time, and then the game hits you with a static loading screen and bam, gotta stop (one of the things game developers are going to have to do to for VR is remove static loading screens, anytime you turn your head and the image doesn't move with it is terrible).
