I picked up a Forte VFX1 headset the other day for a pretty penny (fully boxed, too) and gave it a whirl. I'm an enormous proponent of Virtual Realty - I already have an Oculus Rift and I have both a STEM system and Virtuix Omni on their way. My first time trying VR was back in about 1993 during this tour that went around malls (the infamous pterodactyl demo) and have been in love with the tech ever since. I bought a Jaguar largely on the promise of VR, and I was crushed when Sega canceled their VR project. Anywho, this VFX1 is the first piece of consumer virtual reality technology that I have at my disposal from that time period, and the leap between it and the oculus rift is astounding. They don't feel remotely like the same experience. Something like Half Life 2 VR with the rift and Hydra is worlds better than Descent using the motion puck on the VFX1. I'll go ahead and classify the rift as a consumer product right now (considering you need no credentials to buy one at the moment), so, including it in the equation, how has your consumer VR experiences gone thus far? For the sake of discussion, let's leave non-VR tech that was marketed as VR out of the equation (i.e. Virtual Boy and Tiger R-Zone) and concentrate only on pitch, yaw, and rotation head tracking and/or positional tracking. What needs to be improved? What have you tried? Where do you see this stuff heading?
I picked up the oculus dev unit a while back, but have since sold it. I felt like it was an awesome piece of technology. But I just never was able to get my vr legs. I could play the thing at most for 5-8 minutes before I'd start to get a headache. Which would then ruin the night for me. I think it will play a role in the future, but I feel like we will have a while to wait before its mainstream.
Does augmented reality count? Check this out if you haven't seen it http://technicalillusions.com/ Works off a reflective surface, but just imagine making a 'holodeck' by wall-papering a room with the stuff... I don't think this causes the headache problems some people have either...
