I know he’s the lead developer for another engine but he is a game developing guru about the level of Carmack so it’s worth listening to what he has to say.
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So should Unity push more for VR and higher performance?
The problem with VR is that the games it currently has can be played just fine without the VR headset.
Can you give any example of a game that could not be played with a desktop screen? …Exactly.
But I do think that Unity should support all of the VR platforms, because eventually game devs will figure out how to develop games that make good use of advantages of VR.
I hadn’t thought of doing a VR game (hmmm, actually I’m not sure blindly flailing about in a VR headset is safe???) but actually the game I’m working on now is better suited to VR then a Desktop or Mobile screen, or rather to the Microsoft Hololens thingy that I can’t afford. Maybe next year.
It’s not so much playing a game on a screen as the experience you get in VR. Take for instance the 3D modelling and painting apps in VR were waving your arms around with controllers creates a 3D model or picture. Yes you could do it in 2D but you would not have the same level of depth perception and precision as you get in 3D VR.
There are also VR demos that allow people to experience great heights and this is a profound experience in VR as vertigo kicks in but on a 2D screen it would be meh!
You really have to try it and experience it, the term used is ‘presence’ as you feel like you are there in the virtual space. But check online there are some great videos of people playing VR game experiences and the fun is seeing their reactions.
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And watch the refresh rate! 
I can ride in a boat in high seas on a stormy night, upside down, while reading a book, after half a bottle of cheap whiskey and not feel the least bit ill, but after about 35 minutes of some less than polished demos - that was enough for me to enjoy the view watching others from the couch the rest of the evening.
But it certainly is an interesting different experience.
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I tried to like VR, I really did. After playing with my DK2 for a good length of time I just got sick of it. Too much bulky gear, too much motion sickness, and I just wasn’t getting thge same fun compared to sitting at my pc and playing games without vr. I think it has a ways to go, at this point you are a super early adopter if you’re developing for it.
On the area of VR motion sickness, the HTC Vive has had some rave reviews from people who have experienced motion sickness on other VR platforms.
There was an odd study where they found that adding a virtual nose to the VR experience reduced motion sickness. link
Unity should push for unified VR hardware support, and we as developers should focus on performance and design. Early on, I imagined playing traditional shooters and RPGs in VR. But virtual noses and high refresh rates alone don’t cut it. That’s why the developers of Among the Sleep are dropping VR support.
VR games require some fundamentally different design approaches. Some of it is to resolve the motion sickness problem, which is why you teleport instead of running in Epic’s Bullet Train. Valve’s Chet Faliszek is quoted in this article: “It’s no longer the hardware’s fault any more. It’s the developers making choices that are making you sick.” And some of it is to take advantage of the deeper experience of presence in VR. Little things that you wouldn’t give a second thought to on a 2D screen have a way of astonishing you in VR. I think there might be a future in investigative point-and-click adventure games in VR. Mousing around on a 2D screen to find hidden hotspots is a terrible mechanic. But imagine being able to, say, pick up a keyboard in-game and move your head to look underneath it for a sticky note with the villain’s password. It doesn’t sound like much until you’ve experienced it, but it’s a world of difference.
If Unity can continue its work to make it easy to support different VR hardware, it frees us up to design the right experiences for VR.
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I’ve tried few different kits, demos and VR enabled games. No way around it, after less than 5 mins I get motion sickness. And it’s a shame cause I enjoyed the level of immersion. 
Just to check but have you tried the Rift CV1 or the HTC Vive as most reviews are claiming great improvements?
For those who have not experienced it or not seen anyone get really sick from VR, it’s enough for one game to give bad experience and regular user will not to try it again no matter what. There is nothing that current tech can do for the problem that some people experience and is the main cause o nausea for them: eyes will see movement but the body ain’t moving. They can only take sea sickness pills before gaming and hope for an pleasant run 
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Yeah I heard great things about HTC and I’m waiting for my HTC Vive kit but tried DKC1/2 and got motion sickness too.
(I added the emphasis above.) That’s the problem. You can’t just “enable” VR into traditional gameplay. That’s why I quoted the Valve guy: “It’s no longer the hardware’s fault any more. It’s the developers making choices that are making you sick.”
The smoothest, most high-resolution hardware still won’t address the core problem, which @Ostwind identified: your eyes see movement but your body doesn’t feel it. If people try to jam traditional games into VR, it’s going to turn away the audience and kill VR before it can even get off the ground.
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I think Oculus are adding a rating system for motion sickness to their VR App Store.
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I don’t know much about VR and don’t pretend to, so I have to ask what you mean by “traditional game” and how do you solve the issue of not moving? (Besides from obviously running into walls).
The article is really eccentric. Is the author paraphrasing Sweeny or is this supposed to be direct quotes?
VR headsets aren’t going to replace TV’s or displays on a large scale, VR is hardware just like a TV and it can serve many purposes. There’s also a difference between VR and AR, and they seem to be talking about AR concepts in the article more than VR concepts.
Seems more like a hypetrain article than anything of real value.
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Interesting! I hadn’t heard that yet. Thanks!
I mean games where the player runs, jumps, and moves around freely. This’ll make you crazy sick in VR since your eyes see you moving but your body doesn’t feel it.
Epic’s Bullet Train uses an approach like Cloudhead’s “Blink” solution in The Gallery, where you can instantly teleport to a location. Once you’re there, you’re stationary but you can look around freely. Since you’re physically moving your head to look, what your eyes see matches what your body feels.
Owlchemy’s Job Simulator and Schell Games’ I Expect You To Die take a different approach. They’re designed so you don’t need to move. You just look around and interact with things within arm’s reach.
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The virzoom stationary bike controller solves the problem of moving through vast virtual worlds by pedaling on the bike.
I suspect that the important part of a “traditional game” is one where a major part of the interaction is moving the point of view without the player (ie: the real person using the computer) also moving.
An immediate potential solution that jumps to mind is to have the player actually move. So play games in an open field and instead of “press W to move forward” people actually… you know… walk. A limitation here is of course that not everyone has a football field in their computer room or office.
Another potential solution (edit: covered by TonyLi) is perhaps having the point of view “jump” from location to location, Myst style, and at each location the camera only moves as the player’s head moves. This way players can navigate without translating from place to place.
I’m sure there are others, too. The point is that you can’t just “enable” the technology and “tweak” the experience. You need to design a new experience from the ground up built around VR’s strengths and weaknesses. And from what I can tell, one of the weaknesses is that if you want the player to move then you’d better have them actually move.
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