It would be amazing it we could wear a virtual reality visor to play games and create content.
You could have an incredible game experience if you could actually look around in the actual environment. As an example, imagine running across a rope bridge or falling off a cliff edge in game. If you were caught up in the action you might actually experience vertigo. I could go on forever with scenarios.
Why hasn’t it taken off already?
I think Johnny Mnemonic killed VR. 
There would be a ridiculously large market for this. It can’t be that hard to mass produce on the cheap.
Replace the mouse with a gyroscopic device in the visor… job done $$$$$$$ (j/k)
One of the problems was many people felt sick after playing them for a while. Their eyes are telling the person they are moving, but everything else is telling the brain they are not. This disparity was creating a similar effect to seasickness.
I once spent about 15 minutes in an arcade style VR flight simulator. I felt odd after that amount of time, some people didn’t look very well after their turn.
The helmet could be attached to a gaming chair/frame to prevent disorientation until a technology removes the need. Atleast the sickness would be gone.
A chair isn’t going to create the motion needed to fool the body into believing it’s in motion. You’d need something like a simulator. But either way, I don’t think VR is necessarily the best interface. Just look at the Nintendo Power Glove and the VR interfaces in Johnny Mnemonic. Sure, they’re dated and retarded, but why overcomplicate UI? As for the display, I don’t think most people want to wear screens. People have a hard enough time with 3D glasses.
Virtual reality has been around in practice at least since the early 90’s, which is when I started dabbling with it. It’s been failing ever since.
Price. Even the cheapest non-VR glasses with crappy LCDs in them are more than a decent large HDTV. Nobody has the hardware, so nobody makes software. Same thing could happen with Microsoft and Sony’s new control offerings; time will tell.
I think the head tracking idea would be a better implementation as it works for anyone and wouldn’t give the vertigo effect. A light helmet or glasses with tracking would be relatively comfortable compared to a whole helmet or visor needed for VR.
I can’t see 3D and VR because of my lazy eye and I know the percentage of people who can’t is pretty high.
Head tracking would be awesome in a FPS.
The kit would have to have sensors on the spine, arm joints, hands, neck, dummy gun and head. One hand controls movement and the other is for shooting and changing weapons.
Multiplayer VR shooters based on the players actual physical shooting skills? Creeping up on players with a virtual machete? That would be amazing!
VR quite simply has never been practical in a large, consumer scale.
For example - check out this excellent 3D headset: http://www.3dvisor.com/index.php
$1799 - 800x600 res, contrast ration 200 to 1.
I can build an entire gaming rig, with monitor etc and have change left over http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/rmp_sg_whirlpoolpcs_gaming_configs.
@ $200 a pop, one could get 6 ~24" monitors, have a resolution of 5760 by 3240, a contrast of 20,000 + etc. for less than one of those goggles. Immersive.
The reason ATI created eyefinity is because the (or one of the) lead developers saw that this is the way to get to the ‘holodeck’. Now we can support 6 monitors, it is not hard to support more if the demand arose.
We may be better off getting out of our old way of thinking and stop trying to project ourselves into virtual humans with all that clunky stuff like headsets etc.
What’s so good about being human anyway?. Aren’t we just advanced monkeys?.
Why not strive to become free spirits with the ability to fly and virtually transport ourselves from A to B in an instant?.
We don’t need arms and legs and all that primitive nonsense. As of now I’m far more comfortable doing a 180 turn with a flick of my mouse.
Isn’t it be better to be able to move around with as little effort as possible?
Although I will say that headsets may eventually be good for giving us greater peripheral vision. But when it comes to head tracking and all that gumpf - meh…
In summary - the human body sucks.
…(Although I’m still very impressed with Beyonce’s)
Go to the gym and eat some friggin’ flax.
i went for a jog this morning on my nintendo wii.
I think AR is the new VR in many ways. You get many of the exciting possibilities but without the nausea and expense.
For the mass market, no technology which forces you to wear some uncomfortable glasses/headsets will ever succeed, it needs to be a complete no brainer, affordable and add some real benefit. On the other side in the more serious field of applications there exist some very cool and expensive VR solutions.
Expensive now for sure. I guess the tech will be cheap to produce in the future (when we are all 6 feet under)!
I can’t help thinking about it. Coming home after a few beers and reaching for the VR kit. What shall I play tonight? How about L4D VR with unbiased realtime graphics 
The price hasn’t come down enough to make it a realistic buy since I was playing VR games at amusement parks and museums nearly two decades ago. It won’t; nobody cares. Contacts with holo-screens would happen first.
I’ve owned a headset/glasses in the past and even without the head tracking I would feel queasy after using it. I suspect given enough time I could’ve gotten used to it. There’s also dizziness when switching from a small monitor to a large monitor, but that hasn’t stopped people from persevering.
The main problem I had with the devices was the poor resolution. When the resolution improves then the big companies like Apple will start to take headsets more seriously.
Although it may even mean that rather than placing somebody entirely within the virtual world and having them try to overcome the disorientation, it may be that the headset uses augmented reality and projects a large virtual display in a fixed position in the real world. So while this isn’t exactly virtual reality, it still saves on floor space. The devices would also be portable too. And another bonus will be that you can use them outside in the sun. No more vitamin D deficiency! YAY! 
So one way or another headsets are gonna happen, but the all encompassing virtual worlds may still be quite some way off yet. But where there’s a will…
I’d prefer Augmented Reality. It won’t be long till someone does a pair of lightweight glasses, with straight to retina display, built in GPS, accelerometer, Wi-Fi, camera and mic/earphone.
Apple could then rip them off, tart it up a bit and sell it as a must have product!
I think we all thought VR was the future back in early 90s. I wet myself using SGI headset/glove back then at Uni.