I like 360 panorama movies. Done right, the feeling of presence is excellent. VR is a niche to begin with, so I would hesitate to say that any one application (ex. CAD, gaming, 360 panoramas, etc) is the "killer app" so far since the audience is so small. As it grows (which I pray it will), we'll see definitive trends emerge.
> VR is a niche to begin with
I would prefix that with "in its current state".
It's been a niche thing for 30 years or so. But any day now...
The feeling of presence is so limited compared to realtime-rendered 3d spaces where you can move your head around from the central camera point even just a bit. Adding some artificial parallax shift to the movie frames might be enough to give it that extra oomph to feel truly immersive.
The Oculus Go doesn't have 6 DoF, and he's been working on that and phone-based VR for the last few years. Because they're cheaper, they move a lot more units! And because they're more constrained, they need more optimization attention from someone like Carmack.
Given that Carmack is CTO, I'd assume he has a fair amount of say in what he works on.
VR hasn't necessarily had its killer app yet. The hype has died down somewhat, and the slow build starts. It is a new medium, so something impressive that people can use it for, like watching a concert from the middle of the stage, is important to keep it from being all potential.
I want it. Also looks like prerequisite for other fancy stuff.