Spoken like an investor who knows nothing about the audience. Sorry, VR was intended for PC gamers. They're not casual mobile gamers. They loathe casual games. They now loathe VR for wedding with Facebook.
I'm not familiar with the intimate details of the Ocululs business plan, but their story page says they have a larger view of the potential for VR:
"revolutionize the way people experience interactive content"
and their vision says nothing about games:
"Immersive virtual reality technology that's wearable and affordable."
Perhaps the negative comments here are part of the natural bitterness from insiders that accompanies any technology as it goes mainstream?
Remember the VR-32 and VRML? Everyone was super excited that we were going to start doing all the things in virtual reality, and then we figured out that it's a really cumbersome way to present most information.
Sure, I understand that. My point is that perhaps folks who went to the trouble of dedicating their lives to VR might have a larger vision than this.
In 1992, you could have defined the Internet in similarly limited terms -- after all, using the Internet largely meant text interfaces. I'm just positing that the folks who run Oculus are a) smart and b) have spent a lot of time thinking about how best to spread VR.
If VR takes off, by definition it will mean expanding beyond FPS games, because most people do not play those (you could alternatively get VR to go mainstream by increasing market penetration of FPS and FPRPG games by orders of magnitude, which might be harder than putting VR to other uses).
Carmack is a ridiculously smart guy who is damned good at squeezing things out of hardware that shouldn't be possible, and if there's anyone that I think could work out the how-to of VR, I think it'd be him, but I'm not sure that I trust his read on what the markets want.
The question isn't so much "will VR take off?" as it is "what could VR possibly do beyond FPS games that could make it take off?" and I just don't have any answer to that at all.
"Designed for gamers, by gamers." [1]
Now, I understand that in the Kickstarted it was promised only the first developer kit and that it was successfully delivered, but I feel very uneasy knowing that the Facebook platform is geared exclusively to casual gaming. My worry is that Facebook will be happy with a VR technically good enough for a social VR but that can't stand the requirements for gaming. I may be too old to understand, but I really don't feel the urge to interact in 3d with my friends to say hello or to watch their holiday's pictures.
[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1523379957/oculus-rift-...
VR is way, way, WAY bigger than some hardcore gaming nerds (of which I am one).
What sorts of applications can you imagine? The idea of virtual presence being a killer app is silly, IMO - I've played with both the Oculus Rift and telepresence robots - they're neat, but for meetings/gatherings, I'll take a plain old webcam any day. I can't imagine what Facebook would do with this that I would be interested in.
For example, see how well that's worked out for Tesla.
No just Oculus.