Does anyone doubt this will technology will be the biggest advance in human-computer interactions in decades?
You need real world training for all of the above, but I'd be curious to see how the VR training could help people get started. I wouldn't buy a VR headset for any of these things alone, but combine it with games, entertainment, virtual workspaces (you could be sitting in a 10x10 basement, but feel like you're sitting at a desk in a penthouse overlooking New York), and I think they could be quite versatile, and a worthwhile purchase.
I can imagine big business in creating alternate reality assets, such as virtual homes. I wonder if you could combine the real world and the virtual world as well. For example, I'm building a new home, so I make a 20x20 room, dividing a 5x20 and 15x20 section with a sliding door. I put a bed in the 15x20 area, and a railing in the 5x20 section. There's nothing passed the railing, it's just a railing 2ft from a blank wall. However, I create a virtual world that matches the geometry. I put on the headset, and I can sit down on my virtual bed, or walk across the room and slide the door to the balcony. With the headset, the balcony looks like it's on the 20th floor, overlooking the ocean. I can lean on the railing and look down at the world below, while in the real world, I'm just wearing a headset staring at the wall in front of me. I could put a fan in the 5x20 room, so in VR, it feels like there's a breeze on the balcony.
It sounds a little crazy, but is it? You can turn an unfinished space, such as a basement, into a billion dollar VR dream home. There could be a VR home generator, where you enter the floor plan of your basement, and it generates a VR home with rooms and doors that match that space. I'm curious to see where things go, it'll be an interesting decade.
If it is indeed immersive, the silence following the delivery of a killer joke would be excruciating.
It will, for sure, improve some human-computer interactions in a few domains where it is easily deployable (mainly entertainment and industrial manipulations).
Other than that, I don't see it used that much. It is still cumbersome to wear, doesn't seem to be usable in mobility, and won't solve common problems in a business environment.
(But I'm still waiting for it, heh.)
Lighthouse is really exciting in that way because being able to get peripherals into virtual space accurately would be a boon.
It literally makes your desktop into a big screen display floating right in front of you. For a background you can have a space scene with a planet similar to Saturn and asteroids floating around you. Immediately I fired up and watched 2001 A Space Odyssey on my new virtual big screen display. I could also work on code in any editor.
It's just your desktop in virtual space. But this gives me some neat ideas, especially business applications. Startups that exist only online are not that uncommon. Imagine a virtual office application where employees across the world can work together in a virtual space. It could be a office setting or on the bridge of the Enterprise. Each employee has a workstation with displays that you could check out in real time. For example, say you're having an issue with a database, you could get up and move over to the work station of your admin and help resolve it and see what he does on his screen. You could have meetings on the moon. And all while working from home, thousands of miles apart. Combined with voice group chat, it could be a killer app.
As someone working on an indie studio in Texas, with my partner based in New Jersey, the idea of doing that makes me very excited.
I however don't see me running around with that in my room. Maybe I'm too old for that but it's not what I have in my mind when I think about VR devices. What I think of is Cyberpunk. Gibson. Guys starving in their chair having such a device on my head. I still have a Wii flying around somewhere in the dust...
Consider that computers, microwaves and maybe even TV's started at tens of thousands of dollars - and that's before adjusting for inflation - and it's hard not to say it's already stupidly good value for money for an entirely new medium.