The problem I see is that VR would be great with dual 2K screens and 120+hz , but we don't have the GPUS to push that many pixels today (in any remotely affordable way...maybe quad TitanX would work).
Cheaper, lower-quality VR headsets will leave a bad impression on consumers. I don't think that's the direction we should be going. I'd rather see HTC and Oculus release higher-res, faster refresh rate HMDs, but I doubt they'd do that with no single GPU able to run those today.
When you get to scale, you can start doing things like manufacturing displays with higher PPI near where the lenses are centered. That way you have the same number of total physical pixels but a higher resolution contributing to the image.
You can further reduce the computational costs by using foveated rendering(http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/johnsny/papers...). You can use low-latency eye-tracking to spend more time rendering the portions of the frame that the user is actively looking at.
I think the combo of falling gpu prices, and clever hardware design means we will probably see headsets with effectively higher and higher resolutions sooner rather than later.
You'd need a new lens design for that really. Right now the lenses that are used aren't really good if you start looking to the side too much. When I get going in VR I generally just look with my head instead of my eyes to avoid those lens issues like chromatic aboration.
a slew of headsets from major PC vendors (HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc.) starting at $300.
Wonder if that will help or hinder VR. Personally I think the Vive is just about the bare minimum needed for VR to barely be acceptable. If peoples first impression of VR is something less than that I doubt they'll be impressed enough to actually use VR for more than 15 minutes over the first 2 weeks after purchase.
