I could make the same argument that lack of eye tracking, native speech inference, better locomotion strategies, and higher resolution mean that today's cutting-edge VR headsets will be subject to the same misplaced scrutiny that you're currently giving the cheap, commoditized headsets. It's still Virtual Reality.
It really isn't. 6DoF with hand presence is profoundly, fundamentally different to 3DoF. It's the difference between someone taking off the headset after a brief demo and saying "that was cool" versus someone taking off the headset and needing a moment to recalibrate their sense of reality. 3DoF is a panoramic monitor, 6DoF is being there.
Not really. It’s subjective, but full head and hand tracking is a radically different experience then all sub-options, and the things you mention do not seem to be as radical an improvement in comparison.
The things I mentioned are critical for increased rendering efficiency and full immersion. One day they will be deemed as essential to the experience, and people will lament current tech as not VR.
Agree to disagree. I think that 10 years from now, 6dof hand and head tracking will continue to be remembered as the core boundary between VR and not-VR, with the vive and rift being the 1st gen consumer VR devices.
The gap between a 6DOF headset and a 3DOF headset is almost as much as the gap between a 3DOF headset and simple stereoscopic images. The 3DOF viewers are whimsical but a good full motion VR experience can actually click you into full immersion. The kind of immersion where you might accidentally lean on a table or wall that doesn't exist.
It's still VR but I think the gap between a "Google Cardboard"-like experience and real VR is huge.
The 3D effect of VR is cool but the real magic is using controllers in true 3D space, the Oculus ones are really well designed and just sort of fade away and feel like your hands.
Exactly. Obviously, it's still VR. However, because the gap between say an Oculus Quest and a Google Cardboard is so massive, calling both VR without further specifying is not very sensible to me. It's almost like a completely different technology, the only similarity being that optical lenses are used between the screen and the user's eyes.
3DOF vs 6DOF could mean less depending on the experience you try out. If you try out a well designed 3DOF experience that can work quite well, especially as the same experience in 6DOF won't be drastically different. But when you try out a good 6DOF experience WITH hand/controller tracking, that is a game changer. Being able to pick up things and interact with them in a natural way, this makes it real for me.
>It's functionally VR and is most current gen folk's/kids first experience with VR. There is no point gatekeeping it
A Zoetrope is technically a moving picture, but it's a fundamentally different category of thing to a real movie. Sticking your smartphone in a glorified ViewMaster is a cool gimmick, but it's a pretty disappointing experience after the very brief novelty has worn off. If we don't very clearly delineate "real VR" (6DoF, low latency, hand presence), we risk poisoning the well for the whole industry.
The experience in a "true" VR headset that offers 6 DoF and hands, such as the Oculus Quest, is just something completely different.