What can I say, I'm a compulsive early adopter =P I also have an Apple Watch and a Myo armband, but haven't found a ton of compelling uses for them yet. I didn't want to miss out on the opportunity to develop for it early if I was wrong and I had the cash to buy it.
The difference from 15 years ago is that the hardware is actually here and practical. We have the tracking and displays and they are actually really good. It really creates presence, there is 0 comparison between Oculus/Vive and VR experiences of yesterday, such as the Aladdin ride in Downtown Disney. Hell, HTC is literally pivoting the entire company to the Vive. HTC/Valve + Facebook + Sony + Samsung is a ton of top-notch engineering effort being put into just the first generation of devices/software.
See my comment above, but basically I imagine it'll create new media/experiences rather than replace. I don't think "floating monitors in space" will ever be compelling (maybe in AR), and I don't think "movies" as we think of them now will be practical (though I do think there is room for a more "theatre-like" approach).
If the displays get a lot higher res, I could see myself using stacks of floating displays for apps instead of my current multimonitor display. Imagine being completely surrounded by digital paper that defies the laws of physics.
They were letting people try them on at the Emerging Technologies booth at SIGGRAPH. You could get yourself one of the cheap passes and come down to Anaheim in a couple of weeks, I'm sure they'll have their latest revision.
I'm actually going to be in Anaheim the weekend of the 16th (Disneyland), but making it back down there a week later isn't going to work with my already planned vacation later. :/
If only I could find a way to convince my employer that this conference is related to the job at hand...
The difference from 15 years ago is that the hardware is actually here and practical. We have the tracking and displays and they are actually really good. It really creates presence, there is 0 comparison between Oculus/Vive and VR experiences of yesterday, such as the Aladdin ride in Downtown Disney. Hell, HTC is literally pivoting the entire company to the Vive. HTC/Valve + Facebook + Sony + Samsung is a ton of top-notch engineering effort being put into just the first generation of devices/software.
See my comment above, but basically I imagine it'll create new media/experiences rather than replace. I don't think "floating monitors in space" will ever be compelling (maybe in AR), and I don't think "movies" as we think of them now will be practical (though I do think there is room for a more "theatre-like" approach).