Heh... I love how paying 2 extra bucks for your ticket to an imax movie is compared to buying hundreds of dollars of equipment for a home setup. People absolutely want 3D as a novelty in public forums, I already expressed that if he would bother to read the posts, but that isn't the same as wanting to invest the time, money and effort into doing a home setup. Hell even now that 3d tvs cost basically the same as a regular tv, nobody is buying them... thus the lackluster 3d tv sales.
Sorry, but Ive seen so many posts about how people hate glasses / 3d... as well as how 3d movies are garbage...etc... that it boggles the mind. Everywhere you go, theres always some loud mouth, that had to trash something that they are not enamored with... and they try to project their own feelings and assumptions onto pretty much everyone else.
Ive already stated, just as you, that cost is a huge problem with VR. That cost would have stayed low, had the rift chose to stay at a reachable early prototype level. Something that peoples current gen PCs could have been fine with, so that the investment was only a mere $200 at most for the ride. In fact, it was doing very well, and gaining in sales and popularity... at those early stages.
Its when they decided to push to the higher end... that they lost the core 'poor' mass audience. Its one thing to have or get a spare $200... and quite another, to fork over $1000+ for a new PC, video card, accessories... and to end up with a very expensive hunk of hardware... that has very little offering in software, and those games which it does have... are still very far from the goal of what people expect... especially for that price point.
As for your quip on 3dtv sales... I do not think you can easily get hold of a 3dtv that does both 4k and 3d today. And thats the issues... (along with the horrible idea to have multiple incompatible glasses / hardware standards). People would love the 3d on their large flatscreens... but to give up on 4k? A cheap +45" 4k tv at walmart is like 700 or less now, I think. 3d incorporation, would have been fairly easy for these tvs... even if it was kept at the lower resolution / framerate. But, the companies chose a few more dollars in profit, rather than keep the 3d tech.
It does not help, that the content, just is not available for 3d, and what little is available, is WAY too overpriced. (Bad enough that many bluray / dvd released are still crazy expensive... and most will just wait till they hit the $10 marker to buy them. And thats a fair price point... considering many films are pretty pathetic, and are not worthy of much beyond a few watches, let alone must-haves).
Initially the LCD glasses were like 100$ a pop... and that did not help a family of like 4... whom wanted to watch a movie together. The competition drive down the price to a mere $40 a pair... and so that became less of an issue too. (the problem then, was a mindfeild of incompatible / different standards to try to figure out)
All of this leads to data that figureheads try to interpret as "people dont want 3dtv". Or "People dont want to wear the glasses". Both of which are not really true, for the majority of the masses. The reason is content lackings, price point on that content, as well as some of these having very poor standards of quality.
Fix all of that, and 3dtv, .. would easily start to gain mass acceptance and greater sales.
And as for PC 3d, many have tried, but, its always been a standards issue. Dedicated lock into a hardware vendors video card and special drivers... that the companies do not keep updated / active / functional. Drop the price to like $75, (not 150+) drop the dedicated hardware vendor crap, and get Microsoft to actually play-ball with their OS... and Bam... you will get Millions of 3d users, enjoying and creating 3d content on their PCs. And M$, should already have been working on / implementing a 3d desktop / windows environment. Even if its simply floating icons, windows. Let alone, 3d Painting programs, (get with it already Adobe / Corel ..etc)
But hey, at Least we FINALLY are starting to get more color depth support. As as artist, its been sickening, to see how my art and photos, are butchered when working with a PC and a typical PC monitor. (let alone the Poor drawing interface options)
Not to get into any other points of why VR will or won't succeed, but there are some real reasons why phones currently can't provide a 'taste' of what VR is really like.
Well, IMO, 3d is 3d. If it is done well, you do get a taste. Certainly not anything like the real deal, at a high level. But it does provide some interesting and fun experiences. And really, at the end of the day, thats what people want. An interesting and fun experience, that does not break the bank. Not everyone has a boatload of expendable cash.
A few of the games Ive played, were poor.. and some were quite cool. Problem for me, has always been the lack of a controller, and or lack of much interaction at all.
Not to mention, my phone heating up to auto-reboot point. heh
Worst discovery for me, re-mobile processing power, was getting a Galaxy Note 2 some years ago, thinking I could use it for art at times... and finding out that mobile drawing apps are cut down and crippled so badly, that it makes using these programs painfully impossible to deal with. I found an ancient fujitsu laptop with xp and a wacom digitizer built in, and called it a day.
IMO, the biggest problem I have with every argument high-end VR made today ... is the use of a tall aspect ratio, in a 'high end' device. If anything is going to ruin your VR experience... to me... it would be that feeling that you were wearing blinders on. Looking through binoculars... rather than seeing a wide expanse. It also ruins the whole nature of the game format, that it is supposed to help Fix... 3d fps. In most FPS games, they cant have many enemies attack from behind... due to limited field of vision, and lack of quick turn controlling mechanisms. Free that up, and one should be able to do a Robotron like 3d game. However, that cant really be done, in a narrow feild of view... if at all on current hardware, due to speed of interactions, and lack of 3d positional tracking accuracy.
IMO
Phones will gather and keep some interest... but nothing huge.
VR will eventually take hold... but, not till its around or under $200 price point in total.