So I'm hoping I can get a workflow going where I can export my CAD models into a VR environment to examine at the correct scale.
You may get your wish if you use Solidworks or Catia: Dassault are
showing off the Vive as an alternate to CAVEs for dispaly of models and assemblies.
And it hard to believe Facebook has helped in any way to make it a better product, just a bigger buzzword.
Apart from having a big enough wallet to convince Samsung to do a short-run custom OLED panel (anything under a million units is a short run for OLED panels, because of the MASSIVE fab startup costs)*, Facebook has a huge custom electronics engineering division. They nearly single-handedly kicked off the Open Compute initiative to push completely custom server hardware, so they have a huge team of guys who literally design customised motherboards for servers and networking hardware. That's a great knowledge-base for designing the hardware to drive those custom OLED panels.Then there's the server infrastructure needed to get the backend working: Oculus store, all the social side of things (Carmack and Abrash finally get to build the Metaverse they've been wanting to for decades), etc.
Iat the end of the day, the headset has to be a better purchase than anything else you could buy to improve your gaming experience at the same price point.
I think this is already true. No monitor or combination of monitors you can buy will provide such a complete paradigm shift in immersion as a VR HMD.
There is a market for multiple competing companies to make motion simulator platforms in the $5k-$10k range just for driving game enthusiasts (many are single-axis rotation so unsuitable for other sims like flight sims). If Oculus were to release a DK2 with a different label on the front as CV1 you would be looking at a buy-in of ~$1300 for a PC plus the HMD. Pushing that out to ~$1500 for a dramatically superior HMD is a good decision.
On the Vive's potential cost: With the screen and optics being very similar to the Rift's, the main difference for the HMD itself is the casing. The Vive Pre is a basic injection mould, so if that releases unchanged as the consumer Vive it's be somewhat cheaper (though much less pleasant to wear due to the greater weight and elastic headbands). HTC may have a redesign waiting for the consumer version, but only if their projected release date gets pushed back to allow for production startup, or they do a paper launch. Lighthouse is also a mechanically complex device compared to a CCD/CMOS camera (high-speed spinning optics, speed-controlled motors, Class 3B lasers with safety-interlocks to allow a Class 1 product classification, precision frame for reliable baseline), and everyone here is well aware that even a little mechanical complexity becomes expensive to manufacture. Lighthouse avoids the cost of fabbing a sensor ship, but needs a lot of it;s own custom mechanical components. The controllers are gong to be of minimal cost to produce though, same as Touch (though both without the volumes to be as cheap as the XB1 controller, which is close to the raw plastic cost).
More worryingly, HTC are selling just the HMD, unlike Oculus. This means they can't subsidise it significantly, particularly as HTC are not in a good financial position. HTC's attempt to set up their own Vive store also indicates they are not goign to be receiving a big (if any) cut of sales through Steam of Vive-compatible titles. I wouldn't hold my breath on the Vive being anything less than on price-parity with the Rift + Touch combination, and potentially more.
PSVR is more interesting. Sony are fabbing their own OLED panels, and using a single panel rather than two panels. That's both a production overhead they can reduce, and a margin overhead they don't need to worry about. They do have the additional cost of the outboard processor to perform Reprojection (AKA Timewarp), but Sony have their own division producing framerate conversion chips for TVs, so they may be able to use or modify a CotS chip there. They are also in an even better position than Oculus to subsidise HMD sales through software sales. My guess is the PSVR will come in slightly under the Rift pricing, even with a pair of Move controllers included.
* The DK2 was so cheap because it literally used the entire front panel assembly from a Note 3; glass, digitiser, even the Samsung logo. It was a completely off-the-shelf part from a high-volume production line. The optics were also off-the-shelf plastic singlet lenses, and the chassis a basic injection mould.
