It was clear years ago that it was possible to make better VR headgear. There's been some progress since the 80's and 90's. The question is whether VR is worth the trouble. I'm still not seeing the killer app for this. Hardcore gamers? Virtual tourism? Implanting false memories in kids? (The VR group at Stanford has used their system to let kids experience swimming with dolphins. Asked about it a few months later, the kids believe they really did swim with dolphins.)
A big problem is that VR has the same problem as gaming - moving and shooting works great, but try to manipulate anything and it sucks. Early thinking about VR was that it might be easier and more intuitive to do design work in VR than on a 2D screen. Autodesk did some work on this. Design in VR is like drawing while wearing mittens. No good.
Notice that the Oculus Rift crowd totally ignores the input side. The first generation of VR was "gloves and goggles". Now it's just goggles.
The Kickstarter video claims it's the first consumer VR glove with finger sensing. It's not. The Nintendo Power Glove, 25 years ago, has that honor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove
The Power Glove was a relatively decent input device. But the game machines of 1989 had no hope of displaying a virtual world in which it was useful.
Now if the "Clang" game kickstarter, which was fully funded years ago at $500K and produced zero, had produced something, there would at least be a game for this thing.
A big problem is that VR has the same problem as gaming - moving and shooting works great, but try to manipulate anything and it sucks. Early thinking about VR was that it might be easier and more intuitive to do design work in VR than on a 2D screen. Autodesk did some work on this. Design in VR is like drawing while wearing mittens. No good.
Notice that the Oculus Rift crowd totally ignores the input side. The first generation of VR was "gloves and goggles". Now it's just goggles.
This may be the biggest dud since 3D TV.