Virtual Boy pretty strongly illustrated that if you can't do this perfectly, you shouldn't do it at all.
Absolutely. But the Virtual Boy was clearly before its time. The hardware just wasn't ready.
Within the current constraints (including budget), making a "good enough" product is clearly not feasible.
I think that's clearly not true. The response from everyone who's tried the Oculus Rift has been that real VR has finally arrived. And the Oculus Rift is one guy's prototype; the resources of a company like Microsoft or Sony could drastically improve it in several dimensions. Specifically, they could source a higher-res, higher frame rate, lighter, lower-latency OLED display, and connect it to rendering hardware with all the latency-reducing features John Carmack just described. These features aren't necessarily expensive from a hardware POV; it's just that nobody's seen the need to implement them yet.
Absolutely. But the Virtual Boy was clearly before its time. The hardware just wasn't ready.
Within the current constraints (including budget), making a "good enough" product is clearly not feasible.
I think that's clearly not true. The response from everyone who's tried the Oculus Rift has been that real VR has finally arrived. And the Oculus Rift is one guy's prototype; the resources of a company like Microsoft or Sony could drastically improve it in several dimensions. Specifically, they could source a higher-res, higher frame rate, lighter, lower-latency OLED display, and connect it to rendering hardware with all the latency-reducing features John Carmack just described. These features aren't necessarily expensive from a hardware POV; it's just that nobody's seen the need to implement them yet.