It's because technology has reached a point in which they can exist in the way they were imagined to be in the first place.

Imagine full peripheral vision, combined with stereoscopic 3d, combined with the parallax effect of head tracking (see Johnny Lee Wii head tracking) combined with modern quality graphics and gameplay.

You see a big scary enemy monster and they litterly look 20ft tall.

You stand at the bottom of a mountain on Skyrim and look up in awe at the scope naturally- intuitively.

You stand in a dense forest and manovour your head to peer through the branches.

The Sony thing from last year makes it seem like your in a private cinema, this should make you feel like your in a private world.

It could even make a decent motion controller practical and more fun than controller / mouse.

It's escapism as its finest in theory.

I agree the resolution isn't great but they acknowledge that and say the consumer version will be higher when it releases next year.

@guitar_nerd_23:

The Rift doesn't provide full peripheral vision, It is 110 degrees. Full peripheral is 180.

@dasteru

Close enough for jazz, they say the consumer one will have an even wider field of view.

But yeah fair point.

Oh I hear you absolutely. Im holding off on a 980ti due to AMD releasing the Fury GPU. I have absolutely no qualms about paying for this experience. Truth be told, I even want to budget for a portable rig with VR.
Luckey has said numerous times ( or in numerous articles) that gamers can have the Rift experience for $1500 all in. So that leaves a pretty small margin for the Rift to fit in.

You are 100% correct that enthusiasts wont think twice about upgrading. I was just alluding that it may come at a higher price than $1500 with the rig included.