I think the OSVR units coming will make VR affordable. For 3 or 400$, the price of a mid range/decent video card, it'll make entry into VR a reality for a lot of gamers. It IS expensive now, I spent $2175 for a Vive and Rift CDN, that's retail on the dot after shipping/tax for new units. However with the Razer OSVR and other options coming, that will equal the Rift in performance according to early reports - as Rolex said, it DOES provide a crazy immersive experience compared to monitor gaming. We have had 4 of the best gaming monitors you can buy this year, 34" and 2 27" ROG Swift Asus and a 4k 28" Acer, all Gsync. I NEVER thought you would drag me away from my lcd panels for gaming, especially for flight sims. I'm hooked on VR, for DCS I'll never go back, and once AH/HTC comes up with a way to make quick head movements to the rear for tracking enemy planes in fights faster than how VR is now (HT has already suggested ideas I believe he is working on for this very reason), I'll never go back for AH/Beta either.
Until you actually try it, and get that feeling of speed on the deck, of altitude looking out of your cockpit up at high alt, and the feeling looking around inside the cockpit - you just can't tell, especially from YT videos, what you're missing.
I understand the frustrations of waiting for AH3, but what I took away from what HT said, regarding dx9/dx11/VR/etc, that if he doesn't work on implementing VR into the new product NOW, it'll be FAR harder and slower slugging to do it LATER. That's just an assumption, but that's the gist of what I read between the lines. For average long term player, it seems like balancing pushing AH3 out faster vs inclusion of VR. Since VR IS the future, and not just IMO but in pretty much every gaming mag/site/etc out there, I think HTC is placing their chips at least partially with VR being able to attract new players into the new game.
I've commented enough over the years vis a vis HTC forum/PR policy and repeating and rehashing one player's opinions isn't going to make any difference, so I'll stand pat on that for once. I do think that VR will be at very least important, and in all likelihood critical to the future success of AH3. Unfortunately that likely = more time until AH3 launches. Unfortunately that likely = more time until AH3 launches. It's not really HTC's fault that VR came out near the latter part of their development cycle, and I'll wager the first time they used it in their shop and got it working in the air or in another flying demo, it was a pretty obvious decision that it was something that needed to be included with AH3.