Virtual (Reality) Insanity

So, Facebook just bought Oculus Rift.  Literally as I write this news has broke that the social media giant paid $2 billion for Oculus Virtual Reality (VR), the company mainly known for the yet-to-be-released virtual reality headset Oculus Rift.  Why, though?  Is there anyone out there who really wants to scroll through their news feed Minority Report style (and if so I don't want to meet them)?  This may show that "virtual reality" has finally grown into its own as a way of entertainment and companies, and the public at large, are finally ready to embrace it.  For anyone who may not know, virtual reality is essentially an immersive form of entertainment consumption mainly used by video games.  Basically picture the movies Tron or The Lawnmower Man, only real and far less impressive. That's really been the main problem with VR, the tech's never been equal to our imagination.  While that can be said for most technology, the limitations of something like VR are far more apparent considering you're being promised a "realistic environment" that looks on par with what you'd see in a Nintendo 64 game.  The hype surrounding the Oculus Rift, a high-end VR headset that made its debut on crowd-funding website Kickstarter in June 2012, has reignited the gaming public's excitement for virtual reality to levels unseen since the mid-nineties.  The technology behind the craze appears to be able to back-up the promises this time however, and hopefully the hype is deserved if a goliath like Facebook has taken interest.  Just last week Sony announced at the 2014 Game Developer's Conference "Project Morpheus", essentially the PS4's answer to Oculus.  Not much is known about "Morpheus" aside from the fact that it, well, exists.  It's PS4 exclusive, consider Sony is creating it, and it's a less than transparent console-based competitor to the Oculus (which is currently only supported on PC and mobile platforms).  The most apt comparison that comes to mind is the 3-D trend in the film industry, a technology that promises total immersion in film and is rises and dies out every thirty or so years.  Starting in the fifties with King Kong and similar creature features and later re-emerging in the eighties thanks to horror films like Friday the 13^th Part III before coming to its current form thanks to Avatar.  Every cycle the 3-D craze dies out due to the lack of technology (this time it's barely clinging to life thanks to foreign markets like China, which unlike the majority of American audiences, eat 3-D films up).  Virtual Reality seems to rear its ugly head again.  However, I think now is the right time for VR.  While hardcore gamers are still feeling the burn from last generations motion control craze, the idea of strapping some headgear on and being thrown into the world of Skyrim, Columbia, or Gotham City is too good to pass up.  While there are surely still growing pains to be had and skeptics abound (like Notch, creator of Minecraft who took to Twitter to announce he was canning the Oculus Rift version of Minecraft in light of Facebook's acquisition), the promises of what Oculus and Sony are doing beat the hell out of Microsoft still messing around with Kinect's janky voice and motion controls, and hopefully will usher in a new era of gaming.  I may not want to play the latest Assassin's Creed consumed in VR, but even just having the option should fill any gamer with excitement.