No problems with nausea or other problems because of the viewpoint?

nausea shouldn't be a problem as long as you are in control of your view. (it responds correctly to you turning your head)

No problem being a disembodied spirit looking down into a 3d world like a tabletop game or 3rd person view

your disembodied spirit could even have extra floating screens and overlays onto the strategy game it controls or whatever...

Well, that might make the VR goggles actually interesting to me. Getting a large virtual screen and 3D as a sideeffect in traditional games trumps all that "super immersive virtual reality" mambo jambo (which I am sure will either be supercool until the effect starts to wear off, or just a disapointment without all the other senses being stimulated and full body control in the VR expierience).

... on the other hand, giving up on 4k and HDR for a rift will be tough call, as paying for TWO >600$ Screens (a good new monitor AND the VR Goggles) will be outside of my budget. Large virtual screen and 3D or the eye candy of 4k and HDR... or wait until a 4k and HDR Headset is released? Argh, so many choices, and nothing giving everything in one device!

Well, that might make the VR goggles actually interesting to me. Getting a large virtual screen and 3D as a sideeffect in traditional games trumps all that "super immersive virtual reality" mambo jambo (which I am sure will either be supercool until the effect starts to wear off, or just a disapointment without all the other senses being stimulated and full body control in the VR expierience).

... on the other hand, giving up on 4k and HDR for a rift will be tough call, as paying for TWO >600$ Screens (a good new monitor AND the VR Goggles) will be outside of my budget. Large virtual screen and 3D or the eye candy of 4k and HDR... or wait until a 4k and HDR Headset is released? Argh, so many choices, and nothing giving everything in one device!

If I had that choice I'd go with the 4k screen. A 4k screen is much more likely to work with a variety of games right now than a VR headset.

And maybe by the time you feel you can afford to get a VR headset the prices will be down, the quality will be up, and the number of supported games will be even higher

Getting into tech early is always a bit of a sucker's game (he says as someone who has VR devkits).

on the other hand, giving up on 4k and HDR for a rift will be tough call, as paying for TWO >600$ Screens (a good new monitor AND the VR Goggles) will be outside of my budget. Large virtual screen and 3D or the eye candy of 4k and HDR... or wait until a 4k and HDR Headset is released?

I picked up a 40" 4k 60Hz monitor from South Korea for less than $500 including shipping. It's damn nice, and despite a 2-year old mid-range video card, I can play games like StarCraft and Heroes of the Storm at the full resolution at 60Hz.

That said, it's just a bigger, higher-resolution monitor. It doesn't enable any new experiences that weren't possible with the 27" 2560x1440 monitor I had before.

I wasn't going to post the link but, since it sounds like the 3rd person perspective for VR isn't widely known (or at least not known to Gian-Reto), this hololense video at about 2:25 shows what it could look like.

As immersive as a first person perspective VR is, to me this is... I just don't know what to say without sounding like some sort of crazed fan. If you'll pardon the pun, it is a game changer. This will be the reason I will finally take the plunge into trying my hand at a 3D game. And I can't imagine anyone not wanting to create a world that can be viewed like this.

When I hear people talk about immersion, I think of this video:

I wasn't going to post the link but, since it sounds like the 3rd person perspective for VR isn't widely known (or at least not known to Gian-Reto), this hololense video at about 2:25 shows what it could look like.

As immersive as a first person perspective VR is, to me this is... I just don't know what to say without sounding like some sort of crazed fan. If you'll pardon the pun, it is a game changer. This will be the reason I will finally take the plunge into trying my hand at a 3D game. And I can't imagine anyone not wanting to create a world that can be viewed like this.

Hololens is really cool bit of tech, but you might want to reign in your expectations.

First, it doesn't actually look like that. The field of view is much more limited.

Second, hololens is not a gaming device, or at least, that's not the market it's pitched at. The developer version is $3000. Given the rift devkit was cheaper than the consumer version, it might actually go up by the time it hits the market. Undoubtedly, it will eventually come down in price, but not for a while.

IMO, VR tech will be relatively affordable in about 5-6 years; hololens style AR will be affordable 2-3 years after that.

Isn't Hololens meant to be an all-in-one device (i.e. they actually have CPU, RAM, storage, etc on top of all of the display/tracking/optics)? It seems like they would naturally be quite a bit more expensive than display-and-tracking-only devices.

The developer version is $3000.

Whelp, I know what platform I'm not going to be developing on and for any time soon. Microsoft is going to have to get content on their hardware platform to make it an attractive purchase for end consumers, and the end consumers are going to be looking at ways to get functional use out of the hardware, and that means they'll buy the hardware based on available content. If the content just isn't there... the billions MS is investing into hololens will be wasted. It might just be a prudent business move to hand out a couple thousand hardware devices to vetted developers to spur the growth of the content ecosystem instead of trying to get back $3m in hardware production costs.

Second, hololens is not a gaming device, or at least, that's not the market it's pitched at. The developer version is $3000. Given the rift devkit was cheaper than the consumer version, it might actually go up by the time it hits the market. Undoubtedly, it will eventually come down in price, but not for a while.

Microsoft is going to have to get content on their hardware platform to make it an attractive purchase for end consumers, and the end consumers are going to be looking at ways to get functional use out of the hardware, and that means they'll buy the hardware based on available content. If the content just isn't there... the billions MS is investing into hololens will be wasted.

The way I see this AR and VR are on a completely different playing field, and Microsoft is totally aware of that + they are in the position to freely waste a lot of money for technological advancements...

VR is most probably going to be #1 ENTERTAINMENT focused piece of tech if it all goes well.
Games, movies, theatre, amusement "parks", online presence, virtual travels/experiences etc...

AR is going to be the #1 INFOTAINMENT focused piece of tech.
Info-communication, work environment assistance, social networking, news, navigation, commercials etc...

A good analogy, I think, is how a PC or a gaming console compares to smart phones today (at least from a "gamer" perspective). Most probably there will be games, why wouldn't anyone design games for new tech, but both the users of AR and the developers for AR will don't give a damn about EMERGENCE, and in contrast all the users of VR and developers for VR will focus on that!

AR does not need much content for consumers to buy devices. Users of AR will "only" need the already preexisting app ecosystems with a little "re-tailored for AR" updates, like social-media/networking, navigation and communications apps, apps to order stuff from a store and check how it would look like in our house/room etc... Another big part where it is going to work well is the office/work-environment, since you need "similar" stuff there. Apps to manage stuff, apps for aiding development of new products, apps for marketing, or for communicating with your colleagues etc... It is more likely to become a new way to view and perceive information, like monitor 2.0 or something like that :D. Probably application developers are going to jump on that bandwagon first and foremost instead of game developers.

VR on the other hand will need content, the same way gaming consoles need exclusive titles to buy them these days :). Otherwise no one will care, but I guess, that is just as much likely to happen in the foreseeable future.

P.S.:
Tried the DK2 before. Really cool, but needs bigger resolution to really be there. I still would love to put my hands on a final one, but bit pricey, so I wait for the final Vive product and the Oculus controllers too before buying.
Tried Google glass. It is really really far from where it has to be for becoming a mass-market stuff. Based on what I've seen about the hololens, it is much much closer. Needs to come down in size and price, but that is going to take some time, maybe even a decade I guess.

If hololens contains a CPU, etc, $3k is pretty cheap. A devkit for any games console ever has always been about $10k. When you've got 20 coders and want to put a devkit on every desk, that's a $200000 bill...