Thought I would jot down a few thoughts on the oculus rift 2 from the eyes of a quaker and semi completive gamer.

I am only an hour into it, but you can see the potential for it right away, it just sucks you out of the real world by isolating your spatial awareness of the real world and then it does a host of tricks with the display to add a new dimension that you'll never get with normal monitors. External hearing is not really affected, and there is room for adding ear phones. Even the big ones.

With the right software things would be even more impressive, of the few demos I have seen the graphics have been very, last gen, but you don't need good graphics to get the wow factor of this device, that would still remain if it was an untextured quake level. But I look forward to Crytek and Epic releasing something to really 'up' the graphics I have seen so far. I know Epic have a few small scenes, so I will check them out, but I really need a new graphics card.

The headset is pretty comfy to wear and you can breathe ok while wearing it.
Its seems to do a pretty good job of keeping the light out, and in game you're not really aware of anything outside of it. No nasty light leaks etc.

I have no idea how to set it up right at the moment so I'll not be too critical of certain things, but I did find myself adjusting the headset from time to time in game, which affected the visibility in game, sometimes it felt a bit out of focus, and you can then see the colours of certain things in game change.
But you do find a sweet spot from time to time, so I'm sure things will get better when I know what I am doing.

Its also a little pixelated at times as you're essentially wearing 2 little magnifying glasses which look at a screen, so you are aware of the joins in the pixels. but like quake you soon get used to it, its just when you jump out of VR and back to your normal monitor, its going to be hard to ever forget about this. This will be greatly reduced with something like a 4k screen which will no doubt come over the next few years.

One thing it really misses is some kind of display of your body, if you raise your arm up, or look down, you almost expect to see yourself and when you don't it kinda makes you question the realness of it, though I guess the fact that I am expecting to see a representation of a body in game goes some way into saying how immersive it is.

You can still use the mouse to look around if you want, its quite hard to get used to looking around with your head (you have to remind yourself this is possible) as its not something you're used to doing, even if you use the mouse to look around, you still get the added effect of the VR.

Unlike Kinect, you COULD see this being used for competitive games like quake if they could get a 1:1 with the mouse and keyboard. Its basically an enhanced display device, while the kinect rapes competitive games, this would be much less so.

To be honest, I am not surprised, I heard too many similar things to what I said from others who have no reason to lie, I expected it to be good and it is, its memorable, its an experience and its only going to get better.

I consider the rift similar to comparing a car to a boat, the simple truth is they offer experiences the other cannot and the only way to experience them is to buy both. The rift is worth experiencing, but like a boat, you MIGHT be able to get by using a friends, or just going on a day trip in one instead of owning your own.

I think though from the time being, try and get a free demo on one at a trade-show or your local game store (if they have one), it should give you enough of an experience see what its about and then you might be able to wait for the next version which will no doubt be closer to the product people will get when it goes mass market.

Overall I'm pretty sure anyone who tries it will have more positives to say than negatives. It just depends on how curious you are.