I was wondering if anyone here has experience with VR development for Unity. Having previous Unity experience, I'd prefer to stick with Unity but am open to other engines. It's something I've been interested in, and I'm wondering which community/technology is the easiest to use.

An Oculus Rift costs around $400, so I'd rather not invest money in that if it doesn't have a big community and support behind it. Another option I was looking at was Google Cardboard for Unity. The guy here has a pretty good starter tutorial on VR dev for Android and the headset is only ~$20 and the Moga controller is only another 20 or so. This is definitely the most economical option, but I'd rather not go down that path if no one uses this technology or if VR on Android is crappy or something. 

The VR community doesn't seem like it's that big, so I'm having a hard time getting a feel for what's popular and what direction the technology is going. 

The doubts you have now is the exact same as any player, that is why the VR community is so small when compared to others. The fact is no one knows if VR is worth it.

The large ones are too expensive and the small ones require extra gadgets and have low quality. "Why Spend +/ $60 to by VR stuff when you can buy a game for that price" that is what most people think.

The lack of any real standard and good games is also a factor. After the release of Resident Evil 7 there was a spike but it has gone back down again.

Simple enough, if you were not interested in making a VR game, would you buy a VR set and which one if yes. That is the one you should make games for.

There is a VR market and it consist of people with enough money to pay +/- $400 for a gadget, so there is money to make; just don't plan on being a millionaire.

1 hour ago, Scouting Ninja said:

Simple enough, if you were not interested in making a VR game, would you buy a VR set and which one if yes. That is the one you should make games for.

There is a VR market and it consist of people with enough money to pay +/- $400 for a gadget, so there is money to make; just don't plan on being a millionaire.

I guess I should say that I'm not so interested in people actually playing anything I make or even making money. I've kind of accepted that that's just kind of how game development is.

I kind of just want to explore a VR technology, but don't want to invest time in anything that will be obsolete in a few years and have no community of support. I'm a little bit motivated professionally too since I may soon be working for an ad agency that occasionally makes promotional vr apps. I guess I'm just wanting to know the best way to get my feet wet with vr.

14 hours ago, samoan62 said:

kind of just want to explore a VR technology, but don't want to invest time in anything that will be obsolete in a few years

Then no concerns. The VR technology of today will be the grounds of the VR technology of the future. VR is improving, it just hasn't become mainstream yet.

Most Virtual Reality developers believe that once Augmented Reality can capture enough real world data, it will result in better VR. Because it would get rid of the need for controllers.

Working with VR and AR is very fun, I recommend it if you are looking for a hobby. Who knows your own work can be fundamental in making VR mainstream.

VR isn't going away but won't be the next big thing either. Instead it looks like it will gradually become a part of life. Lots of VR technology is behings used right now for small things in different apps.

They use the Occulus headset for there technology so one may be attended to the results what may come this year

http://www.neurable.com/