There is maybe a use case for VR to add immersion for games (like space sims or racing games), but why would I want to have a device on my head to look at a 2D canvas?
I mean it's a nice tech demo, but it seems like the 2000ish hype around these 3D-cube window managers that ... looked cool, but otherwise don't add anything to your workflow. Do people really want to work (e.g. develop) with a VR in a 3D environment?
Longer-term though, VR (and eventually AR) have the potential to offer a number of significant productivity advantages over desktop displays. Unlimited screen real-estate, the ability to organize your workspace spatially, better interaction with 3D models and data.
It's also possible that there's a whole new set of UI paradigms that we haven't discovered yet which will be enabled by VR/AR interfaces. If we were designing user interfaces from scratch with the ability to project images anywhere in 3D space, what would those interfaces ultimately look like? Are 2D interfaces really the most efficient? Or did we just arrive at that solution as the result of the limitations of current technology?
There are practical limits, sure. Most people are not going to want to turn their entire body around 180-degrees just to look at another window. Within those limits though I find that more space is generally better.
If one has to Alt+Tab or Command+Tab through programs, yes, that would suck the life out of productivity.
The only real benefit larger screen spaces (larger than a ~30 inch monitor) provide me with, are when I need about 4-6 open windows (maximized vertically) to switch between when dealing with large merges/patches. I haven't experienced any practical benefits beyond two ~30inch monitors.
I also maintain that this is significantly more intuitive than having to memorize keyboard shortcuts for each of my more frequently used programs.
I suppose everyone's workflow is different though. If you're comfortable with just one monitor then good for you. I for one will be a lot happier once I can arrange my workspace into a neat grid of windows arrayed across my desk.
I use a side by side in landscape orientation, so a 7680x2160 desktop. I think this is about ideal width and dot-pitch for me. Higher resolution in the same field of view would be wasteful as the pixels are already too small to see individually unless they are high contrast. I still prefer mild RGB sub-pixel anti-aliasing on fonts in this setting. A wider field of view would also be useless for desktop tasks since I would not be able to comfortably scan it all. While I wouldn't mind a taller field of view, I don't have the budget nor tolerance to stack monitors vertically nor to switch to an array of portrait orientation monitors.
VR will not give me any screen "real estate" unless it has incredibly high resolution and wide field of view or has solved eye-tracking and zero-latency foveal rendering. I am not interested in turning my head constantly to shift a high resolution porthole around a blurry overview or (worse) a blinkered black void.
Because of the gap between monitors, I sit slightly offset and favor the right half of the left monitor for transient tasks. I keep chat and email windows open on the far left and tend to open a browser or editor on the left half (or two thirds) of the right monitor, while opening reference materials like PDFs in the rightmost extreme.
I do have traditional virtual desktops where a hot-key press can shift my displays to show any one quadrant of a logical 15360x4320 desktop. This is a holdover from my days on a single, lower resolution screen. I find that I use it far less frequently now, as I can indeed use the large visible area to organize things related windows spatially. I use it mostly for mode-switching between different sets of windows which may keep the same arrangement for weeks at a time. For example, one quadrant is my code-editing and communication space and another is a deployment/test suite/log-following space. I have room to open other reference materials or sample data around my code editing, and conversely room for other SSH shells and state-spelunking tools around my test and log windows.
As the hardware becomes more mature, we'll support more use cases, but we wanted to enable some compelling early use cases (especially voice search) and learn from users as soon as we could.
Because instead of having a, say, 24 inch screen, I can now have a "screen" the same size (or larger) as my field of vision.
True, you have more screen real estate for the "Alt-Tab" aspect of window selection, but I am not sure that is such a leap.
Office managers are sooner or later going to find one VR headset cheaper than 2 or 3 large screens for tech work. At that point, you will be given a headset instead.
But what's the advantage of that?
You still can only focus on one monitor/window? The only difference is that you switch focus/windows via head tilting instead of keyboard/mouse, so I don't really see what that buys you.
Laptops aren't perfect, you need to take them everywhere, the screen is much smaller, and they are expensive. Imagine a world where you only need a smartphone and a headset. You are traveling by airplane? You take out your headset, and you have a huge screen in front of you to work with.
I think VR/AR could replace the need of laptops in maybe 10 years. Firefox is stepping in the right direction for it. Firefox combined with AWS Cloud9, and you can have a programming machine in VR.
Virtual big screen (IIRC, not too many years ago headsets were sold for exactly that purpose, without even VR capability; they were basically like modern VR headsets burn without motion tracking.)
But for what exactly (despite ... porn)?
Like I said I get the use-case for games and I also think there is potential for AR - but pure VR for the web? If it were that important to have 3D to represent information on the web, we would have a lot more 3D websites (without VR) already - which is technically possible for a long time.
Putting 3d content on a screen sucks in the same way that putting a 2d plane in 3d does. Making 3d content explorable in 3d makes a lot more sense.