Day 1 Vive owner. It really isn't a big deal. Immersion gets overplayed a lot in the click-baity tech press. Sure it feels 'real' but about 3-4 steps removed from reality and where traditional 2D gaming is 5-6 steps away from reality. We are nowhere near anything that be can considered 0-2 steps from reality. There will always be an uncanny valley effect here and a sense of falseness. Humans aren't that easily fooled, unfortunately.
My Vive had performance issues where my background environment would randomly pop-up during games. It was kinda annoying the first time, but is no big deal. Sharp cuts are pretty meaningless. This stuff isn't exactly the Matrix. You're not going to be in constant amazement or think you're in some new reality with a new body. It still a screen pasted to your face and your mind knows this the whole time.
There's a big difference between the 3-4 steps and 5-6 steps. Just as you can't simply assume that everything in books automatically translates to film, you can't simply translate everything in film to VR.
My Vive had performance issues where my background environment would randomly pop-up during games.
I thought that was a feature called "Chaperone."
You're not going to be in constant amazement or think you're in some new reality with a new body. It still a screen pasted to your face and your mind knows this the whole time.
Who said anything about amazement? No one. What I'm referring to is precisely the fact that you know it's a screen strapped to your face. Being stuck on someone else's POV through something strapped to your face is a different experience than looking through the magic window of the cinema screen or the computer monitor. I think it makes a fundamental difference to how the "cut" works or won't work.
Chaperone is when you get close to your room's edge. There's a bug that can make your background environment, which can be anything - mine was a spaceship, appear instantly. Its no biggie.
Darkened theaters are rather like a screen stuck to your face. After a while you really stop noticing the 'static' background and people just focus on the screen.
This is true, but there is still a significant difference. You have to actively engage your eyes to have that immersion. This is also the case when you can explore and look around a VR environment. There is a difference in agency. Naievely use the conventions of film in VR, however, and you can lose that. Everyone wants to be able to peer into another's POV. No one wants to be strapped into it. Doing VR wrong can change VR from the former to the latter.
My Vive had performance issues where my background environment would randomly pop-up during games. It was kinda annoying the first time, but is no big deal. Sharp cuts are pretty meaningless. This stuff isn't exactly the Matrix. You're not going to be in constant amazement or think you're in some new reality with a new body. It still a screen pasted to your face and your mind knows this the whole time.