I believe it will be important in the architectural and 3D design fields, particularly when interacting with lay people. In the architecture industry, for example, the most common refrain I hear is that clients, who might be spending hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of dollars on a building, can't understand the plans they're looking at; can't visualize their unbuilt structures. This technology changes that; enables them to walk through and fully immerse themselves in their building before it's ever built. It's a visualization game changer.
One might further theorize that the design profession itself might be fundamentally changed by it. When you think about it, the mouse and keyboard isn't an ideal medium for this type of design; it's a crude interaction. Why look at a scaled wireframe of a structure when you might be able to virtually build a structure while being inside it - using your hands and eyes, like clay. You could use your arms to gesture, saying "I want this wall here, and to be this high"; "I want a 3'x5' window on this wall, here", etc. You could mold structures with your hands with this type of virtual reality and some type of motion tracking. It would be ground-breaking.
One might further theorize that the design profession itself might be fundamentally changed by it. When you think about it, the mouse and keyboard isn't an ideal medium for this type of design; it's a crude interaction. Why look at a scaled wireframe of a structure when you might be able to virtually build a structure while being inside it - using your hands and eyes, like clay. You could use your arms to gesture, saying "I want this wall here, and to be this high"; "I want a 3'x5' window on this wall, here", etc. You could mold structures with your hands with this type of virtual reality and some type of motion tracking. It would be ground-breaking.