I think the less cynical answer is that HTC often has good ideas for physical devices but then often fails to follow through and iterate well. They're also just struggling as a company in general.

But damn, so I 1000% agree with being bummed about it not being the hackers headset. I preordered the Vive because of a VR video of a guy programming the environment he was in at the moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db-7J5OaSag

I would love to use a VR IDE some day.

> I would love to use a VR IDE some day.

The LCD Windows MR HMDs seem pretty close to being a sufficient display. The useful visual area is something like 900^2 px. Big, visible pixels, that are ok with a 7 pt font. And one can do subpixel rendering, so ~3x the horizontal resolution. If you are ok with working on a small laptop screen, you might be ok with this.

Otherwise, there's Varjo[1] later this year. Similar resolution to looking at your laptop. ~55 px/deg. For "under $10k".

For gloves, that you can still type in... we'll see. I had hope for https://senso.me/ , but they've gone quiet. If you don't mind spending $10k, there are existing trackers.

For software... sigh. Maybe if market size explodes this Xmas, things will improve. There's been a lot of "do something, then abandon it, because the area isn't ripe yet" over the last half decade. And software dev in VR hasn't been where people's attention is focused.

Oh, if one's interest is in-VR creation of VR, instead of in-VR general software dev, then there are a bunch of "authoring environments" being worked on.

[1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/12102/varjo-announces-shippin...

I thought that their products were available to order now...

> I thought that their products were available to order now...

Senso.me? https://senso.me/order has said "Estimated shipment date: December 2017" for long time, and blog hasn't been updated since Sept.

Varjo? Last I saw, Alpha version available to partners. Though Beta was expected Q1?

Reminds me of Second Life, in which the tools to model, edit, and script the 3D environment were all integrated into the environment itself (and realtime-synchronized over the network, no less).

There's OSVR, which is about as modular as you can get - there are plugins to interface with e.g. SteamVR, and it's compatible with VRPN for peripherals. (Very much a dev kit though, if you're looking for something you can just plug in and use the OSVR headsets are absolutely not that.)

I have to wonder if this team could have gotten more mileage out of working with OSVR, since a lot of the work to connect it with existing VR apps is already done. But there's certainly value in doing it all yourself!

Modular but not adopted, that's the real issue. The Vive looked like that happy medium.