I am quite glad of the VR competition.
The occulus is great but really with only one screen split between two lenses its not going to compete against a real dual screen HMD, the other issue is relatively narrow FOV of 90-100 when it could do much more with decent lenses (i am being a bit of a FOV snob haha).
Back in the 90's the Leep cyberface2 had 145degree horizontal FOV HMD which was only let down by the poor resolution LCD displays of the time (385x119 lcd) but it is possible to get really wide angle FOV, apparently wide angle FOV is even more important than 3D to trick the brain into believing you are there.
Sensics piSight managed 150+degree HFOV at 4200x2400 pixels per eye, but that was made out of a array of 800x600 oled displays, it also costs a ridiculous amount which is why most of those things never really become commercial products as they are priced to sell to university's etc.
Although psisight is a very high quality product but way too expensive for what it is, but as its low volume thats what you expect.
But a lot of the HMD market in the past was massively overpriced I remember a VR setup with one LCD screen and using one of those cheap Fresnel lens magnifiers like you buy on ebay for reading small print coupled with a bicycle helmet hardly a high quality product but was usually sold at £20K+ or some ridiculous price.
But it does not need too, soon we will have 4k phone displays which should drive down the cost and even 180degree HFov should be doable.
180degree HFOV is imax territory which if you could imagine that strapped to your head with a dual 4K displays running at 144hz.
Might need some better GFX cards to run it though
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This site has a good list of quite a few old HMD's if your interested
http://www.stereo3d.com/hmd.htm#chart
Also leep VR were planning some great things (270degree HFOV HMD) and had already built a number of great HMD in the past.
Wish they had done a kickstarter they could have made something incredible.
http://www.leepvr.com/