I haven't actually played any games in VR yet, but is there any reason the headset couldn't display a normal game? Even if it doesn't need VR and doesn't benefit in any way from head tracking or 3D visuals, just imagining a hypothetical future situation where all 2D monitors on the face of the Earth are replaced by VR headsets, you could still play Pillars of Eternity on a VR headset and it wouldn't be any worse, right? There's no technical reason a VR headset couldn't replicate a regular monitor?
SteamVR has a theater mode. The issue is the pixel density isn't really as high as you'd like it to be. You're using 2160x1200 resolution to render over most of your field of view, so the effective resolution of a rendered TV/cinema screen is actually lower than you might like. It's like playing on a 720p or maybe even a little lower resolution. Also, how will you see your mouse? That's actually not a huge problem if all monitors were replaced there could just be mouse tracking in the simulation.
It's possible, but the resolution and pixel density has to go up before it can be an effective replacement for the amazing screens we have.
I think minecraft is a great illustration of some of the limits of vr today: it defaults to a theatre mode, but also has the option of pov gaming. The latter is terrible for moving around - but works OK for standing still and looking around.
For now simulator-like games such as Elite:Dangerous are the most interesting. I'm sure we'll Se a couple of nice "room scale" games - but "sitting in a cockpit" fixes many of the issues related to movement etc.
Then, I think a backpack rig (Pc) coupled with custom controllers (eg: a softgun with tracking hardware and trigger support) will enable vr theme park games; a typical indoor paintball range with padded corners mapped in 3d - rendered over with vr goggles. I assume the first ones would need custom tracking hw.
