What makes the Oculus Rift special in that regard? There have been numerous head-mounted VR solutions that have been able to do that for many years. Yet they have not seen any serious use for such purposes.
Have you tried it?
The Rift is different in that it provides full hemisphere viewing angle. There is no 'tunnel vision', and you get full peripheral vision. Peripheral vision is important to the HVS for motion sensation and situational awareness.
Its immediately different as soon as you turn your head, there is a definite wow factor over a monitor.
The tradeoff of course is the terrible resolution, but its interesting in showing the potential of at leas solving most of the other immersion problems.
It's time to look back to see what was predicted a year ago and how successfully it was.
But even more, it's time for the fresh predictions for the following year, 2014.