[k__]

"the Oculus Rift’s two most important components are a cheap smartphone screen and a pair of fifty cent lenses"

I got a smartphone and a VR headset to put it in. Yes they are cheap, but the experience is completely different from the Rift.

These may be the most fundamental parts, but they are not what makes the Rift a good VR set.

[joshjdr]

“These two withered parts allowed for mainstream pricing ($350) and freed the team to work on peripheral innovations like decreasing latency and refining positional tracking.”

The focus on decreasing latency is arguably what differentiated the Rift early on: https://www.wired.com/2014/05/oculus-rift-4/