READY or not, here comes virtual reality.

Gaming was the focus of the original Oculus Rift headset, the virtual reality viewing device that set off the recent wave of interest in the technology. But now companies like Samsung, movie studios and Silicon Valley start-ups are racing to create new types of video experiences for virtual reality — and in some cases, even the cameras they will need to film it.

“The videos, the games, the phone, the operating system: Everything needs to be from scratch to make this work,” said Nick DiCarlo, who leads the virtual reality efforts at Samsung. It is “really the dawn of a new era,” he added.

But really, where are we with the development of virtual reality?

At first blush, virtual reality is a hard sell. You must wear a big, clunky headset that is either connected to a powerful computer or to a phone. You choose from a sparse selection of videos to watch and hopefully don’t suffer motion sickness as you soar through landscapes, physically turning your body around and looking up and down at the scenes around you.

Also, there are few headset types from which to choose. The most famous name in virtual reality, Oculus, which was bought by Facebook last year for $2 billion, has yet to release an actual consumer device.