Generally curious

Those sound like antique VR headsets. Like comparing the Atari 2600 to an Xbox One. The Rift is much better than those older devices, though comfort largely depends on the content. With the right content, it can be very comfortable.

In terms of focus, if you need glasses in real life (and it sounds like you do) then you'll also need your glasses with the Rift. Although the screen is technically inches from your face, the optics actually push the virtual screen further away. So you need to wear either glasses or contacts unless you have good vision already.

Finally, if you haven't purchased anything yet I would strongly recommend you wait until the consumer version comes out next year. The current developer kits are cool, but they are more difficult to setup and use and can be confusing if you are not a game developer.

1) The new crop of high-end consumer-facing VR headsets (including Oculus Rift) are made to minimize head-tracking latency BIG TIME, to the point where you can call it a solved problem. And that changes everything because the view of the virtual world that you see now feels stable, fixed in space, and not something that's playing catch-up to where you are looking. On top of this, some of these headsets (including Oculus Rift) make use of low-persistence display which means your view of the virtual world isn't blurring as you quickly look around. And on top of that, these headsets (including Oculus Rift) have some form of positional head-tracking, which means that when you lean forward or to the side in reality, the exact same thing happens in virtual reality. All of these factors (and more) work together to avoid mismatches between what your body is experiencing and what your eyes are seeing, which means your body no longer tells you you're drunk/poisoned and to go vomit. You'll be pleasantly surprised if you try a new consumer-ready VR headset like the Rift.

2) The screen may be physically close to your eyes, but your eyes don't know this -- they see a stereoscopic view of the world where the software dictates how far away things appear to be, so if you're in the middle of a virtual meadow with virtual mountains in the distance, your eyes are going to be looking at things as if they are a mile away. It sounds like you're near-sighted, so I'm not actually sure what the user experience is going to be like for you with the consumer Rift, but they have designed it to work while you wear your glasses (or just wear contacts).

Hope that helps.

Thanks for the replies!