VR user (Oculus DK2) here. Not being able to see your keyboard with the headset on is a bit inconvenient. When restarting / pitting / spectating you have to find your keyboard blind and guess where the keys are, or remove the headset itself.

However, during racing a VR headset is way beter in terms of immersion and the ability to look around to see where the other cars are. It really doesn't compare to Track IR, so in my opinion the trade-off is more than worth it.

Quoting from the blog post: "The Rift SDK 1.0 and runtime include features tied to the consumer product".

My guess is that public access to the the 1.0 SDK would reveal features of the first consumer version that they don't want to share with the public yet (which explains the NDA).

Personally, if I would have a chance to get early access to the first consumer version of the Rift, I wouldn't be too bothered by having to upload 400MB ;-)