Hey David — thanks for the kudos. As to your question. Well specifically the arc of attention is the visual anchor for a cut — but as for the Hamlet soliloquy of VR (to vr or not to vr) — I address some of this in the piece I wrote but basically it boils down to a few obvious things (as far as I’m concerned)

(a) Real life isn’t usually exciting in 360 — doesn’t matter whether I’m on the beach, driving, sitting at a restaurant. talking with friends. I mean yes you can conceive of a dinner party where at a particular moment in time there is stuff going on around me in 360 — but it’s highly highly highly unlikely.
 That’s not how socialising works — there’s usually (for any given person) a direction that they are facing that is their primary source of attention — person you are kissing/talking to, across from the table, buying something from etc etc…

No-one goes through life in awe and wonder at the world around them — unless you are in a wondrous room of light and sound or a forest full of light flares and freshly falling leaves then you spin around like Maria in the sound of music…

(b) when you sit…and people sit — A LOT — it’s not biomechanically comfortable to look behind you
 Of course you can do it “Honey — yes we DO have bottle openers — there’s one in that drawer…” but mostly you don’t do it for very long…

(c) I’m not suggesting that the stuff behind you isn’t part of the illusion — it is of course…it kinda/sorta needs to exist a bit — but it certainly doesn’t need to have stuff going on inside it…especially if there’s something interesting going on in front…it’s mostly there just because your eyes perceive stuff in peripheral vision…

I absolutely believe full 360 is not necessary for most stories — case in point my porn example — many people don’t even notice it’s 180…and more to the point they bring their arms up to “touch” the performer…even I felt my hands move for a moment — when I first tried it — despite knowing EXACTLY how the video was shot and how it was being delivered to me eyes…

All of which is a very roundabout way of answering your question “why do this kind of editing/coverage in VR?”

Think about the porn example again. Static shot. 180 degrees only. Yet it’s a visceral punch in the face.
Your question could be “What is the point of this shot in VR — what does it add?”

And the answer is some version of empathy machine/visceral punch in the face.

In other words — the emotional connection of the viewer to the space/story can be orders of magnitude stronger.

That’s the be all and end all.

Yes porn is a cheap trick. It’s primal and it’s full POV so it works like a fantasy. But even if 10% of that strength of illusion can be put to work emotionally for other narratives — then we’ll be able to take people on an emotional rollercoaster of the kind you wouldn’t believe.

My aim ultimately is to make people feel. And VR is a very powerful tool for doing that — we’re basically building Total Recall type storytelling. That’s why VR should be used.
But it’s not only powerful when it’s a POV story.

People emote in VR because of a powerful sense of presence in the environment…sound and staging and performance and script build on TOP of that sense of presence…

On a brief technical note here — cuts are often used to compress time and show different points of view quickly…If I’m telling a POV story it’s extremely difficult to accelerate stuff (not to mention give context — e.g. multiple storylines in parallel)

Lots of things will be possible here — my primary focus was to demonstrate that you could actually do this kind of cutting — since everyone seemed to be avoiding it.