1). It most definitely slow down production but the idea is that it will save you time in post as having real-time set extensions available to the on set creatives should enable them to make the “right” creative decisions on the day instead of having the fix it in post mentality.
2). It depends entirely on what you intend to do with it - but I recommend thoroughly battle testing your use-case before production as the last thing you want is to a have a union crew standing by while you are debugging the engine.
3). Absolutely! I’ve seen some stunning work done in the engine by artists on these forums - I would suggest looking for talent on the job board here.
4). At the very least you will need a camera tracking solution, there are 2 flavors of tracking solutions available:
Inside Out tracking (Attached to the camera):
turn key solutions:
N-cam (Optical/RGBD)
Mo-Sys (IR)
Stype (IR)
hackable solutions:
Intel Tracker
ZED Camera
Any SLAM solution capable of retaining world orgin
Outside In tracking (External cameras that track your cameras position):
Traditional motion capture:
Optitrack
Vicon
Indie/Hackable Solutions:
Vive tracker
In short, it is hard to quantify the cost benefits right now and you would surely have to pay the early adopters tax but I think it is an indispensable creative tool.
Feel free to ask me more questions.