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Ars: Samsung Gear VR Is Today's Best Virtual Reality
An anonymous reader writes: Samsung took a distinctly different tack from Oculus VR in developing virtual reality tech. Whereas Oculus has a dedicated device, Samsung simply has a high-tech piece of headgear that you strap a Galaxy Note 4 phone into. A review popped up at Ars Technica after a month using the device, and they say it works surprisingly well. Quoting: "Though the weight of the two units is comparable, the Gear VR benefits from a strap system that distributes that weight on the upper forehead and the back of the skull rather than through an elastic death grip around the eye area."
They still say a purchase is hard to justify, simply because the content selection is lacking. But as that improves, the price tag will become worth it. "Simple, minimally interactive virtual reality experiences like The Deep, BluVR, and Titans of Space have become go-to apps when passing the Gear VR around a party for friends to check out. It's incredible just sitting in place and following along with your gaze as sea life or entire planets fly by in sharp, well-rendered, 360-degree glory."
They still say a purchase is hard to justify, simply because the content selection is lacking. But as that improves, the price tag will become worth it. "Simple, minimally interactive virtual reality experiences like The Deep, BluVR, and Titans of Space have become go-to apps when passing the Gear VR around a party for friends to check out. It's incredible just sitting in place and following along with your gaze as sea life or entire planets fly by in sharp, well-rendered, 360-degree glory."
Or android? Which would you have if only one?
Samsung is developing GearVR together with Oculus, there is even a GearVR discussion area in the Forums of OculusVR.com.
There are some impressive things in the works.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
I'm getting bad visions of Stallone and Bullock having bad VR sex in that movie.
Heck, can even order a 'nice' version from Amazon for 20 bucks, drop in your phone, done, you've got a VR headset. Pretty amazing how well it actually works.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
I wouldn't get a Samsung smartphone anyway, not until they give up on that cancer called TouchWiz.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Call me old fashioned, but once I get home from work, I want to sit on the couch, grab a gamepad and a beer, and play games. Not jump like a fucking monkey, not wave hands in the air like a cheerleader, etc.
VR seems to be more work than fun, especially if you want to get the fully immersive shebang, which will likely require that 360-degree treadmill thingy and a nice surround sound system.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Out of curiosity I bought the Stooksy VR set for my iphone 6+. It is a Google cardboard variant from plastic foam, and despite its crude appearance it has some good features: ability to adapt for the distance between your eyes, a focus ability and very useful for me: big enough to accommodate my glasses.
In practice it is really impressive (considering that there are not that many great apps on the ios store that can handle google cardboard), the first time I tried Hiroshi Jump and the Zeiss cinema app I was grinning like an idiot.
But I soon found that I was quickly getting dizzy when using the more interactive apps or rollercoaster side by side movies,as the difference between what you see and feel is so big. Think about playing Doom for the first time, but in my case an even stronger dizziness. How do others experience this?
"Sorry, we don't support the Galaxy 4 firmware anymore, better upgrade! Don't forget to link your account to your new device!"
I want a monitor, not a phone, thanks.
I wouldn't get a Samsung smartphone anyway, not until they give up on that cancer called TouchWiz.
I have a Note 4 and imho, Touchwiz is just fine now - definitely much improved from my previous Galaxy S3. Even more so if you use a different launcher such as Nova, like I am. It remains to be seen how it will truly be with Lollipop, but from the screenshots I've seen - there's little to worry about.
VR seems to be more work than fun, especially if you want to get the fully immersive shebang, which will likely require that 360-degree treadmill thingy and a nice surround sound system.
It is more work than most realize. I was working on VR tech 15 years ago. The graphics have gotten better but the fundamental problems with it remain. Foremost is that the use cases for it are VERY limited and even as a piece of kit for entertainment the novelty wears of very quickly. It's one of those technologies that sounds pretty cool (and is cool up to a point) but most people are going to go "huh, neat" and then never bother with it again. There is almost no use for it in most businesses aside from some high end simulations which very few businesses need. There is no use for it in the home except for some computer games which will only appeal to a relatively small group. Maybe some uses in virtual tours like for museums but that's pretty tiny too.
I think there is a potentially huge market for augmented reality. I can think of all kinds of applications that most people would find useful. I think the market for immersive VR is quite small and mostly centers around computer games for geeks like us.
Do you believe that the dizziness has more to do with tracking latency, 3D display perspective, or a combination of both?
It's a combination effect and you forgot the disconnect between perceived motion and actual motion which is what gives most people motion sickness. The proportions of each depend on the particular person. I used to work with this stuff in my day job some years back. The stronger you make the 3D effect (increasing perspective) the harder it is for people to adjust and the more likely you are to cause headaches and disorientation. I know for me I could increase it to a point and then my brain simply had problem adapting to/from the VR environment. Tended to cause a splitting headache for me kind of like putting on the glasses of someone with a strong prescription. If you are doing a motion simulation that is reasonably realistic it isn't hard to cause motion sickness. Your butt is telling you something different than your eyes and that makes a lot of people motion sick. Latency can have a similar effect. It's not a problem you can really solve for everyone though you can minimize it with improved tech.
Basically if you are prone to motion sickness in the real world, odds are good you will be prone to it in a VR environment too.
The occulus team have put a massive amount of resource and effort into identifying and minimizing motion blur, input lag, head tracking lag and other artifacts that cause nausea and other subconcious effects that make their unit less useable and/or realistic.
Consequently there is literally no way that you do or even could ever get the same experience just from strapping a phone to your head. This is yet another example of sloppy unprofessional reviewing based on only the most superficial and immediately apparent aspects of the product.
1. The gyroscopes in the headset really do make 360 degree motion (up and down, turn around) downright magical. The immersion is spectacular, and the inputs & environment are quite well designed. As a first consumer product, they really did a bang-up job.
2. It'll make my Note 4 much easier to sell since I cannot root the f***ing thing
Buddy has one, the main issue is resolution. It's not nearly high enough. You can easily see the pixels. Someone smarter than me will need to do the math, but my rough guess is they need 5X-10X the resolution they have now.
I've been futzing around with VR equipment since the early 90's... even owned a network gaming center in the late 90's with various VR and simulator equipment. My two favorites: Sony Glastron, and LiquidImage MRG headset... I think that MRG2 was about $8,000... both systems used magnetic field device for head tracking.... and simulated mouse moves. I would play mostly Quake (3 I think, back in '98)...and no one ever reported any issues of motion sickness with the HMD. I had a sit down rig, with a joystick... the main thing was that the MRG headset was a single LCD panel, 800x600 if I remember correctly (cost me $800 to repair once)...with a flat Fresnel lense... yeah, you could see ring patterns from the lense, and pixels, if you paid attention to them. If you just got into the game, it was great. Really didn't need stereoscopic eye pieces for immersive feeling in a "3D simulated" FPS like Quake...and the audio was positional too back then... anyway, I wonder if the emphasis on dual screen stereo is too much (in terms of both hype, and technical necessity) for immersive feeling... I also currently own a Durovis Dive headset with I slide my phone into... it was "cheap", and is fun, but needs some work, but still, working with a single high rez screen can still produce some pretty good times.
I worked on a PDA-phone hybrid 15 years ago. These things are ugly and useless and expensive and will never take off!
Ok prove me wrong. Tell me what the killer app for immersive VR is that will make it something more than a geeky niche toy. I'd be happy to be proven wrong so dazzle me with the use case that I'm not thinking of. Show me with examples specific to VR rather than snarky examples of unrelated technologies. I'm all ears.
Seriously, I'd be happy to be wrong but I doubt I will be.
Some of the games that I used to play on my desktop with my 3d shutter glasses were nothing short of amazing, including expert manipulation of focal length and field of view, even though it was all a contrived experience of using relatively slow pulse width modulation to convince my visual cortex that I was seeing a volume with actual dimensionality instead of being tricked by a flickering, alternating LCD shutter essentially rendering each eye blind 50% of the time.
That device is an RS232 device, which means all it takes to manipulate it is a micro controller or a pair of systems on a chip that can render two slightly different perspectives on one monitor and something like a max232 to control the shutter function. (God I am glad I don't have epilepsy!)
The other device that has already been retired in favor of my HTC one M8, is my HTC Evo 3d which is now working as a 3d scanner device to be used with my 3d printer.. 3d stereoscopic camera and a screen that could deliver 3d images without the need for specialized eye ware . (I did run into more than a few people that when looking at 3d images on the Evo had a nausea response, but not me, I watched movies on it and it was nothing short of amazing. I waited to upgrade for so long because I was waiting for another 3d phone like that to come out and years later the HTC one M8 is the closest thing (though I believe the implementation of 3d on the Evo 3d was much better, if not a little nintendo 3ds for some people's tastes. ) The nausea thing though is what I think killed the Evo for most people. I think the effect was due to a sensitivity some people have and also you could adjust the display's rendering of the left and right image for how far apart your own eyes are. That has got to be a multi sensory thing, I was swung around a lot as a kid and went on all kinds of roller coaster rides and went places that pretty much ended any fear of heights. (Sears tower, Grand Canyon, Mount Saint Helens, Hawaiian mountains and lots of Helicopter rides.) There was a story a few days back about someone who didn't develop proper visual 3d processing as a child and had his visual cortex start processing 3d information during a 3d movie. He described it as being a wonderful thing, and I bet it was but for some people I would wonder if that kind of experience wouldn't make them want to lose their lunch like my old Evo 3d did.. who knows?
I have experienced the Oculus DK 1 and am now in posession of a DK2. While I haven't tried the Gear VR, I think the reviewers treat the lack of positional tracking very very mildly. To me, the sense of disorientation in the DK1 is so huge, and having used the DK2 without positional tracknig as well as with, I can confirm just the tracking can make all the difference. Sure, you can say 'just don't move your head', but then you might as well say 'just don't look around' and use a standard 3D screen. Full positional head tracking is a key element of VR, and Oculus was absolutely right to move in that direction with the DK2.
Let's put the genes back in Genesis.