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Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable

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Re: Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable

#5

Post by danpalmer »

I wonder how effective this VR actually is.

It seems that VR heavily depends on high quality screens, with very high resolution, and low latency and persistence. However this works with a screen that isn't optimised for those attributes.

$99 may be good, but it seems likely that it will be much worse than the Oculus Rift, I think is targeting ~$400-500, and could be far better. Is it worth it?

Re: Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable

#6

Post by pavlov »

danpalmer wrote: post #5

I wonder how effective this VR actually is. It seems that VR heavily depends on high quality screens, with very high resolution, and low latency and persistence. However this works with a screen that isn't optimised for those attributes. $99 may be good, but it seems likely that it will be much worse than the Oculus Rift, I think is targeting ~$400-500, and could be far better. Is it worth it?

The Gear VR requires a phone with a 2560 * 1440 resolution. That's actually higher than Oculus DK2, which is only 1920 * 1080.

I have a Gear VR for Note 4 and it's pretty awesome (especially for 360° video)... But there's just no content yet.

I'm really looking forward to Land's End, a new Gear VR game from Monument Valley's makers: http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/21/9353235/lands-end-vr-game-...

Re: Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable

#7

Post by AndrewKemendo »

danpalmer wrote: post #5

I wonder how effective this VR actually is. It seems that VR heavily depends on high quality screens, with very high resolution, and low latency and persistence. However this works with a screen that isn't optimised for those attributes. $99 may be good, but it seems likely that it will be much worse than the Oculus Rift, I think is targeting ~$400-500, and could be far better. Is it worth it?

I've tried most VR systems and I think the benefits of Gear FAR outweigh what you lose.

The biggest one is that it's wireless so you don't have to worry about the cord at all.

You do lose processing power, but quite frankly I think that is fine because it forces developers to really focus on making the UX/UI experience really tight.

From the Performance aspect the CV1 is much better and has better interactivity/presence abilities but if the goal is to get MM of people using VR, this is the way to do it. Everyone can thank cardboard for paving the way for this type of implementation.

Re: Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable

#8

Post by lux »

danpalmer wrote: post #5

I wonder how effective this VR actually is. It seems that VR heavily depends on high quality screens, with very high resolution, and low latency and persistence. However this works with a screen that isn't optimised for those attributes. $99 may be good, but it seems likely that it will be much worse than the Oculus Rift, I think is targeting ~$400-500, and could be far better. Is it worth it?

The screen differences aren't that far off between Gear and Rift CV1, but the biggest difference (aside from processing power) is positional tracking. You only get directional tracking of the user's head on the Gear, but games/experiences can be designed around current limitations.

The other frustrating limitation to the current generation of headsets is field of view, but FOV is fairly similar between the two as well.

IMO the value of each of these platforms is going to come down to content.

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