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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

#31

Post by acgourley »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #7
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/prese…

Actually Palmer worked on a research project in university that was using 3d printed goggles and cheap off the shelf lenses which you could snap an iPhone into. See http://projects.ict.usc.edu/mxr/diy/vr2go/

I don't know if it was his idea or how involved he really was, just that he said he worked on it. The point is that cardboard was based on this.

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

#32

Post by _pius »

julianpye wrote: post #17

From OC2, but semi-offtopic - What did people think about the Michael Abrash lecture "These are the good old days"? For me it was one of the most inspiring lectures on engineering solutions for HCI solutions. The cool part was that it positions Oculus as a technology company supporting senses far beyond vision.

Wonderful talk.

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

#33

Post by ctdonath »

exelius wrote: post #11
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?

Phone screens on top-end phones are high enough quality to manage (and are higher resolution than most PC monitors anyway). They also have the added benefit of being able to render graphics internally as opposed to being attached to a PC by a cord. Yeah, the graphics may not be quite as good, but the gap in perceived graphics quality between a $1000 PC and a flagship cell phone is rapidly closing. I think the Rift wi…

The key overlooked point for VR - a point that Carmack had enough pull to persuade Samsung to address - is latency. http://oculusrift-blog.com/john-carmacks-message-of-latency/... The system must render "motion-to-photons" the image in less than 20ms to avoid discernible (& disorienting) lag. That's fast enough that the graphics system doesn't have time to buffer the image (which would cut available render time by a large percentage); Carmack was able to convince Samsung of the importance of "unbuffered display" in a market where otherwise nobody cares about such minute timings.

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

#34

Post by linksbro »

aianus wrote: post #30
exelius wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phone screens on top-end phones are high enough quality to manage (and are higher resolution than most PC monitors anyway). They also have the added benefit of being able to render graphics internally as opposed to being attached to a PC by a cord. Yeah, the graphics may not be quite as good, but the gap in perceived graphics quality between a $1000 PC and a flagship cell phone is rapidly closing. I think the Rift wi…

> perceived graphics quality between a $1000 PC and a flagship cell phone is rapidly closing Is this true? Can an iPhone 6S theoretically run CS:GO or Crysis (an eight year old PC game)?

Perhaps not the actual CS:GO binary - but one built on Metal could certainly come close to CS:GO on lower settings.

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

#35

Post by xanderstrike »

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?

That's $99 plus a $600+ smartphone. If you already have a Samsung phone that's great, if not... it's a very powerful Google Cardboard for $700+.

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

#36

Post by tluyben2 »

I picked up a Homido VR cheaply and it is quite nice and fits all phones I have. The downside is that it starts to hurt after a while but it is enough to do VR experiments on my S5. I would recommend if you have an older phone and you can pick it up cheaply.

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

#37

Post by aianus »

linksbro wrote: post #34
aianus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> perceived graphics quality between a $1000 PC and a flagship cell phone is rapidly closing Is this true? Can an iPhone 6S theoretically run CS:GO or Crysis (an eight year old PC game)?

Perhaps not the actual CS:GO binary - but one built on Metal could certainly come close to CS:GO on lower settings.

Wow, that's awesome! My 3-year-old video card uses 160 watts of power and roars like a jet engine running CS:GO at 1080p.

It blows my mind that we've come so far so fast.

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

#38

Post by aresant »

I bought the original Gear VR with very limited expectations and was surprised how well it worked.

The reason it works so well is the GearVR platform is comprised effectively of three things:

a) Lenses to make for comfortable, adjustable viewing.

b) A touchpad for input.

c) A ton of high quality / high fidelity sensors like Accelerator, Gyrometer, Geomagnetic, Proximity (1)

Since most VR functionality is driven through sensor fusion it's a very elegant solution to develop a one-size-fits-all headset that gives devs a way to build/test/deploy against one set of sensors vs a phone-by-phone approach.

Take that plus the fact that the DK2 screen is an overclocked Galaxy 3 screen (2) and it makes complete sense.

(1) via http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/gearvr/gearvr_specs....

(2) http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/31/oculus-rift-dk2-gets-torn-a...

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

#39

Post by SwellJoe »

exelius wrote: post #25
miketuritzin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true, but the CV1 (consumer version) headset will have 2 separate screens that can be moved independently, which is something you can't get with a phone attached to a headset.

Not sure that feature will justify a $200+ price difference for most people. Plus, you will upgrade your phone every year or two anyway and get all the benefits (faster, better screen, improved features, etc) associated with that, while the CV1 will require a separate purchase to get new features.

"Plus, you will upgrade your phone every year or two"

Do normal people actually upgrade their phone yearly? I've kept my last several phones for about 3 years each, and I tend to think that'd be overkill for most folks (admittedly, I tend to buy higher end phones, with large storage, so they last a little longer; and I never buy on contract, so I'm paying full price, so I don't want to do it often).

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

#40

Post by minalecs »

sciurus wrote: post #20

I wonder if this will work with a Nexus 6, or if it only supports Samsung phones.

there are other really great headsets you can buy that would work. For example I bought a freeflyvr http://www.freeflyvr.com/. Really works well, but do your own research. There are a lot of factors like FOV, adjustable lens and size. etc.
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