I don't think it's much affordable if I've to upgrade to Samsung's latest device! Given, it's a good marketing ploy!
Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable
41–50 of 105 posts
Re: Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
Maybe not now; Apple is starting that "phone on subscription" program to replace your phone yearly, though.
Re: Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
I think the more typical behaviour is to buy on contract and thus upgrade on the one year or two year interval that coincides with the contract.
A quick Google suggests that even two years might be a bit long for Americans: http://www.phonearena.com/news/Americans-replace-their-cell-...
Re: Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable
#44From 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.
Any chance you have a URL to a transcript or video of this lecture?
Re: Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The trend lines showed a year ago that a high end smartphone in about 3 years from now (mid-way through the PS4's lifetime) will have higher paper specs than a PS4 (paper specs, not necessarily as well-utilized).
An Nvidia Shield tablet is on paper roughly equivalent to an XBox360. The Shield set top box is double that. A few more doublings and the prediction will play out.
Re: Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
My family has been on contract for last 10 years and so has most people I met in America. The subsidy means flag ship phones at ~$200 with 2 year contract, or a cheaper phone for free. The other part is that AT&T and Verizon had much more reliable signal so it wasn't worth going to another provider.
Re: Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable
#47I 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?
FWIW, the Oculus DK2 uses literally exactly a Note 4 screen, display glass, Samsung logo, and all [1]. [1]: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Oculus+Rift+Development+Kit+...
No, it uses a Note 3 screen. An executive from Samsung corrected me when I said Note 4.
It's significantly lower res than a Gear VR, and you can tell.
EDIT: your link confirms it's note 3, not note 4.
Re: Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
FWIW, the Oculus DK2 uses literally exactly a Note 4 screen, display glass, Samsung logo, and all [1]. [1]: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Oculus+Rift+Development+Kit+...
That's actually really interesting. If this is the case, then I'm not sure Oculus was worth the money Facebook paid for them - Samsung seems to own all the relevant IP and it's not clear what Oculus provides that couldn't be replicated by another company in short order. If Oculus Gear takes off as a product, it seems like Chinese manufacturers would start churning out knockoffs and commoditize the product space.
Oculus owns a lot of the IP, and more importantly know-how. Evidently the Gear VR was the result of extremely tight integration between Samsung and Oculus engineering, with Oculus providing the bulk of the VR-specific knowledge. Samsung provided screens and phones.
Late in the game, the Oculus engineers pushed for major changes to the architecture to allow the phone to communicate with the sensors in the headset in a very low latency way -- something nearly bare metal. Evidently it took a lot of convincing.
(A friend heard this from Carmack in person, for what it's worth.)
Re: Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable
#49I 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-...
Content is precisely the problem. Carmack even admits as much here:
http://uploadvr.com/john-carmack-talks-difficulty-mobile-pos...
That guy's pretty outspoken. (And yes, he's referring to live action content; I presume mobile VR will be tilted more toward video streaming etc than gaming, but I could be wrong.)
Re: Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable
#50Screen sold separately* ?
Think of it as an high-tech Google Cardboard. edit: wording
No, it's significantly better. The headset has MEMS sensors running at 1 KHz (the Note 4 runs at 100 Hz IIRC), which means the head-tracking is perceptually flawless.
Add to that the quality of the optics, the high quality screen, the wide field of view, and the difference is substantial; if you haven't tried both, just trust me. They're not even in the same category.
Now, the Zeiss headset, that thing is just a high end Google Cardboard.