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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

#21

Post by julianpye »

L_Rahman wrote: post #18
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.

Any chance you have a URL to a transcript or video of this lecture?

It just finished 10 minutes ago on the livestream - http://www.twitch.tv/oculus - so it should be posted somewhere soon on YT.

Watch this channel at 1pm for John Carmack's lecture.

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

#22

Post by miketuritzin »

borgel wrote: post #15
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?

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 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.

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

#23

Post by exelius »

borgel wrote: post #15
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?

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.

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

#24

Post by lux »

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.

Agreed. Super inspiring, and that's definitely how it feels working in VR these days.

Also very cool to see such a sweeping overview of the ongoing engineering challenges we face.

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

#25

Post by exelius »

miketuritzin wrote: post #22
borgel wrote: post #15

Earlier 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 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.

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

#27

Post by calbear81 »

guelo wrote: post #26
sciurus wrote: post #20

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

Only 2015 Samsung phones.

I wouldn't be surprised if they sold this at breakeven or a slight loss in order to try and get some market share back for their phones.

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

#28

Post by exelius »

benologist wrote: post #19
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…

If VR is going to matter for movies and tv it's only going to be on devices like this that everyone can participate on economically. Streaming game services will also close the gap between this and an expensive dedicated gaming rig per headset.

Streaming games have far too much latency for VR applications. Latency requirements for VR are much lower than console games because too much latency on head tracking can cause nausea and breaks the "immersion" effect.

But yeah, I agree that when VR blows up big, it'll be something like this rather than the PC-based Oculus. That solution has always felt clunky and more like a development kit than a consumer product.

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

#29

Post by Strom »

exelius wrote: post #23
borgel wrote: post #15

Earlier 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.

The screen is only a small piece of the puzzle. Most of the value of the Oculus products comes from the insane software optimizations that have been done at all levels of the stack to bring down the latency.

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

#30

Post by aianus »

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…

> 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)?

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