

Gear VR: Today’s best virtual reality - deegles
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/01/gear-vr-for-todays-best-virtual-reality-strap-a-phone-to-your-face/

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inDigiNeous
I'm really wondering why Samsung would want to rush with this product to the
markets, and more specifically why Oculus would want to agree to this. I mean,
the Oculus hardware is still under development, the SDK is under development,
and consumer software is just getting into grips what it is to develop for the
VR platform.

Probably a deal between Oculus and Samsung, as Samsung is their display
provider, in order for Samsung to continue providing them displays and other
hardware ?

What I've heard (from CCP Games, developer of Eve Online for the Oculus,
primary developer for Oculus) Oculus is focusing on making the best possible
product, so it doesn't make any sense to publish what is in sense a beefed up
DK2 to the public, other than that it was part of their Samsung deal.

I'm excited about VR, but I'm not at all excited about the Gear VR, there is
no killer application yet even and it's just meh, pretty cool for maybe
watching movies and such 3D -content, but what I hear the battery life is
pretty poor too, and it's gonna be pretty obsolete once the consumer version
of Oculus Rift comes out ..

Anybody have any more insight into this ?

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Laremere
I've been following this stuff fairly closely:

This is rooted in a deal between Samsung and Oculus. The DK2's screen is
literally Galaxy Note 3 screen. The screen is a critical part of virtual
reality, so a good partner already in the space is a major win. At the same
time, Samsung wanted to get into this space with a Gear VR like device.
Samsung already had some work done on it before showing it to Oculus. I'm not
sure who approached who (I think it was Oculus to Samsung about the screen and
Samsung replying that they would like help with the Gear VR.) This was also
when John Carmack got involved, and has been the chief person responsible for
getting the intensive software requirements to work on a mobile device.

As for why now? You gotta start shipping eventually. The current Gear VR is
labeled as an "innovator edition", which a way of saying it's a dev kit
without actually saying that. I'm guessing the Gear VR system will be attached
to the update cycle of the Gear line of phones.

As for Gear VR vs Oculus CV1, the CV1 will be better in almost all aspects.
However, you can't say use it to watch a movie on a plane ride.

