

Samsung's Gear VR Is a Portable Oculus Rift for the Galaxy Note 4 - geetee
http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/3/6098745/samsung-gear-vr-oculus-announcement-hands-on

======
MartinMcGirk
You know what this is going to be great for? Travelling.

I'm facing a flight from Scotland to Australia in December where I'm going to
be sat in economy class on a no-frills Air-China flight for god-only-knows how
long, and my options to distract myself are currently either read a book on my
kindle, or play or watch something on the iPad. I would kill for one of these.

The problems with my existing options are that I can be distracted by seeing
people moving around next to me, or I can check my watch absent mindedly, or
one of many things might happen that could bring me back into the reality of
being sandwiched into a sweaty tin can. Time can pass very slowly when you're
travelling.

VR on the other hand completely transports your mind to a place where time
isn't really relevant anymore. You need to block out all of your surroundings
to really make it work, which means no seeing other passengers get up for
toilet breaks, no listening to the engine buzzing along as you read. If I
could put this headset on with a decent pair of headphones, and all of a
sudden be flying around space in some mobile equivalent of Elite:Dangerous or
watching a movie in properly immersive 3D then time would just speed by and my
flight wouldn't be so bloody awful.

I've got an Oculus DK2, but I sadly can't lug my beast of a desktop PC on to a
flight with me to power it. In terms of being the VR headset of choice for
gamers, I'm pretty convinced that Sony will eventually win that battle with
their PS4 Project Morpheus headset. This won't compete with either of those
two excellent experiences, but I think that as a traveling accessory at least,
a wireless headset that uses your phone as a screen could be a god-send.

~~~
mgolawala
Great, but be sure to pack a good book for the remaining 13 hours of flight
time after your devices have used up their battery.

Editing comment to respond to replies in one place instead of individually.

1) The Note 4 is housed inside the Gear VR. Larger battery pack probably won't
fit. You will need to carry spare batteries. Possibly the next generation
might solve this.

2) I may have missed it, but I didn't see anyway to charge the Note 4 while
using the Gear VR. So assuming you do have a charging port, you would need to
stop and charge the device. Or carry a spare device to charge your spare
battery while you use the Gear VR.

Just to be clear, I am not criticizing the Gear VR. My response was only
targeted at the Parent comment's use case. I think it is really cool that
Samsung is trying to think out of the box and come up with innovations. Some
will stick, some won't. We will see.

~~~
cbr
Are there flights without charging ports nowadays?

~~~
Someone1234
In economy? Uhh yes. A lot.

In business class and above? Fewer.

------
readerrrr
Their presentation, featuring John Carmack at 1:32:45.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRLy0QQI6xU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRLy0QQI6xU)

~~~
chucknelson
And so you don't have to skip through it yourself:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRLy0QQI6xU&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRLy0QQI6xU&feature=youtu.be&t=1h32m33s)

Edit: Oh man, he sure doesn't hold back on the technical lingo.

------
rizwan
It doesn't appear to have positional sensors (the Oculus DK2 does, with a
stationary dongle to compare your relative head movements).

It is very disorienting if you only have rotational support (as if your head's
at the same point in space) and not also positional (head moving forward,
backward, up, down, left, right, etc.)

~~~
andybak
Is there any sensor or combination of sensors in modern phones capable of
doing this?

I suppose the obvious one is to use the front-facing camera and some external
markers but that might be very CPU-intensive.

~~~
yincrash
Google Tango is attempting to accomplish it by using the camera sensor to
measure positional changes.[1] They showed it off at Google I/O, but it was a
bit eclipsed by Cardboard (probably to the chagrin of the Tango team).

[1]
[https://www.google.com/atap/projecttango/](https://www.google.com/atap/projecttango/)

~~~
efraim
Project Tango doesn't just use a camera to track position, it uses structured
light - like the first kinect - with an infrared projector and camera to build
up a 3D model of the environment.

[https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Project+Tango+Teardown/23835](https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Project+Tango+Teardown/23835)

------
cdcox
A teardown last year showed the Oculus DK2 was using a Galaxy Note 3 as its
screen system [0]. Being able to pull the phone out seems like a logical
enough step. Though I wonder how much of the 'other stuff' like positional
sensors etc they decide to include.

[https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Oculus+Rift+Development+Kit+...](https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Oculus+Rift+Development+Kit+2+Teardown/27613)

~~~
GrantS
Thanks for the link, but perhaps you meant last month? The tear down appears
to be from 33 days ago.

------
wildpeaks
If you can use the mobile's back camera like Structure Sensor does, it could
even choose between VR and AR based on the app :)

Also if you later can use Google Tango with it, you'd even have both depth +
color feeds for AR, not just color, which helps realism when you add 3D
elements in it, or even simply to sneak parts of the real world into VR (like
in youtu.be/fEiyzJDFiJI).

Natural interactions, realistic rendering, latency (and battery life :) are
definitely the next big battlefields.

------
swalsh
Before graphics cards were standard, very few games supported them. Eventually
more and more games started supporting specific cards, and then people started
buying the cards. Today virtually all games support them, and if you have a
gaming PC, you have a card.

While the Oculus still looks to be competitively better, seeing the market
expand can only be a positive signal for VR.

------
yarrel
Interesting brand dilution for Oculus there.

~~~
TulliusCicero
It's almost like they're prepping consumers for 'real' VR by giving them
something that's obviously a half measure but still works decently well.

------
andybak
In case people have forgotten there are many similar DIY solutions based on
this: [https://cardboard.withgoogle.com/](https://cardboard.withgoogle.com/)

I've got one and there's quite a few fun demos and small games in the Play
Store that work with it.

------
KaoruAoiShiho
Did anyone see the bloomberg coverage of the event? Completely whacky, it's
all about how Samsung is fake launching stuff to get ahead of apple without
talking about VR at all. Sooo weird, it just goes to show how far the media
has its ass stuck up its head sometimes.

------
mrfusion
I'm confused. Is this a preview of what the CV1 will be? Or is this a separate
product?

~~~
georgemcbay
All I know of it is from the article, but it seems to be a separate product,
one that uses the Samsung Note 4 entirely for display and sensors. It is more
like a really fancy version of the Google Cardboard VR (and one that only fits
a Note 4) than a Rift, AFAICT.

I assume whatever Oculus helped with was mostly to do with software and/or
helping Samsung spec out the sensors used in the phone to give a decent VR
experience.

------
LeicaLatte
Facebook is starting to kick ass. They have the coolest platform. Again.

