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

http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/24/gear-vr-for-all/

by tksohishi • 11 years ago

166 101 11 years ago

techcrunch.com

lux5• 11 years ago

I wish it shipped with a gamepad (e.g., for a $149 price point), but this is still great news!

jsprogrammer2• 11 years ago

Screen sold separately* ?

zapu• 11 years ago

It is an enclosure for Samsung phone.

Raphmedia• 11 years ago

Think of it as an high-tech Google Cardboard.

edit: wording

ryandamm7• 11 years ago

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.

danpalmer• 11 years ago

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?

pavlov• 11 years ago

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-...

ryandamm7• 11 years ago

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.)

mmastrac• 11 years ago

I've used the Cardboard on my S5 and it is pretty painfully low resolution (1080). 2560x1440 would be fantastic. 2000 vertical lines would be amazing.

kriro2• 11 years ago

Just because I've never done it and want to double check. How does one get content to the phone-VR system?

I currently develop my toy VR applications with Unity and only target PC/Mac. I'm assuming I can just publish to Android from Unity and be set (never done it, just know this exists)? That is I target Android and can use the phone-VR setup?

Pretty solid coincidence that I'm currently in the market for a new phone as well. I tihnk I'll go with this and then skip the regular Oculus and get a Morpheus instead since I own a PS4 but the only machine suitable for smooth VR is at work (and I surely want to play around at home, too) :D

AndrewKemendo• 11 years ago

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/presence abilities but if the goal is to get MM of people using VR, this is the way to do it. Everyone can thank cardboard for paving the way for this type of implementation.

acgourley• 11 years ago

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.

lux5• 11 years ago

The screen differences aren't that far off between Gear and Rift CV1, but the biggest difference (aside from processing power) is positional tracking. You only get directional tracking of the user's head on the Gear, but games/experiences can be designed around current limitations.

The other frustrating limitation to the current generation of headsets is field of view, but FOV is fairly similar between the two as well.

IMO the value of each of these platforms is going to come down to content.

exelius4• 11 years ago

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 will be the choice of the "PC Master Race", but a solution like this is much more mass-market friendly. There's no reason a headset like this should cost more than $30 once mass-produced - and that's low enough to be an impulse purchase for a lot of people.

benologist• 11 years ago

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.

aianus2• 11 years ago

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)?

ctdonath• 11 years ago

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.

ajmurmann• 11 years ago

I had the chance to use the first generation of this setup together with a variety of other VR headsets a few weeks ago at a VR film festival. It was fun and worked pretty well, but non of the screen that I got to try had the needed pixel density. I was able to see the pixels on all of them, because the screen is so close to your eyes.

fla• 11 years ago

it's effective enough for the wow effect, and that's pretty awesome because that's how VR might become mainstream.

wvenable• 11 years ago

Screens on these phones are pretty advanced. Even the Oculus Rift is just using screens designed for phones. From what John Carmack has said in the past, mobile platforms are easier to control for latency and lag than PCs.

borgel• 11 years ago

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+...

miketuritzin• 11 years ago

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.

exelius4• 11 years ago

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.

ryandamm7• 11 years ago

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.

sayangel2• 11 years ago

It is pretty effective. I think most people dismiss it as just a fancier google cardboard, which it isn't. With it's own IMU and impressive display the GearVR is a great entry level device.

Also, the Samsung S6 has a higher res screen than CV1 (the consumer version of the Rift coming out next year).

xanderstrike• 11 years ago

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+.

dagw• 11 years ago

That's $99 plus a $600+ smartphone.

Poking around ebay I found lots of used Note 3's for less than $250.

sciguy77• 11 years ago

I owned the Note 4 Innovator Edition. Its better than you'd think. Very low latency, excellent tracking, solid design. But a noticeable Screen Door Effect is a downside, more so than resolution IMO. You may not get full presence, but undoubtably its worth a mere $99.

lhl3• 11 years ago

The GearVR actually has a fair amount higher resolution (and arc-resolution) than the first-gen wired headsets. It also has a bit more SDE and lower FOV so there's a trade-off.

In terms of rendering pipeline, even w/ the latest Gameworks VR / Liquid VR drivers and WDDM 2.0, the GearVR may still beat out the PC's latency - Carmack's OC keynote from last year is worth watching for some of those details. Since the GearVR has both a direct kernel driver for the sensors and front-buffer access to the GPU, he quoted something eyepopping, like 4ms M2P latency.

IMO, the killer app for GearVR is watching movies on long trips, and the really compelling 360 photo/video content that's starting to get made. If you're getting an Android phone anyway, the extra $99 seems like a no-brainer and is a compelling reason to buy a Samsung device over the competition.

dingo_bat2• 11 years ago

The screen is literally the same as what you get in a DK2. Oculus couldn't get any manufacturer to make them a screen that qualified all their requirements. Then they discovered that if they pry out the screen from a Galaxy Note, it is nearly the best they can hope for. So every DK2 right now just uses a screen that they literally tore out of a normal Galaxy Note.

gregmac• 11 years ago

Well, looks interesting, but too bad it doesn't work with the new Samsung phone I got just 7 months ago (S5).

b1gtuna• 11 years ago

you mean 17 months ago? I got it when it launched, and can't wait to get rid of it. What an ugly phone =(

monstrado• 11 years ago

I've had a chance to actually test this device and I can say it was comfortable, and the VR experience felt smooth and responsive. I was skeptical since it was powered by a phone, but I was definitely surprised.

bduerst• 11 years ago

The phone is the screen, right? Or is the phone processing the content and delivering it to the screen? What's the resolution like?

dogma1138• 11 years ago

The phone is the screen(s) they also do some image processing on the phone, and use the accelerometers and audio out, and potentially in the future other sensors (e.g. Bluetooth LE to measure distance from beacons, the camera for AR (can't be done in current Samsung VR headsets) etc.)

dingo_bat2• 11 years ago

The phone has a big part in content delivery and processing too. The screen resolution on Galaxy Note devices (GearVR needs one of those) is 2.5k. That is divided between both eyes. But the thing is that Oculus itself uses the screen yanked out of a Galaxy Note. So screen quality and resolution should be top notch.

julianpye2• 11 years ago

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.

L_Rahman• 11 years ago

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

julianpye2• 11 years ago

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.

rasz_pl• 11 years ago

1:35 http://www.twitch.tv/oculus/v/17538854

lux5• 11 years ago

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.

_pius• 11 years ago

Wonderful talk.

dperfect• 11 years ago

Inspiring, yes - but it's also disheartening with respect to how far away we are from highly-convincing VR.

It's not even a matter of engineering the solutions; we have yet to fully understand so many of the problems, and we'll need years (decades?) of research before beginning to think about some of the solutions. That's not to say it can't be an overall positive technology/experience in the meantime, but it'll likely be many years before it's free of certain side effects (e.g., nausea, discomfort) that bother people.

lhl3• 11 years ago

In a few months you'll be able to easily try the consumer Rift, the HTC Vive and see for yourself how convincing the VR is. I think you might be pleasantly surprised.

While the road toward "perfect" VR is just getting started, these first-gen consumer sets have crossed the starting line, and are qualitatively different from earlier VR experiences.

(BTW, while comfort isn't a totally solved problem, for 1:1 motion, these sets (and PSVR) are pretty good and I think for most people, won't make them sick.)

Tepix• 11 years ago

I loved it. It was much presented than his previous talks, that said, they are always interesting and inspiring.

These are the good old times of VR. Cherish them.

sciurus• 11 years ago

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

guelo• 11 years ago

Only 2015 Samsung phones.

calbear81• 11 years ago

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.

minalecs• 11 years ago

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.

tluyben2• 11 years ago

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.

aresant2• 11 years ago

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...

myth_buster• 11 years ago

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!

werber• 11 years ago

Does anyone else think there is going to be some crazy additional Star Wars release tie in after the Facebook thing today to boost sales? I wouldn't be surprised if a VR version for Gear came out once a good bootleg was out.

LouisSayers• 11 years ago

Super excited by this. Does anyone know if they've dealt with nausea during use? This is the only thing I really wonder after trying the original.

I'm also selling Orift.co for anyone interested in the VR space! (https://flippa.com/5569435-invest-in-the-future-of-virtual-r...)

rabble• 11 years ago

I got to try this out at XOXO and it worked remakrably well. Really enjoyable to use and i didn't get motion sick.

nivla• 11 years ago

Interesting. I would get one if I could hack it for other devices. It is kind of amusing that even when Microsoft has started making cross platform compatible hardware [1], Samsung is stuck on a page from the old MS playbook. Hardware that is only compatible with Samsung devices and not even other Androids. [2]

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-band/en-us/support/hardw...

[2] http://www.tizenexperts.com/2014/06/pair-your-samsung-galaxy...

nadams2• 11 years ago

My only question is have they fixed the whole driver problem yet?

The Oculus Rift DK2 was a complete disaster. I understand it's a "dev kit" but if they are to release it for general use they will need to drastically change the way the driver installs, the way it communicates error messages and issues with the connection.

It took me several hours to release I needed to move the Oculus Rift "monitor" to the right. And it's working "fine" on my desktop - but I can't get it working on a laptop (and current Oculus Rift statements suggest they will never support it on laptops...).

aresant2• 11 years ago

The GearVR never had these issues, what they shipped was way more polished than DK2.

As for DK2, have you tried .7 release yet? They completely removed the "extend my desktop" piece you had issues with. It's way less fungible than earlier releases, but feels much more polished / simple.

fr0styMatt22• 11 years ago

The latest Oculus SDK (0.7.0.0) on Windows _absolutely_ fixes this mess. I have nothing but praise for the latest software and this is coming from someone who couldn't use his Rift since around November last year when the AMD drivers and the Rift's extended mode stopped working together.

Basically now the Rift is considered a proper HMD as a category of its' own and not a bastardized monitor. There is no more extended mode. Everything compiled with Oculus SDK 0.6.0.0 and above now works in Direct Mode only. The latency is noticeably better. With the latest AMD/Nvidia drivers, you just plug the headset in and there's no monitor-type configuration at all.

Note this is with Windows 10; I don't have first-hand experience with 8.1 but think it'd be much the same. It really is that much better.

Also, if you haven't checked out the latest VR Desktop (http://www.vrdesktop.net), you need to do this too. In addition to giving you a giant screen to see your desktop on, you can now play full-screen games in it, watch YouTube 360 videos properly in it and watch 3D movies encoded in side-by-side or top/bottom encoding. It's really really awesome :)

nadams2• 11 years ago

The latest Oculus SDK (0.7.0.0) on Windows _absolutely_ fixes this mess.

Tried to use that to show it off to a friend on his desktop running Windows 10. Didn't work. The demo desk worked - but nothing else did. Also - didn't I read something where .7 is not backwards compatible with apps compiled for .6?

AMD drivers and the Rift's extended mode stopped working together.

I find extended mode only works for me on my AMD card. And I think this is part of the problem - there appears to be a number of "it works for me"/"it doesn't work for me" threads all over the Oculus Rift forum from people with varying builds including threads of "if you follow this incantation and sacrifice a chicken while modifying your registry - this will make the Oculus Rift work"

Also, if you haven't checked out the latest VR Desktop

I tried that out - but it crashed for me almost every time I tried using it.

For me the Oculus Rift has pretty much been a fail - I couldn't tell if the fail has been on my end (ie my desktop) or Oculus Rift's end. Though I really think if they hope to get a market share is to hire the guy(s) who has been working on JanusVR and make that a bundled "app". Right now that is the only reason why I don't just put it in a box and forget about it. Yes - I understand this is a "development kit" but I would like to know that it's functional before I develop for it. If people have to read out of the Necronomicon to use it - there is no point in developing for it. I feel like others share this opinion because I think Elite Dangerous implemented support but said that they won't update it until the Oculus Rift has a non-dev kit version.

I'm just frazzled because I purchased this $300 device expecting it to be somewhat stable - and it seems like something I would get out of a kickstarter.

metasean3• 11 years ago

Does anyone know (preferably with a source) whether the visual correction in the new Gear VR will cover the same range (particularly, the near-sighted range) as the existing Gear VR?

macspoofing2• 11 years ago

Ok, but it's not the right product to bring VR to the masses.

sayangel2• 11 years ago

why not? is a tethered experience that requires a $1k+ desktop the right product?

macspoofing2• 11 years ago

1) Tied to Samsung device (singular).

2) No software ecosystem.

3) No hype, interest or marketing.

It's kinda like Microsoft tablet laptops before the iPad. Serviceable, but not a category maker.

fr0styMatt22• 11 years ago

This is excellent. I know many people for whom this would be cheap enough to just add on to their next phone contract, who otherwise wouldn't have dipped their toes in it.

As an aside, I really wish Google and Oculus could get together and work out how to allow Cardboard apps to take advantage of the extra hardware from the Gear VR if it's available. Using a Gear VR and then trying Cardboard shows how woefully inadequate Cardboard is; but there are some cool Cardboard apps that I'd really love to be able to try with the much much better tracking of my Gear VR.

ryanSrich• 11 years ago

Is there any reason this is getting a lot of press now? I've seen it all over twitter. This thing has been out for a WHILE. I used one a Toms store in Portland. It was neat but I'd much prefer something with a higher resolution. VR is all about resolution imo.

lhl3• 11 years ago

This is a new version and the first non-"Innovator Edition" (read: enthusiasts/devs) - the big deal I think is that presumably as a true consumer product, it'll be getting a lot more distribution, and moving forward will probably a big part of Samsung's pitch for differentiation of their flagship mobile products.

More resolution would be nice, but it's not everything. The biggest issue for VR geeks is probably the lack of positional tracking. A close second (or first, depending on how sensitive you are) is the relatively low refresh rate (60Hz) causes noticeable strobing for a lot of people. At that refresh rate you don't get the temporal super-resolution bonuses you get at higher rates. Fill factor is as important (if not moreso) for screen-door effect - the CV1 and Vive screens are lower-res, but look much better. AFAIK, the S6/N5 screens don't support global refresh (although there is direct front-buffer access). Lack of physical IPD adjustment is a big deal, and it's hard to solve w/ a single screen w/o sacrifices. Oh, and of course, running the devices comfortably w/o overheating.

kriro2• 11 years ago

The two questions that pop into my head are

1) How long can you use it with say an S6 before the battery is drained if I don't use the micro USB cable that they offer (especially with something like a game running on it)

2) What about storage. A modern 3d game requires quite a bit of space. Sure you could load a couple of them onto the phone but AFAIK the S6 doesn't even support SD cards...how is this handled? USB OTG? I read that the Gear has a microSD...can I really store all stuff on this or is there a requirement to leave some Gear apps etc. on the actual phone?

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

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