Samsung Gear VR

Samsung VR

This is the Samsung Gear VR, a wireless virtual reality headset that marks the company’s first steps into the wearable future tech arena previously pioneered by Oculus Rift and Project Morpheus.

What makes this baby different? Well the headset houses the Galaxy Note 4 and uses that as the screen to create the 360 visuals. Samsung says with Gear VR people can ‘fully immerse themselves in a cinematic virtual reality environment’. Samsung says the Note 4’s quad HD screen provides ‘stunning and engaging visuals’. First testers likened the experience to sitting in the best seat of a theatre or being ‘on-stage at a performance with full 360 3D video’.

First impressions are that it looks state of the art and very cool, but what is it for? Playing virtual reality games and watching 360-degree videos of course. Questions also arise when you think of the technology, Oculus Rift and Project Morpheus have been years in the making and both products have individual screens; one for each eye. Project Morpheus uses the PlayStation Camera to maintain calibration. I don’t know about you but when using maps on my mobile phone it annoyingly repeatedly needs recalibrating so quite how it will work without this issue remains to be seen. However by turning the phone into a functioning VR kit one thing is clear and that is Samsung seems intent on making 360 experiences accessible as possible. It’s interesting too that given the Google Glass they have chosen to go in a completely different direction.

So how much does it cost? Well first views are that the headset may cost around the £250 – that is separate from the phone itself. However given the likelihood of different deals by various companies this may change.

Keep it tuned to Frost for more details.