Gear VR consumer pre-order now live!

Lucid Rifter

Lucid Rifter

VR Master Race
Cornerstone Member
Sep 11, 2013
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Gear VR is a HMD powered by Oculus and flagship 2015 Samsung phones. This means all S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge+ and note 5 phones will work with the $99 headset.

GearVRPhoto-small.jpg


https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/samsung-gear-vr-now-available-for-pre-orders-at-99/

Gear VR is available on Amazon.com, BestBuy.com, and Samsung.com and will ship on November 20th.
 
TDbank24 said:
I have a Samsung Galaxy S6 and i love it. Not sure what this is all about though.
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Kind of a casual vr experience people without mid to high end computers can enjoy. Put your phone in and you have some decent vr that is enjoyable. Now, don't take this as how the heavy hitters are, just a taste. Lacks many features the rift, vive or psvr have. Go to best buy or Verizon and give it a whirl if they have a display.
 
I know I shouldn't really knock it without trying it first, but how is this not the same as just putting a phone 3 inches from your face and playing a game?
 
Z A C K said:
I know I shouldn't really knock it without trying it first, but how is this not the same as just putting a phone 3 inches from your face and playing a game?
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Try to think of it has how our vision IRL works. A single images for each eye combine together in your brain to be interpreted as 3D vision. With this tech, it splits the phone screen into 2 different images, the built-in lenses and software stretch the image to give you a high field of view, and then the gyroscopes/motion sensors allow the image to change based on where you are viewing. So it tricks your brain into thinking the light going through your eyes is an actual place and experience you are in.

Really need to try it to understand.
 
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I wonder if there is a place that is demoing this. I have a Note 5 (awesome phone!) and am kinda interested in checking this out. I had a buddy that made the cardboard "VR heatset" that he could put his phone into. lol, It was kinda neat, if clunky.

How would you control anything, though? Some kind of controller you plug in?
 
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Frozpot said:
I wonder if there is a place that is demoing this. I have a Note 5 (awesome phone!) and am kinda interested in checking this out. I had a buddy that made the cardboard "VR heatset" that he could put his phone into. lol, It was kinda neat, if clunky.

How would you control anything, though? Some kind of controller you plug in?
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The headset itself has a built in control pad as you can see here. Works for all applications.
gearvr1.0.jpg



However, I am going to use my PS4 controller with it for ease of use. If you don't have one you can get a cheap bluetooth controller on Amazon.
POWER A MOGA Hero Power
 
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Yeah, almost all impressions/reviews seem to point at it as a "no-brainer" to buy if you already have a Samsung S6 variation/note 5 phone.
 
Lucid Rifter said:
Yeah, almost all impressions/reviews seem to point at it as a "no-brainer" to buy if you already have a Samsung S6 variation/note 5 phone.
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If I had one of those phones I would jump in. Since I do not, I will have to wait for Playstation VR, and potentially a price drop or two--depending on launch price.
 
menace-uk- said:
If I had one of those phones I would jump in. Since I do not, I will have to wait for Playstation VR, and potentially a price drop or two--depending on launch price.
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Yes I will be getting psvr as well! (I think I have a problem)
 
Initial Impressions, more in-depth to come Sunday when I get more time. In comparison to DK2...

Better FOV: Slightly better field of view for the gear VR. Noticeable but not significant.

Clearer: Expected as this is 1440p as DK2 is 1080p. Thought not as much as a jump as one would think. We need 4k!

Foggier: Also expected as it is housing a smart phone inside while DK2 is just the screen. I ordered some antifog spray and microfiber clothes as recommended by John Carmack himself.

Better User Experience: So nice to just be able to pop in my phone, the home screen loads, I put on headset and away I go. DK2 was a hacky mess because it was a dev kit. Not user friendly. Final rift will have a similar approach as this.


This is just a taste of a more in-depth story I will try to get to either Sunday or Monday. Let me know of any questions you might have!
 
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Update on the fog issue. Seems that it was only a major problem because I got it from outside yesterday. The lenses were cold and when I put it on, it'd fog up easy. Much better now.
 
de3d1 said:
any game experiences?
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Not yet, will hopefully have some time tomorrow to play and give a decent writeup. Yes, I also have adult material to test out for science. Not sure of forum rules on that tho. Haha
 
Dno69 said:
360 degree pron?
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Gotta be able to look behind you when you are banging some guys wife. I can see a game in the making...you gotta finish before the door is completely beat down with an axe. Cue Benny Hill music in background.

:laugh:
 
Apparently pre-orders are sold out right now. I will be getting one before christmas, hopefully.
 
Due for a phone upgrade next month, still on an S3 currently. Was going to hold off buying this until I got my consumer Rift but the great reviews are pushing me over the edge.
I read that you can watch Netflix with your friends whilst there Avatars are in the same virtual room as you and you can see/hear when they speaking and where they're looking. Really looking forward to social VR.

Edit: it wasn't Netflix but Twitch where the guy could sit with 4 VR friends in the same virtual room

https://m.reddit.com/r/gadgets/comments/3txggk/samsung_gear_vr_sold_out_online_at_amazon_and/

"I responded several times to the same question so here is why this is better than cardboard:

This has sensors built into the actual device that are an order of magnitude more accurate, and more responsive than what you have in your phone. This means that when you turn your head, there is no noticeable delay before the image updates on the screen. What you see matches 1-to-1 with how you move your head in real life. I've had the innovator edition for quite some time now, and the experiences are pretty fantastic. I watch netflix in a beautiful ski chalet on a giant TV all the time. The other day I watched my favorite twitch stream with 5 other people at a movie theater on the moon. They are sitting around you and when someone talks it sounds as if they are actually sitting to your left or your right. Their avatars look like cartoons but it doesn't matter. You can see where they're looking, you can see them nod their head in response to a question. It's like you're really together. And this is just the very, very beginning. One other big difference is the oculus store. It's like the App store for VR content. Lots of great stuff on there already."
 
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OK I've spent more time in this since last week. I don't feel like writing too much right now as the turkey flows through me, but I'll start out by saying this is a good to great experience that will someday be spectacular.


COMPARING TO DK2

Differences-

* No tracking for leaning . Looking around is there, but since there is no camera tracking your movement (as there is for Oculus Rift), if you try to lean then the world get glued to your head. Adding an extra camera lense to measure depth will most likely be the solution for a mobile VR experience going forward. One camera to track objects, the other to calculate the depth. Unfortunately this requires more CPU/GPU strength...which leads to battery/heat issues.

- Visual Fidelity: 1440P for gear, 1080P for DK2. Noticeable, not drastic. There seems to be a diminishing return when it comes to resolution. 4K mobile screens will be nice...but honestly we need 8k. Yes, 8k screens. 10 years from now, hopefully we can do 8k plus battery/heat performance to render virtual objects in 8k. This is the fidelity part of VR that needs to get there. But hey, you remember TV before HD? I think breaking through the visual barrier is attainable. The problems I see is mobile power/heat distribution. Cell batteries still are volatile and under-powered. I'm interested to see how companies will get around this. Put an extra battery on the headset itself? How does that affect weight? We need to get these thing down to the size of large sunglasses so tacking on a bunch of batteries isn't the answer. This is going to fundamentally challenge how we shrink technology...again.

- Audio: I bought some bluetooth headphones to augment the experience. Unfortunately games mysteriously slow the audio down in half. I am an outlier in this situation, most wireless headphones seem to work fine for other GearVR users. I got Sentey B-trek H9 Ls-4560. So returning and getting new pair! Good thing I have a nice wired pair of beyerdynamic gt 770's. Sound is great so far. So IRL, when someone is next to you talking, you can hear them where they're talking from. With the Social VR app, I can watch twitch streams or movies with another gearVR user next to me...and I hear that same distance/direction of sound. It's hard to explain, needs to be experienced.

- Content:


...to be continued after a night's rest.
 
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I've been increasingly spending more and more time with the GearVR. Once I get some more time this week I'll go into detail on the content. Good thing I waited cause I really want to check out the web browser!
 
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