IMMINENT: Samsung’s Gear VR is all set to be the first promising VR headset to the market.
By Bilal Iqbal
techknow beat
When it comes to technology, the next best thing is not the half-baked smart watches that cost way more than they should given the things they do, but a new class of devices that promise to transport you to an entirely new world.
Virtual Reality is no longer a subject limited to speculative science fiction movies and books. With three very viable prototypes already in the works, 2015 could be the year when the VR craze takes off. Sony has its Project Morpheus for PS4, Samsung has its Gear VR for the Note 4 smartphone and Oculus VR has its much-praised Rift headset.
The Oculus Rift and Project Morpheus are slated for release in 2015, but the Gear VR, announced last, might actually beat them to the market in true Samsung style. There is little concrete information on availability and pricing for the headset, but rumours suggest that it might come to the market by December at a not-too-exorbitant price of around $200 dollars (roughly 750 to 800 Qatari Riyals).
Part of the reason why the Gear VR is rumoured to cost less than what you would expect of such a cutting-edge device is that it does not use a screen of its own — it requires you to own a Samsung Note 4 and uses the phone’s screen to render the virtual reality scenes for you. So if you are planning to get the Note 4 anyway, the cost of buying into this exciting new tech is not that much. On the other hand, the total cost of the setup will set you back anywhere around QR3,600 later this year.
Given the high costs involved, the question you may ask is how well does it work. Samsung has a track record of rushing concepts to the market, anyone remember the early Gear watches? The first few watches that Samsung released felt a lot like early prototypes to early adopters and reviewers (hardly surprising given that latest smart watches have barely begun to breach the realms of acceptability).
One piece of info that may help put many minds at ease is that Oculus is behind the Gear VR. Oculus is currently the pioneering company in VR technology, with its Rift prototypes turning many sceptical people into true believers. Oculus has co-developed the hardware with Samsung and have also built the Oculus Mobile Software Development Kit that developers will be using to bring their games and apps to the Gear VR.
The final unit, according to Oculus itself, is not as immersive as say what the Rift might be when it comes out on PCs in 2015, but is still way ahead of anything being developed on the mobile platform. Early users also question how useful Gear VR can be for mobile gaming, especially because of the limited controls made available to you. Even so, there are still a number of interesting games in development.
There is a new edition of Temple Run in development for instance, dubbed the Temple Run VR, which will take you into a first-person experience. Then there’s Omega Agent, allowing you to strap on a jetpack and train to become a Cold War spy. Land’s End is another game for the Gear VR, a unique puzzler with an interesting look. Oculus itself is working on a dungeon crawler RPG in veins of the Legend of Zelda titles. Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4 (which is a game engine that is used by developers to make their games and is sure to power a number of games going forward) is also being ported to the Gear VR.
So even if the VR platform does not lend itself naturally to gaming (without the presence of a suitable controller), you can be sure that you will have plenty of games to play on the Gear VR.
But gaming is not the only thing that the Gear VR should be useful for. The Gear VR can act as your very own cinema screen, with no annoying toddlers in the backseat to ruin the experience for you. Hayden Dingman of the PC World, for instance, described the experience as “surprising”. In his words, “the thing that stuck with me most was Oculus Cinema. And by stuck with me most I mean ‘has probably killed movie theatres for me.’”
The Gear VR will be able to simulate a screen as big as the IMAX, in 3D. Dingman watched a demo of a film he had seen on a real IMAX 3D screen and came away with nothing but praises. The Gear VR could be the definitive film experience at home for movie buffs.
That said, a caveat: a number of people who have tried the Gear VR hands-on have found out that the Note 4 tends to get hot enough to the point where it has to shut down. We do not expect this to be a big problem while watching movies in a cold room, but your experience may be ruined while playing games, which are sure to be much more demanding on the phone’s chipset.
Also, the Samsung Wireless Gamepad that some of you may consider to get to play games properly on the Gear VR itself has not been well-received, with its layout and buttons getting flake (not to mention the additional QAR300 that you will have to shell out to get it).
At this point, there are a lot of unknowns about the Gear VR. The cost can be prohibitively high. Then it only supports one device at present. We wonder if it will at all be possible for Samsung to bring Gear VR support to the Galaxy S6, something that we feel will be needed to get more developers on board. Ultimately, it would seem that Gear VR is not poised to become mainstream any time soon, but works rather well for what is essentially the first VR unit to the market. You will not find yourself frustrated like early adopters of the Gear smart watch were. Not everything will be perfect once it launches, but if you dive in knowing well what it offers, you should find plenty to keep you happy with you investment.
*The author may be contacted at [email protected] or followed on Twitter at @tknobeat
