So with the holidays coming to close and the new year in full action, I realized its been yet again a couple months in the way of a meaningful post. Truth be told, the time just hasn’t been there to make progress on my shop, therefore no new projects have been completed either. So in the interest of keeping the blog from stalling, I figured I’d post my first thoughts about a new Christmas present I gave to myself and received yesterday.
As some of you may know, VR is about to take the main stream by storm, with the heavy hitter Oculus and their flagship product, “The Rift” leading the way with its upcoming commercial release. But another product they had been working on with Samsung is the Gear VR headset, which essentially takes the power of the new Samsung Galaxy series of phones and turns it into the main display and processing center for a completely mobile VR experience. This had been released in beta forms for the Galaxy Note 4, but has been re-released for the more updated 6 phone series and I recently just picked up the Galaxy 6 Edge, pretty much for the sole reason of using it with this headset.
The initial boot up was quite simple. As soon an you plugged your phone into the unit, it told you to take it out and install the required software. This happened automatically after that and took about 20 minutes because my Internet connection sucks. But once all the software was installed, and the tutorial was complete, the menu showed itself in the middle of a huge room and the sense of presence this gave me was much more than expected from a headset for $99. It was almost immediate as to how quickly the interface was learned and ease of use the touch pad and back button were to give you a basic input function.
Though this unit can’t give the full VR experience that the Rift will do when it comes out, for 360 Degree photos and videos, this has been a remarkable experience. Just in a day I’ve been too Rome, Paris and Florance. I’ve flown with the Blue Angles and surfed through a blue tunnel wave in the Pacific, road on a speeder on Tatoonie and I’m just scratching the surface. Once my Internet connection is improved (installing Fiber tomorrow), I’ll give the Oculus video a try and see how it feels to have a whole movie theater to myself.
All in all I’ve been very impressed with this headset and it’s getting me even more excited for what the big boys are going to bring to the table when they start shipping. One thing is for sure, though we will still never be able to be in two places at once, these headsets and VR are going to make getting somewhere else a great deal faster.
To my friends, Beta, Aux and Tchay, you guys have done a remarkable job with this in the past few years and I though the original basement is gone, that meet-up allowed me to meet some great people who in turn have put out some amazing products. I look forward to the time I can get out to the west coast again and see what else you guys have brewing!
Downing's Basement 