Initially brilliant and breathtaking but limited content makes the Gear VR a novelty for now
Samsung’s Gear VR is the closest thing yet to a consumer VR headset. This ‘Innovator Edition’ is supposedly a device for early adopters, enthusiasts and developers, yet it is a slickly designed product, both in terms of hardware and software. Anyone is free to buy Gear VR online and the company has collaborated with Oculus to provide an app store for content.
The newer headset costs £143 from Samsung. That would be quite a bit for a device that simply holds a phone to your head, like Cardboard does, but there’s a lot more to Gear VR; as it has built-in head-tracking sensors using technology licensed from market-leader
Oculus Rift.
STAGGERING
Everyone we tested the current headset on was staggered, sometimes quite literally, by the experience. It’s hugely impressive and genuinely immersive, whether you’re sitting on stage amidst Cirque du Soleil, following a herd of giraffe from a helicopter, exploring a beautiful narrow gully or perched vertiginously above the Las Vegas strip. Based on this alone it looks inevitable that VR will grow rapidly over the next few years.
Oculus’s head-tracking technology is spot on, accurately reproducing your head motions, while the Galaxy S6's high-resolution 2,560x1,440 display is capable of sharp visuals. The OLED screen updates quickly and has excellent image quality. The headset has a small touchpad on the side to let you navigate menus and select content. A micro USB connector lets the phone and headset communicate, plus there’s a light sensor to turn the display off automatically when its not in use. A micro USb port on the bottom lets you keep you phone charged while using it, it'shandy but the cable can get in the way when you're turning around to look at things.
The headset and phone together provide a respectable 96 degree field of view. The lack of peripheral vision is a bit disconcerting at first, but the head tracking is good enough to make it less of an issue. Our only gripe with the Gear VR is focusing the image. However much we played with the focusing ring on the top of the headset with we couldn’t get the whole image in sharp focus, but rather only the centre section.
Weighing in at 420g with the handset attached, it’s pretty comfortable to wear for short periods of time. Around 100g of that weight is in the straps, which still leaves a significant weight hanging from the front of your face. A warning to the vain; with three straps, this VR headset will mess up your hair pretty quick.
It takes quite a while to find a position on your head that’s both comfortable and keeps everything onscreen as crisp as possible. Once you get it comfortable there's little need to take it off, as you can use the Note 4's camera to passthrough a windowed view of the world at 60fps, so you can grab a drink or snack without a problem. The straps are easy to remove if you want, giving you a more social device that can be handed about for quick goes. Used like this the Gear VR really comes into its own, with everyone keen to have another go.
VIRTUAL WORLDS
The Gear VR uses Oculus's own content store, which includes panoramic photos and videos plus games and VR experiences. VR content takes up quite a bit of space, so you might find your phone's memory filling up quickly.
360 degree panoramic photos may not be the most exciting VR content by they are still the most effective and varied - you can easily find such images online and load them onto your phone. The sense of presence is powerful, and we couldn’t get enough of this kind of virtual tourism. The resolution of such photos is way in advance of any game or video content we’ve seen, and their stillness gives you a chance to appreciate that detail. VR experiences based around still images also work well, letting you navigate through environments by moving from one fixed point to another.
Most of the video available looked very compressed. Some clips were of a good standard but many simply weren’t taken from high enough resolution sources to truly convince. The Galaxy S6 is certainly capable of playing high-quality video, but attempting to stream video was a disastrous-looking mess. Downloads are better quality but Samsung still needs to find more high-quality content, and quickly with the consumer launch looming, if it’s going to hold people’s attention.
The Oculus Cinema app lets you watch 3D movie trailers while seated in a choice of virtual movie theatres. You can also watch your own movies this way, be they 3D or not. At present there’s no simple way to watch 3D content directly from YouTube on the headset. However, YouTube has recently announced that it plans to add support for 360 degree movies to the service, so we should then see better compatibility between the service and this device soon.
There is now a Netflix app though, so you can enjoy Bojack Horseman from the comfort of your own VR living room (which looks a lot like Bojack's to be honest). Video plays on a huge screen on the wall and fills your vision, it's impressively but suffers from teh same problem as all Gear VR content, in that you have to move your head, not just your eyes to focus on areas around the screen, just sit looking straight forward and the outer edges of the screen are annoyingly blurred.
There’s a reasonable range of games available, most are of the simple look and shoot variety but there's a handful of more creative gems among them, such as Esper and Totems in Dreamland. There’s not much support for the optional game controller, presumably as developers don’t want to further divide a small pool of users. If you’re looking to play serious games on a VR headset we highly recommend you hold out for the release of Oculus Rift or
HTC Vive next year.
^ Totems in Dreamland is one of the better Gear VR efforts
A VIRTUAL FUTURE?
We’ve resisted comparing Samsung’s Gear VR against its step-sibling, the
Oculus Rift DK2 (which uses the display from 2013's
Galaxy Note 3). Oculus is undoubtedly the trailblazer in VR, and now that the company is owned by Facebook it has the financial muscle to break into the mainstream. However, the Development Kit 2 headset costs $350 (plus shipping from the US and VAT) and really isn’t a consumer product.
The DK2 has to be hooked up to a PC in order to work, as it’s a VR display rather than a standalone device. Anyone who’s happy to tinker with applications and games will have a whale of a time with DK2 - just take a look on Youtube to see what you can get up. That said, a more advanced development version, Crescent Bay, has already been demoed and a consumer device will be released early next year.
The Samsung Gear VR is one of those bits of kit that make us glad to be technology journalists. It’s immense fun when it simply lands on your desk, but few should consider actually buying one. It’s a fantastic novelty, but the current paucity of content means it’s not a lot more than that. That said, if you own a Galaxy S6 and like the idea of VR then it’s a tempting treat. However this is a fast-moving area and the Gear VR is being squeezed both by Google Cardboard on one side and Oculus Rift and HTC Vive on the other. Samsung's middle-ground approach could prove to be the one that takes off but it's too early to say yet.
| Hardware (* from Note 4) |
|---|
| Resolution | 2,560,1,440* |
| Screen technology | OLED* |
| Field of view | 96 degrees |
| Latency | 20ms |
| Interface | Touch Pad and back button |
| Video inputs | none |
| Audio inputs | none |
| Audio outputs | minijack* |
| Dimensions | 198x116x90mm |
| Weight | 550g |
| Buying information |
|---|
| Price including VAT | £143 |
| Warranty | Five-year RTB |
| Supplier | www.samsung.com |
| Details | http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/gearvr/ |
| Part code | SAM-GV |
