Samsung Gear VR: A limited edition portable Oculus Rift

Facebook's Oculus VR is creating the Rift. Sony's PlayStation is creating Project Morpheus. Google is... well, Cardboard exists. And now as expected Samsung just unveiled Gear VR. The company’s first virtual reality headset was developed with direct help from Oculus and it works pretty well. The Gear VR is a virtual reality headset powered by the Note 4. Gear VR is a virtual reality headset with a removable front cover where Samsung's newly announced Note 4 slips in, acting as the screen. 

Gear VR Innovator Edition is an add-on to the new Samsung Galaxy Note 4, using the phone’s GPU/CPU to power the device and the Quad HD low-persistence 5.7 inch 1440p AMOLED screen as the display. One of the best aspects of mobile VR is the completely untethered, easy-to-use experience: you connect the Note 4 to the headset, you put it on, and you’re in. That level of accessibility, combined with Oculus software to easily launch and transition between VR applications without taking the headset off, really makes the experience magical. 

The Gear VR is powered by the new Oculus Mobile SDK, and also uses variations of the Oculus Tracker and firmware built into the headset for extremely accurate, ultra-low latency 3DOF tracking. It’s impossible to deliver a high quality mobile experience without this kind of deep end-to-end hardware, software, and firmware optimization. As a result, we’ve been able to achieve sub-20 millisecond motion-to-photons latency, roughly equivalent to the most highly optimized experiences on DK2. 

Using the Gear VR is very similar to using the Oculus Rift: it's a completely immersive experience that detaches you from your real environment. But unlike the Rift, there are no wires tethering you and the Gear VR to a computer, so you can freely move about and walk around.  And since you strap the Gear VR to your head, you don't have to hold up to your face the entire time like Google Cardboard.  

The only information on availability is "this year," and there is no price just yet; it'll be available for purchase online and through "select carriers." Considering how low-tech Gear VR is, and the fact that Samsung's pushing a product into a market that doesn't really exist just yet, I expect the company will aim as low as possible in terms of pricing. 

Read More: OculusVR