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

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inFORM : A Giant leap at Virtual Reality

Ever felt an urge to slap your friend but couldn’t as they are far away. Well now that dream is about to come true.

inFORM is a Dynamic Shape Display which is being developed by Tangible Media Group which is a part of MIT Media Labs, led by Professor Hiroshi Ishii. inFORM can render 3D content physically so users can interact with digital information. Also it can interact with physical world for example moving certain things on table.

Remote participants in a video conference can be displayed physically, allowing for a strong sense of presence and the ability to interact physically at a distance. With Oculus and Project Morpheus the market of Virtual Reality is already quite hot and inFORM takes it to a whole new level. It means you an play with your friend a game of chess even when sitting in different countries. So while you are having a VR walkthrough in the park, the inFORM surface can simulate its surface in accordance to where you are in your VR world, you can feel different surface like grass, rocks maybe river. Now that would be truley impressive experience.

The technology behind inFORM is inspired by the pin screens which are used for animation purposes. Each block in inFORM is connected to a motor and controlled by a laptop. Using the inputs you can not only move the pins to render digital content physically, but can also register real-life objects interacting with its surface , for which they have hacked the Microsoft Kinect.

Maybe we are closer than we think in terms of interacting with real world atoms instead of digital pixels. We are back into the physical world; the circle seems to be complete.

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