5 ms·

Samsung's Gear VR Is a Portable Oculus Rift for the Galaxy Note 4

68 points by geetee 12y ago

readerrrr 12y ago
Their presentation, featuring John Carmack at 1:32:45. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRLy0QQI6xU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRLy0QQI6xU
- chucknelson 12y ago
  And so you don't have to skip through it yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRLy0QQI6xU&feature=youtu.be&t=1h32m33s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRLy0QQI6xU&feature=youtu.be... Edit: Oh man, he sure doesn't hold back on the technical lingo.
- FrojoS 12y ago
  Thanks. So, according to Carmack, the IMU Sensor in the phone is not used but they have a separate on in the frame which is faster and more precise.
rizwan 12y ago
It doesn't appear to have positional sensors (the Oculus DK2 does, with a stationary dongle to compare your relative head movements). It is very disorienting if you only have rotational support (as if your head's at the same point in space) and not also positional (head moving forward, backward, up, down, left, right, etc.)
- andybak 12y ago
  Is there any sensor or combination of sensors in modern phones capable of doing this? I suppose the obvious one is to use the front-facing camera and some external markers but that might be very CPU-intensive.
  - yincrash 12y ago
    Google Tango is attempting to accomplish it by using the camera sensor to measure positional changes.[1] They showed it off at Google I/O, but it was a bit eclipsed by Cardboard (probably to the chagrin of the Tango team). [1] https://www.google.com/atap/projecttango/ https://www.google.com/atap/projecttango/
    - efraim 12y ago
      Project Tango doesn't just use a camera to track position, it uses structured light - like the first kinect - with an infrared projector and camera to build up a 3D model of the environment. https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Project+Tango+Teardown/23835 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Project+Tango+Teardown/23835
andybak 12y ago
In case people have forgotten there are many similar DIY solutions based on this: https://cardboard.withgoogle.com/ https://cardboard.withgoogle.com/ I've got one and there's quite a few fun demos and small games in the Play Store that work with it.
Relys 12y ago
Called it: http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/1xy2aq/why_not_eliminate_hardware_redundancy/ http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/1xy2aq/why_not_elimi... Here's the 3D HMD I created for my Galaxy S4: https://i.imgur.com/eCxH4co.jpg https://i.imgur.com/eCxH4co.jpg I spent about $15 on that. $5 for lenses off of ebay, $5 for strap, and $5 for 3d model. Here's my solution for 6DOF: https://i.imgur.com/Gfl3ERY.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Gfl3ERY.jpg I took a PS3 eye cam and cut out the IR filter and replaced it with a sheet of floppy disk to block visible light. Then I went to radio shack and bought 3 IR leds, 30OMH resistors and power supply. I'm using tridef 3D to render SBS 3D w/ oculus plugin to distort screen to accommodate lens curvature. I'm using splashtop/kainy to stream to phone. I'm using facetracknoir/FreePie to do the head tracking.
swalsh 12y ago
Before graphics cards were standard, very few games supported them. Eventually more and more games started supporting specific cards, and then people started buying the cards. Today virtually all games support them, and if you have a gaming PC, you have a card. While the Oculus still looks to be competitively better, seeing the market expand can only be a positive signal for VR.
MartinMcGirk 12y ago
You know what this is going to be great for? Travelling. I'm facing a flight from Scotland to Australia in December where I'm going to be sat in economy class on a no-frills Air-China flight for god-only-knows how long, and my options to distract myself are currently either read a book on my kindle, or play or watch something on the iPad. I would kill for one of these. The problems with my existing options are that I can be distracted by seeing people moving around next to me, or I can check my watch absent mindedly, or one of many things might happen that could bring me back into the reality of being sandwiched into a sweaty tin can. Time can pass very slowly when you're travelling. VR on the other hand completely transports your mind to a place where time isn't really relevant anymore. You need to block out all of your surroundings to really make it work, which means no seeing other passengers get up for toilet breaks, no listening to the engine buzzing along as you read. If I could put this headset on with a decent pair of headphones, and all of a sudden be flying around space in some mobile equivalent of Elite:Dangerous or watching a movie in properly immersive 3D then time would just speed by and my flight wouldn't be so bloody awful. I've got an Oculus DK2, but I sadly can't lug my beast of a desktop PC on to a flight with me to power it. In terms of being the VR headset of choice for gamers, I'm pretty convinced that Sony will eventually win that battle with their PS4 Project Morpheus headset. This won't compete with either of those two excellent experiences, but I think that as a traveling accessory at least, a wireless headset that uses your phone as a screen could be a god-send.
- StavrosK 12y ago
  Why do you think Sony will win?
  - MartinMcGirk 12y ago
    I'm a bit late in replying, but hopefully you'll still see this. My current reasoning goes something like this: The Oculus is aimed at high-end PC gamers. I know this because I have a desktop running an i7 3.5GHz quad core processor with 16GB of RAM and a £200 NVIDIA GTX 760 graphics card, and my PC still struggles occasionally to keep frame-rates high enough for VR. And that's just the DK2; expectations are that the consumer version will have a higher resolution and require even more oomph to work. Your average person that plays computer games on a PC is unlikely to have the resources available to commit to that kind of hardware expenditure. My flatmate for instance plays a lot of games on steam, but they're mostly older games. If he wanted to get an Oculus he'd have to pay £300 for the headset, then another £200 (at least) for a new graphics card, more for a new processor (apparently some of the demos can be quite CPU intensive) and then he'd need to make sure his PSU could cope with all that extra hardware. That's a lot of money up front to make VR work. I should know because I just went through it. Sony on the other hand has over 10 million PS4's in the wild, all running the same specs, and all with no upgrade path. If Sony can make a VR headset that runs against the PS4 specifications, even at lower graphics levels, then for PS4 owners the road to VR costs whatever Project Morpheus costs, and no more. Lets put it on equal pegging with the Oculus at around £300. That's a much easier sell. Further to that, people own computers for a whole bunch of reasons. People work on their computers, they code, and they edit videos on them. Being able to play games for them is only part of the value they paid money for. Some people do have PC's purely for games, but I'd be surprised if most people used their PC's primarily for gaming. PS4 owners on the other hand have already shelled out money for a dedicated gaming device. People in that situation (so my theory goes) should be more easily sold on a VR gaming accessory. The way I see things panning out is this. The Oculus will likely continue to provide the state-of-the-art in VR experience for the real VR fanatics or the hard core PC gamer crowd. They will also probably scoop up a whole bunch of professional users too, in the form of architects or engineers or the like. But the costs of all the peripheral PC equipment you need to make the Oculus a decent experience will see off the "mainstream". In my view, it'll take someone like Sony (or an xbox equivalent) to offer a lesser, but good-enough, product to a large audience of people who are already bought into "gaming" to really make VR a viable and mainstream gaming platform. I think Sony stand a pretty good chance of "winning" for those reasons.
cdcox 12y ago
A teardown last year showed the Oculus DK2 was using a Galaxy Note 3 as its screen system [0]. Being able to pull the phone out seems like a logical enough step. Though I wonder how much of the 'other stuff' like positional sensors etc they decide to include. https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Oculus+Rift+Development+Kit+2+Teardown/27613 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Oculus+Rift+Development+Kit+...
- GrantS 12y ago
  Thanks for the link, but perhaps you meant last month? The tear down appears to be from 33 days ago.
- StavrosK 12y ago
  Oh wow, there's even the space for the button and speaker and things! It's the exact component used for phones...
yarrel 12y ago
Interesting brand dilution for Oculus there.
- TulliusCicero 12y ago
  It's almost like they're prepping consumers for 'real' VR by giving them something that's obviously a half measure but still works decently well.
mrfusion 12y ago
I'm confused. Is this a preview of what the CV1 will be? Or is this a separate product?
- georgemcbay 12y ago
  All I know of it is from the article, but it seems to be a separate product, one that uses the Samsung Note 4 entirely for display and sensors. It is more like a really fancy version of the Google Cardboard VR (and one that only fits a Note 4) than a Rift, AFAICT. I assume whatever Oculus helped with was mostly to do with software and/or helping Samsung spec out the sensors used in the phone to give a decent VR experience.
KaoruAoiShiho 12y ago
Did anyone see the bloomberg coverage of the event? Completely whacky, it's all about how Samsung is fake launching stuff to get ahead of apple without talking about VR at all. Sooo weird, it just goes to show how far the media has its ass stuck up its head sometimes.
wildpeaks 12y ago
If you can use the mobile's back camera like Structure Sensor does, it could even choose between VR and AR based on the app :) Also if you later can use Google Tango with it, you'd even have both depth + color feeds for AR, not just color, which helps realism when you add 3D elements in it, or even simply to sneak parts of the real world into VR (like in youtu.be/fEiyzJDFiJI). Natural interactions, realistic rendering, latency (and battery life :) are definitely the next big battlefields.
LeicaLatte 12y ago
Facebook is starting to kick ass. They have the coolest platform. Again.

68 points by geetee 12y ago

Their presentation, featuring John Carmack at 1:32:45. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRLy0QQI6xU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRLy0QQI6xU

chucknelson 12y ago
And so you don't have to skip through it yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRLy0QQI6xU&feature=youtu.be&t=1h32m33s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRLy0QQI6xU&feature=youtu.be... Edit: Oh man, he sure doesn't hold back on the technical lingo.
FrojoS 12y ago
Thanks. So, according to Carmack, the IMU Sensor in the phone is not used but they have a separate on in the frame which is faster and more precise.

rizwan 12y ago

It doesn't appear to have positional sensors (the Oculus DK2 does, with a stationary dongle to compare your relative head movements). It is very disorienting if you only have rotational support (as if your head's at the same point in space) and not also positional (head moving forward, backward, up, down, left, right, etc.)

andybak 12y ago
Is there any sensor or combination of sensors in modern phones capable of doing this? I suppose the obvious one is to use the front-facing camera and some external markers but that might be very CPU-intensive.
- yincrash 12y ago
  Google Tango is attempting to accomplish it by using the camera sensor to measure positional changes.[1] They showed it off at Google I/O, but it was a bit eclipsed by Cardboard (probably to the chagrin of the Tango team). [1] https://www.google.com/atap/projecttango/ https://www.google.com/atap/projecttango/
  - efraim 12y ago
    Project Tango doesn't just use a camera to track position, it uses structured light - like the first kinect - with an infrared projector and camera to build up a 3D model of the environment. https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Project+Tango+Teardown/23835 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Project+Tango+Teardown/23835

andybak 12y ago

In case people have forgotten there are many similar DIY solutions based on this: https://cardboard.withgoogle.com/ https://cardboard.withgoogle.com/ I've got one and there's quite a few fun demos and small games in the Play Store that work with it.

Relys 12y ago

Called it: http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/1xy2aq/why_not_eliminate_hardware_redundancy/ http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/1xy2aq/why_not_elimi... Here's the 3D HMD I created for my Galaxy S4: https://i.imgur.com/eCxH4co.jpg https://i.imgur.com/eCxH4co.jpg I spent about $15 on that. $5 for lenses off of ebay, $5 for strap, and $5 for 3d model. Here's my solution for 6DOF: https://i.imgur.com/Gfl3ERY.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Gfl3ERY.jpg I took a PS3 eye cam and cut out the IR filter and replaced it with a sheet of floppy disk to block visible light. Then I went to radio shack and bought 3 IR leds, 30OMH resistors and power supply. I'm using tridef 3D to render SBS 3D w/ oculus plugin to distort screen to accommodate lens curvature. I'm using splashtop/kainy to stream to phone. I'm using facetracknoir/FreePie to do the head tracking.

swalsh 12y ago

Before graphics cards were standard, very few games supported them. Eventually more and more games started supporting specific cards, and then people started buying the cards. Today virtually all games support them, and if you have a gaming PC, you have a card. While the Oculus still looks to be competitively better, seeing the market expand can only be a positive signal for VR.

MartinMcGirk 12y ago

You know what this is going to be great for? Travelling. I'm facing a flight from Scotland to Australia in December where I'm going to be sat in economy class on a no-frills Air-China flight for god-only-knows how long, and my options to distract myself are currently either read a book on my kindle, or play or watch something on the iPad. I would kill for one of these. The problems with my existing options are that I can be distracted by seeing people moving around next to me, or I can check my watch absent mindedly, or one of many things might happen that could bring me back into the reality of being sandwiched into a sweaty tin can. Time can pass very slowly when you're travelling. VR on the other hand completely transports your mind to a place where time isn't really relevant anymore. You need to block out all of your surroundings to really make it work, which means no seeing other passengers get up for toilet breaks, no listening to the engine buzzing along as you read. If I could put this headset on with a decent pair of headphones, and all of a sudden be flying around space in some mobile equivalent of Elite:Dangerous or watching a movie in properly immersive 3D then time would just speed by and my flight wouldn't be so bloody awful. I've got an Oculus DK2, but I sadly can't lug my beast of a desktop PC on to a flight with me to power it. In terms of being the VR headset of choice for gamers, I'm pretty convinced that Sony will eventually win that battle with their PS4 Project Morpheus headset. This won't compete with either of those two excellent experiences, but I think that as a traveling accessory at least, a wireless headset that uses your phone as a screen could be a god-send.

StavrosK 12y ago
Why do you think Sony will win?
- MartinMcGirk 12y ago
  I'm a bit late in replying, but hopefully you'll still see this. My current reasoning goes something like this: The Oculus is aimed at high-end PC gamers. I know this because I have a desktop running an i7 3.5GHz quad core processor with 16GB of RAM and a £200 NVIDIA GTX 760 graphics card, and my PC still struggles occasionally to keep frame-rates high enough for VR. And that's just the DK2; expectations are that the consumer version will have a higher resolution and require even more oomph to work. Your average person that plays computer games on a PC is unlikely to have the resources available to commit to that kind of hardware expenditure. My flatmate for instance plays a lot of games on steam, but they're mostly older games. If he wanted to get an Oculus he'd have to pay £300 for the headset, then another £200 (at least) for a new graphics card, more for a new processor (apparently some of the demos can be quite CPU intensive) and then he'd need to make sure his PSU could cope with all that extra hardware. That's a lot of money up front to make VR work. I should know because I just went through it. Sony on the other hand has over 10 million PS4's in the wild, all running the same specs, and all with no upgrade path. If Sony can make a VR headset that runs against the PS4 specifications, even at lower graphics levels, then for PS4 owners the road to VR costs whatever Project Morpheus costs, and no more. Lets put it on equal pegging with the Oculus at around £300. That's a much easier sell. Further to that, people own computers for a whole bunch of reasons. People work on their computers, they code, and they edit videos on them. Being able to play games for them is only part of the value they paid money for. Some people do have PC's purely for games, but I'd be surprised if most people used their PC's primarily for gaming. PS4 owners on the other hand have already shelled out money for a dedicated gaming device. People in that situation (so my theory goes) should be more easily sold on a VR gaming accessory. The way I see things panning out is this. The Oculus will likely continue to provide the state-of-the-art in VR experience for the real VR fanatics or the hard core PC gamer crowd. They will also probably scoop up a whole bunch of professional users too, in the form of architects or engineers or the like. But the costs of all the peripheral PC equipment you need to make the Oculus a decent experience will see off the "mainstream". In my view, it'll take someone like Sony (or an xbox equivalent) to offer a lesser, but good-enough, product to a large audience of people who are already bought into "gaming" to really make VR a viable and mainstream gaming platform. I think Sony stand a pretty good chance of "winning" for those reasons.

cdcox 12y ago

A teardown last year showed the Oculus DK2 was using a Galaxy Note 3 as its screen system [0]. Being able to pull the phone out seems like a logical enough step. Though I wonder how much of the 'other stuff' like positional sensors etc they decide to include. https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Oculus+Rift+Development+Kit+2+Teardown/27613 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Oculus+Rift+Development+Kit+...

GrantS 12y ago
Thanks for the link, but perhaps you meant last month? The tear down appears to be from 33 days ago.
StavrosK 12y ago
Oh wow, there's even the space for the button and speaker and things! It's the exact component used for phones...

yarrel 12y ago

Interesting brand dilution for Oculus there.

TulliusCicero 12y ago
It's almost like they're prepping consumers for 'real' VR by giving them something that's obviously a half measure but still works decently well.

mrfusion 12y ago

I'm confused. Is this a preview of what the CV1 will be? Or is this a separate product?

georgemcbay 12y ago
All I know of it is from the article, but it seems to be a separate product, one that uses the Samsung Note 4 entirely for display and sensors. It is more like a really fancy version of the Google Cardboard VR (and one that only fits a Note 4) than a Rift, AFAICT. I assume whatever Oculus helped with was mostly to do with software and/or helping Samsung spec out the sensors used in the phone to give a decent VR experience.

KaoruAoiShiho 12y ago

Did anyone see the bloomberg coverage of the event? Completely whacky, it's all about how Samsung is fake launching stuff to get ahead of apple without talking about VR at all. Sooo weird, it just goes to show how far the media has its ass stuck up its head sometimes.

wildpeaks 12y ago

If you can use the mobile's back camera like Structure Sensor does, it could even choose between VR and AR based on the app :) Also if you later can use Google Tango with it, you'd even have both depth + color feeds for AR, not just color, which helps realism when you add 3D elements in it, or even simply to sneak parts of the real world into VR (like in youtu.be/fEiyzJDFiJI). Natural interactions, realistic rendering, latency (and battery life :) are definitely the next big battlefields.

LeicaLatte 12y ago

Facebook is starting to kick ass. They have the coolest platform. Again.