Samsung and Oculus on Wednesday unveiled the Gear VR -- a virtual reality wireless headset optimized for Samsung's Galaxy Note 4 phablet, also announced Wednesday.The Gear VR -- or "Samsung Gear VR Innovator Edition," as Oculus describes it -- will be compatible with a wide range of film, gaming, 360-degree video, and educational and experiential content. It will be released later this year at a price yet to be announced.Targeting VR enthusiasts, developers and other early adopters, the Gear VR has broken new ground."I guess it's the first time that a tablet is pairable with a VR headset," Lewis Ward, a research manager at IDC, told TechNewsWorld. "This could be a new avenue of exploration for VR technologies, and I suppose it's inevitable -- but it's extremely bleeding-edge for a company (Oculus) that hasn't got a product in the market yet." More on the Gear VRBuilt with soft, flexible cushioning and lightweight materials, the Samsung Gear VR is powered by the Galaxy Note 4's GPU and CPU. It uses the smartphone's Quad HD 5.7-inch 1440p AMOLED screen as its display.Oculus developed a new mobile SDK for the Gear VR and tweaked Android and the underlying GPU drivers for VR.The Gear VR has variations of the Oculus Tracker and firmware built into it, for accurate, ultra low-latency 3DOF tracking.It delivers sub-20 ms motion-to-photons latency, roughly equivalent to the most highly optimized experiences on DK2, Oculus said. |