GearVR is amazing

Bravo to Samsung and Oculus Rift! I just took my first jaunt into the GearVR gizmo with my GalaxyNote4 phone – and it was &#%@$!ing incredible.

Not sure how to best convey why it was rad. but that’s kind of a fun puzzle to chew over as well. eh. Well the tracking is fast/perfect, so it’s instantly a great “looking around device”.

But the res is also great (feels better resolution than old SD tv. not as crisp as my big HDtv. but it’s all around you, so it still feels better than an HDtv experience).

It’s just a trip to be looking around in the middle of hut where some malaysian family is eating, or on stage in the middle of some cirque du soliel group. Kept remembering to look behind myself. at one point happened to look over at an actor just as he tried to get my attention, which was a delightful magic coincidence moment (i assume).

there’s a series of spherical videos from Iceland that are just breathtaking. that clearly stood out as “this is the ballkicker, for anyone who doubts this tech”

plus there’s a 3D “sitting in a theatre” video viewer, which does a good job of making it feel like whatever videos you have on your phone are being projected 60 feet wide. watching my 9 month old drink from a bottle in HD slowmotion vid on this virtual movie screen was wildly heart warming/magical. (and I was thrilled to see I could watch my tv shows in this environ. something I was looking forward to doing on my bus rides). (i doubt a lot of this is going to work out too great on the bus though, because i don’t know how i’d look behind myself without a swiveling chair, or standing. and it’d probably be super creepy for others)

plus I played this cool game that was like Rez meets Amplitude. you look around to power up a Tron-esque console, then are moved forward on a platform that lets you look around and seeing cool stuff. triggering music by looking at certain sides of the forward path. This game was the experience where I accidentally touched the counter in front of me, and realized I was drifting around our kitchen while I looked around.

standing there grinning in the dark. so weird! (awesome)

I think this “presence” experience they talk about may not be so much about “really believing you’re someplace else” so much as “forgetting you’re aren’t someplace else.”
like, i was just looking around and soaking-in the various details of this cool Tron-minimalist-toon-shaded control console as it came to life around me, then accidentally touched the real world counter and it was a weird “oh yeah, I’m in my kitchen. need to be careful” moment.


Another really cool thing: turning on the pass through cam, so you can walk around, is a trip. like Strange Days. The live video is just lower res and slightly delayed from reality, so you end up looking at your hands picking things up and feels slightly off. which geeks me out … because : Strange Days!

Anywho.
I’ve gone from being nervous this tech/movement might be a hoax – to being nervous a mass audience won’t realize it exists fast enough to support further development.
(I haven’t heard of ANYONE else who owns a Samsun Galaxy Note 4, much less this $200 add on for it).
(and this seems much better than the Oculus Rift DK2 experince I had at the UNITE conference in August)(DK1 maybe?).

no nausea or complaints. however, a small portion of the lenses did fog up early on. seemed to come and go a lot.
Will be interesting to see if my hot burning fat eyes will ultimately be some kind of barrier. hmm.

anywho. THRILLING. excited for more!

(also, need to find some way to put vidHero style goggle half-circles on the front of it. 🙂

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