(keyboard noises and calm piano chords are heard in the background)
Greetings, and welcome to "An LGR Thing"
Today we're going to be looking at the Samsung Gear VR,
virtual reality headset
powered by Oculus.
And yes,
this is one of those things where you insert your phone
into it, much like the idea of Google Cardboard
but a heck of a lot more involved in practice, like
seriously, I've compared them both...
Let me just go ahead and talk about that really quick
because I've seen a lot of people saying
"Why would you get this
if this is a hundred dollars but you can get cardboard for like five or ten bucks?
Well, this is basically the idea of Google Cardboard:
This is the Knox Labs V2, it doesn't matter. You can make one yourself.
This just has a couple lenses in it and a couple of thingies for pressing on the screen
and this lets you get a REALLY rudimentary idea of the possibilities of VR.
But, uh, there's no sensors in here,
the lag is terrible,
there's a lot of latency issues
and it makes me sick using this. Absolutely instantly.
It's a good way to get just a quick
and dirty,
cheap way into VR, just to kinda see what it's like to look around in there?
But this is head and shoulders above it, absolutely.
I've been using this thing for about two months now
and now that the initial "Oh my goodness! It's so cool!"
factor has worn off, I would like to give some honest thoughts about it.
Let me just go ahead and open the package here because
for one thing,
the presentation of this whole deal is going to be a whole lot cheaper than
the Rift is at 600 dollars.
And, that makes sense. Y'know... it's just a little plasticky thing.
The plastic on here is all..
pretty cheap and whatnot
It basically is a big
*laugh*
a big phone case, right?
Uh, but it does have a lot more going on
as far as these lenses in here, there's adjustments right here
for different distances and everything,
and it's got a bunch of sensors built in
which are great, we'll talk about those here momentarily.
You do need a compatible Samsung phone to use this thing
so already that's limiting its audience, right?
You need a
Note 5, S6 edge+, the S6 or the S6 edge
in order to run this thing.
I have the Note 5 here
because I upgraded from an Edge,
I didn't like the edge thing after using it for a year and half.
That's what I ended up getting.
If you don't have one of these Samsung phones, this may not be the best choice.
If you do,
this is awesome!
It's only $99 for an experience that is really close
in many ways to what I had with the Rift DK2
and other earlier edition VR headsets
that were a year or so ago.
So here, lemme show you how it works.
First off, you have to take off any phone case
even the thinnest ones. I got one of these
REALLY thin phone cases from Samsung
I was thinking it'd maybe fit in here with the case
but nope.
What you do is just turn your screen on
so that it's right there,
and then it's got a little micro USB deal here...
and all you do is...
there you go!
And it detects that it's been plugged in,
it's actually already ready to go.
All you have to do is this
and when it makes that little sound, it has detected that you're looking at it.
It's actually got these little sensors in here
see now, the screen is turned off so it's not wasting your battery if
you're not using it so I could just leave it on right here
and plug it into this and
it's got the screen turned off and everything.
That's such a cool little feature.
You don't have to turn off the screen manually.
Another thing that is super convenient about this
is the fact that there's no set-up involved
if you have one of these phones and it's got the latest firmware and everything,
then there you go.
You just have to plug it in there and it'll bring up this little set-up screen
and it'll ask you a couple of questions
but other than that, it's there.
It's ready to go. You don't have to mess with drivers or weird ports
or HDMI incompatibilities like the Rift was
It was painless and
absolutely a breeze to get into.
Another great thing is the fact that it uses
the Occulus storefront for the Gear VR
and this is of course powered by Samsung so it does have a "walled garden" thing going on here
as far as you can't find and download anything through it to play on here
but there is a lot of great experiences already on that storefront that you can check out
and if you want to run your own APKs and whatnot, I'm sure you can do that. I haven't messed with that yet.
Uh, let's see...
Oh yeah! On the side here, this is really neat too
and I kinda wish the Rift had this - the DK2 at least.
It has this little D-Pad thing here
and this is like a capacitive touch-thing
you tap it and you can move up, right, left
and... up, down, left, right
*laughs*
and there's a button in the middle here that you just tap like you would a touch-screen.
There's also this back button here
which is a universal "back", so it just backs you out
of whatever you're doing
and those combined mean that you don't have to use a controller with this if you don't want to.
Like 90% of the stuff you can do with the Gear VR, you would need a controller for.
So all you do is have this
and look around at whatever you need to select
and then tap the side of your head to select it
or this to control yourself in a lot of games.
It makes a lot of sense!
Now if you do want to use a Bluetooth controller with this, you can use a PS4 controller
or the Samsung-whatever controller, I ended up going with this one here.
This is the Moga Power Pro.
I just find this to be a very solid, awesome controller for Bluetooth stuff
and it also lets you plug in your phone here
if you wanna do that whole thing.
I just wanted it for the Gear VR purposes
and it works great for that!
Like I said, most games and experiences on here don't actually need that.
One thing that you DO need
is some sort of way to deal with fog
because this thing is so sealed up in here,
and there's no ventilation, like, at all
so fogging is much worse of a problem on the Gear VR for me than it ever was on the DK2
so, this is one thing that people seem to really recommend.
It's called "Quick spit anti-fog".
You basically spray it on there and let it dry for a while
and then you gently wipe it off after it dries
and it works well after a couple of applications
but I found one that actually works better.
To be the Clarity "DEFOG it" wipes.
And these are little wipes that you can use ten times
and you just, *exhales* and rub it off
and it actually does a better job and is much less messy than the Quick Spit.
However, this is gonna last you a lot longer
whereas these are pretty expensive for just a few packs of them so
it's more expensive but it does work better in my experience.
If you want, you can just plug this little dealie right here
on the front of it to make it look a little less stupid.
*laughs*
I found that it comes off really easily
I mean, good grief.
So I just leave it off most of the time.
If you do leave it on, that means you can't use the camera pass-through ability
which is another neat little thing for the Gear VR.
So it actually uses your camera here
and when you're wearing this, you press the back button down
and you can enable "pass-through" and this lets you see without taking of the VR thing itself
so it just enables a quick and kinda crappy way of looking through it
*laughs* It doesn't work very well.
The lag is terrible and the FOV is like
*whoosh noise*
It's like looking through a picture frame about this big.
It's not something I'd recommend doing but it's good if you need to look out really quick
The thing is, it's so easy to take on and off
*phone makes noise*
There you go.
I am ready to use it
and I am looking around in VR right now.
It is that quick and simple.
Note that I did have to take off my glasses though,
there's not enough space in here to use this with glasses,
that's kind of, um, a problem.
Thankfully I can use it without glasses
because I'm... I dunno, something-sighted and it works okay.
I guess I'm near-sighted.
So, I can see things close-up pretty well.
But, you may wanna get contacts or just deal with blurriness
*laughs* if you have glasses, so that sucks.
Another disadvantage with this is...
when I got this, I was thinking you could use this for on-the-go
everything, right? Like... I had this crazy idea of "Man! I could get on a plane
or ride in the back of a car or train, bus, whatever", right?
and just have this on and sit back in my own personal movie theatre and
just watch a movie. Well, that doesn't really work in a lot of cases
because the sensors that are in here detect when you're moving and turning and everything
and even if you don't feel it so much, this thing will detect it because of the gyroscopes in there
meaning that if you're moving in a car, it'll think you're moving around in the virtual world so that makes it impossible for a lot of situations
however, there are some things like Netflix and the movie theatre and whatever
and they have a travel mode that you can enable to turn off that gyroscopic stuff
and you can basically still look around in 360 degrees very well.
You might be wondering why I haven't been showing any gameplay footage and there's a good reason for that.
At this point in time, the Note 5 does not work with any of my capture solutions.
I've tried seven or eight pieces of software for Android that's supposed to let you capture the screen and none of them worked,
I've tried the external solutions, y'know, plugging in a USB
which is another cool thing: it actually has a USB pass-through here
so you can keep it powered while you're using it.
Oh yeah, there's a couple of little things here that I forgot about:
you have a volume control right here
which is also really handy so you don't have to take it out to adjust the volume,
and it has a spot which makes it really easy to plug in your headphones there
Overall, I think they really thought this thing out pretty frickin' well!
This is just a wonderful way to show people VR without getting into some big complicated set-up
that's grounded to a computer somewhere or with a bunch of wires. Like, I tried to show people the DK2 when I was showing that thing off when I first got it
and it was a lot of hassle getting people to not get tangled up in the wires and all that
but with this, it doesn't matter.
It's just like, plop it on your head and adjust it to their head-size and that's it.
Maybe this thing right here that moves the screen backwards and forwards a little bit to make it clearer.
There are some notable downsides, though.
Disregarding the fact that you can't use this very well if you're in a moving vehicle,
it's convenient that it uses your phone
but it's also really inconvenient that it uses your phone.
*laughs* Think about it, right?
This is a phone screen and these are prone to getting dirty or scratched or anything
and when you look at the screen through these magnified lenses, a speck of dust is like half an inch big on the VR screen
and, uh, it's no good.
Or if this side gets dirty, or this side gets dirty,
I mean, I have two sides of lenses to worry about getting dirty or scratched
there's just a big potential for a really distracting artifact on the screen when you're using it.
The other thing is that it uses phone battery like crazy
and some of these apps will warm this thing up until it's hot to the touch
it's kind of scary actually... I don't like to use it for more than an hour at a time.
I have watched a couple of two-hour movies with it, and that was surprisingly awesome
with the included movie theatre app that it comes with.
It didn't get too hot and my eye strain was fine.
This actually has a higher resolution than what the DK2 had so
there's a little bit less of that "screen door" effect that you hear a lot of people talking about with VR
but, of course it's still there. It needs to be a lot more high-resolution for that to be gone.
But it is better than the DK2. But I'm sure that the Rift itself with the HTC Vibe coming out will have a lot better quality than this.
But uh, man.
Overall, this is such a neat little device.
I have had so much fun with this thing!
If you have a compatible phone, absolutely go for it! There is seriously no reason in my mind not to get it if you've got a hundred bucks to spare.
Obviously if not, whatever.
What you can do is go to Best Buy or wherever they sell flagship Samsung products
and you can try it out on the store floor and
they seem to have it set up pretty well at the stores I've tried it in so
give it a shot!
It's free there, so why not, man?
Another slight downside is that there's no positional head-tracking on this thing so
if you're moving forwards, backwards, this way, that way, up or down,
it's not going to detect any of that. It basically treats you as if your head is on top of a tripod and you're looking around in 360 degrees,
which is fine for most of what's on here
you see, a lot of 360 degree video type of apps
and games where you're sort of in one spot and looking around
that's fine when you design for that but it makes it makes it hugely disorienting
if you're in any situation where you want to do
this:
It just doesn't match! So it... kind of gets a little nauseating.
So you're going to need something like the Rift or the Vive to get that sort of experience because there's no external camera to check your head.
And of course, something to keep in mind, might go without saying, but I'm gonna say it anyway:
these are all gonna be running on phone hardware, games and apps and whatnot
and as powerful as these things are nowadays, they pale in comparison to the gaming PC experience that you're going to get with the Rift or the Vive
so y'know, if you're looking for something that's really really high-end, then this is not going to cut it for you.
It may be a little disappointing that you're basically playing mobile games on this.
But yeah! That's pretty much my thoughts on the Gear VR.
Wonderful, wonderful little device for an entry-level VR thing that is not freaking cardboard.
Nothing against cardboard because it's so cheap and it's so easy to just stick any phone in there and there you go: you can kind of see VR.
Quote marks everywhere because it's NOT, as far as I'm concerned. It's just looking at a phone screen really closely.
Whereas this is tracking a lot more. It's got the extra sensors so there's no lag or latency or whatever.
It's still at 60Hz so it's not as smooth as it could be
but it never made me nauseous except for those few moments where I expected head-tracking to be there but it wasn't there.
Right, so that's my thoughts on the Samsung Gear VR.
Once again, if you'd like to check out some of my other videos
on other VR products that I've touched on in the past, then you can click some of these
or just stick around here and look for things in the future I'm definitely going to be covering whenever I can get my hands on them.
I wanna check out the consumer version of the Rift and the Vive and whatever happens to come along on the Playstation thing,
uh yeah, I love this stuff. I'm optimistic about it but cautiously so because at this point, we're already seeing a fractured market: some developers not supporting this stuff
and others are... and y'know, one model or the other, it's going to be interesting to watch
So yeah, stay tuned, and as always, thank you for watching.