Leading consumer electronic manufacturers have focused on wearable gadgets. Along with smartwatches, the wearable gadgets segment is coming up with virtual reality (VR) headsets. Facebook recently acquired Oculus Rift. Sony disclosed their focus of Project Morpheus. Now rumours are indicating that Samsung too is working on VR headset.
SamMobile has posted online that Samsung is working on a VR headset called ‘Gear VR’. We will hopefully get to see Gear VR at IFA consumer electronic show along with Galaxy Note 4 in September. IFA consumer electronic trade show is to be held in Berlin.
Samsung has designed Gear VR in such a way that users can dock smartphone in VR headset. This is not standalone VR headset like Oculus. The sensors in the docked smartphone will be used to track motion of Gear VR. Samsung will implement their popular AMOLED display technology in Gear VR.
The report states that, “Samsung can cut down manufacturing cost in great amount due to docking feature. It is possible for Samsung to introduce VR headset at low cost but knowing Samsung they wont do that because the company doesn’t like to launch first product in new segment at cheaper price tag. The concept behind Gear VR is same as Google’s Cardboard VR headset. Cardboard VR headset was given to I/O 2014 attendees by Google.”
Galaxy Gear VR headset will be comfortable to wear, it will be equipped with elastic head band and soft cushions on sides. Users wont have to remove headset to see the outside world activities as they have to do in Oculus and Sony. The Gear VR will have a ‘see-through button’ on right side of the headset which will use docked smartphone’s front facing camera to provide video of outside real world. This button will also have a touchpad beneath it to navigate through the UI on smartphone.
Samsung has planned to build separate interface for Samsung apps in headset. Samsung is getting the needed hardware from Sony and software from Oculus VR. The company has planned to release SDK for developers.
Source:efytimes
