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Gear VR- Worth it?
JoeysWorldTourLIFE:
I have Google Cardboard. It's cheap and gets the job done.
Pastrey Crust:
I've the rift DK2 and it's pretty fun to play with it. Of course, there are some drawbacks (gridded screen, not fully supported now a days) but when I first got it, there were very little VR games. Now that there's more, I'd say go for it. It's kind of nauseous when you first try it but then you get used to it.
CRITAWAKETS:
HTC Vive is the best, You know when someone who usually gets motion sickness after playing one second of a first person shooter says he did not feel any motion sickness that the VR is spot on.
Gear VR is severely limited by the power of the phone powering it. Its not going to run anything phenomenal.
sir dooble:
I have the Gear VR with an S7.
It looks pretty good and plays quite well.
The downsides to it though are that it doesn't have a motion controller (nor are there many, if any, compatible ones as far as I'm aware), and there's no motion tracking.
So you're not going to be picking stuff up with your hands or walking around a room. BUT, the headtracking is high quality and you can connect a bluetooth Xbox One controller for use with certain apps (Minecraft is interesting, although the camera movement is a little funky in its current alpha state).
I found that the VR doesn't make you that sick, but it varies from person to person. I did find on occasion that I felt my eyes pulling and it was tricky to get the view comfortable. But 9 times out of 10 I could comfortably sit with it on for an hour or two.
The quality of the images are pretty damn decent given it's a mobile phone about an inch from your face. You can notice that it's not super high resolution, and you can at times see the texture of the pixels. But I found it good enough for watching videos/gaming, although reading can be funny as text too small is a bit fuzzy around the edges.
The headset is fairly comfortable, although you will feel the weight of it on your face, particularly on your nose.
Wearing glasses underneath the headset is fine, provided your frames aren't too big.
The headset also leaves access to the phones audio jack so you can plug headphones in and have better sound.
The downside to that setup is that it's not uncommon that the Oculus App or your VR apps may crash and the only fix is to unplug your phone and plug it back in. This requires taking the faceplate off, unplugging and then replugging into the micro usb jack, which can be a bit fiddly, so you might want to take the headset off, which becomes a palaver when you have headphones over the headset and wires around your face.
One thing to be aware of is that the VR drains your battery like a motherforgeter and it makes your phone crazy hot. I've never felt the phone's heat on my face, but when you finish and take it out then it is alarming. I wouldn't recommend putting your phone down on fabrics straight after and definitely don't fall asleep with the VR on.
It's probably perfectly safe, but we are talking about a company whose tablets had a habit of exploding, so...
Overall I would say the Gear VR is a worthwhile entry into VR without being too expensive.
If you already have an S7 then it's an accessory worth giving a try.
It's not as impressive or expansive in ability as the likes of the Vive, Rift or PSVR, but you don't have to fork out hundreds for a powerful enough PC or a PS4.
I enjoy my Gear, and am very happy with it, but I would also like to own something more powerful and interactive too.
Alternat¡ve:
I imagine after I get bored with the games it will mainly be a VR Netflix/research machine. How good is it in these regards?