Author Topic: Gear VR- Worth it?  (Read 1668 times)

Anyone have the Gear VR? Is it worth it? Seems like a neat trinket

dude hell no you can just tape your phone to your face for free lmfao

If you have the S7 edge and stuff, yeah



get a vive
How about no. My computer can run it but I don't want to drop 800 dollars on a machine that will be either woefully outdated or dead in the water in a year.

If you have the S7 edge and earbuds and stuff, yeah its definitely worth it

I was going to suggest google cardboard but the gear vr has better motion tracking since its systems are built into it and your mobile device only acts as a screen, where cardboard I assume relies on the devices systems which aren't very good for something as intricate as VR.

if you can afford it sure, but the cardboard series is a tenth of the price and functionally the same besides the above

I have cardboard and can confirm it works fine enough to play around with, but to be honest you get bored with phone VR after a few days and never use it again.

right now the technology is in its infancy and is gimmicky.
VR is like the 3D movie fad, it too shall pass in a few years.

i'll wait till we get at least some semblance of matrix level immersion or die waiting

I have Google Cardboard.  It's cheap and gets the job done.

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.

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.

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.

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?