We’re right on the cusp of moving into the Gear VR launch window Samsung announced at it’s Developers Conference last month. And we’re hearing retail devices are starting to appear. Now comes a series of video walkthroughs of the Gear VR’s user interface and early release software from a Czech website called ‘Samsung Mania‘.
OK, so the video isn’t the finest of quality, but the narrator of the video (in Czech with handy subtitles) claims the publication’s office received the device recently, presumably a review copy sent from Samsung themselves. The snippet of interesting info from the presenter is that he’s using the Gear VR while we watch, using screen mirroring to his Samsung Smart TV. The footage looks to then be captured ‘off screen’ with a the camera pointed at the TV in question, which explains drops in focus and generally poor quality of the video. There are 3 videos in total thus far, the last of which only appeared in the last hour or so as I write this so there may be more on their way.
Oculus Home and Related Apps including Oculus Cinema
The first video starts with a tour of Oculus Home, Gear VR’s current default hub area where you can browse, install and manage your content. It seems that everything in these videos is all from content provided with the device as the Oculus Store is currently offline and unusable.
The main hub area is clean and uncluttered, with tiles / buttons for ‘Store’ (Complete with Oculus Logo), ‘Samsung Gear VR’ tile, which presumably opens Samsung’s content portal once online, ‘Oculus 360 Videos’, ‘Oculus Cinema’, ‘Oculus 360 Photos’ and ‘Library’. You also have some preview tiles showing (presumably) slides from recently installed content or applications.
Highlights here are Oculus Cinema (check out the selectable, immersive and animated environments [2:17]) which includes a look at the in-movie user interface and movie selection interface – all very slick indeed. Also, Oculus Cinema is capable of showing multi-screen movies, few and far between I’d imagine, but the astounding looking RUIN is shown here. Also an interesting peek at the Gear VR settings screen where you can enable pass-through camera and alter ‘standard’ phone operations plus resetting the unit’s orientation.
360 Photos, 360 Videos and VR Gallery
Self explanatory in function of course, the 360 Photos and Videos apps are demonstrated here. It looks as if the unit ships with a fair selection of demonstration content to show off the capabilities of each application. Galaxy VR 11 is the first 360 Video launched and it’s a cool journey into the future complete with space travel and am intergalactic game of football. This looks entirely pre-rendered, a trailer for an upcoming game in fact. Also shown is an impressive looking trailer for a natural history film on Iceland. Whether these are in 3D as well as 360 degree format is difficult to judge here. The 360 Photos app gives us a glimpse at some of the interface design language
Anshar Wars Demo
We took a look at this title on the show floor at SDC 2014 and here we get a user’s view of the action inside the Gear VR.
See Also: 13 Samsung Gear VR Titles Shown at SDC 2014
The Gear VR is due for release ‘early December’ according to Samsung, so expect an avalanche of news over the next week or so – including a hands-on look from us.
Thanks /r/oculus for the heads up on this
