samsung-gear-vr-roundtable-podcast

Starting in just 10 minutes is a special edition of the Rev VR Podcast, the Samsung Gear VR Roundtable. Joining your host Reverend Kyle will be developers Justin Moravetz and E. McNeil, along with Cymatic Bruce and myself, Ben Lang.

Update: Steam is done! Recording coming soon.

Samsung Gear VR Roundtable Live Here, Starting at 4:30PM EST:

Roster:

  • Reverend Kyle – Host of the Rev VR Podcast
  • Justin Moravetz – Developer of Proton Pulse and Vanguard Valkyrie
  • E. McNeil – Developer of Darknet and its precursor, Ceiss
  • Cymatic Bruce – VR Evangelist and Road to VR contributor
  • Ben Lang – Founder & Executive Editor of Road to VR
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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Alkapwn

    Awesome roundtable guys! You guys covered a lot of great information and questions I’m sure most of us had about this.

    • Ben Lang

      Thanks Alkapwn, much appreciated!

  • illuzion

    Interesting times indeed!, it seems like almost every couple of days theres a significant VR breakthrough in one area or another. Excellent panel and a very significant day for VR, i’m interested to see how the general public receives the Gear VR.

  • John Pillow

    Thanks for the very informative roundtable!

    BTW, here’s the price:

    – Samsung Gear VR: €199
    – Samsung Gear VR + Samsung Gamepad Bundle: €249

    Source: http://samsung.hdblog.it/2014/09/04/Primi-prezzi-online-per-Galaxy-Note-4-e-Gear-VR/

    Maybe this is not the right place to ask, sorry in advance, but I’ve some questions on the Note 4 itself, as I’m not really a fan of TouchWiz and/or all the Samsung bloatware.

    By installing an alternative launcher is it possible to get rid of TouchWiz’s notification and quick-settings bar? Or an alternative laucher just changes the Homescreen and App drawer?

    Correct me if I’m wrong but by listening to John Carmack speech it seems Oculus worked on the Note 4 firmware, so by flashing the Note 4 with CyanogenMod (or similar solutions, if and when available) it will loose Oculus’ software and firmware optimization? Or the firmware Carmack was talking is actually built into the headset?

    Cheers,
    JP

    • Ben Lang

      Hey JP,

      I wish I had more answers for you, but there are a lot of unknowns right now. Hopefully over the next few days and weeks we’ll start to get a clearer picture at exactly what kind of custom modifications were made to the Note 4 and whether or not playing with the software could mess those optimizations up.

      • John Pillow

        Thank you Ben, guess I’ll keep a close watch on this, pretty excited especially after all the Dev announcements of the last few days.

        Cheers,
        JP

  • Simon

    I think that the ‘150inch screen at 2m’ is just a good way of explaining it to the lay person, and the ‘virtual TV’ will probably be one of the main reasons to purchase the Samsung Gear-VR. As a young upwardly mobile person why would you want to invest $1000’s in a big box TV for your (tiny) apartment, when you could have one of these for $300?

    Without positional tracking it will never truly be able to do VR, but for ‘TV like’ viewing experiences it will be fine/great/superb.

  • Ben Lang

    Well put, our issue with the terminology is that companies often use the ‘X inches at Y distance’ to obscure rather than quantity. For instance, Sony claims their HMZ viewer is “like a 750-inch virtual screen from 65 feet.” Who the heck has an idea of how big 750 inches is? Even 65 feet is not a distance that most people would be able to accurately judge. And the whole point is to hide the fact that they’re talking about a measly 45 degree (diagonal, probably) field of view.

  • George

    @Cymatic Bruce I don’t have a smart phone and am very interested in VR :P

    So the Samsung VR Gear doesn’t have a built in fan or heatsink? Seems if heat was an issue that should be a consideration.