milk vr samsung gear vr 2

Today Samsung has announced that it’s adding a new member to the company’s family of curiously named ‘Milk’ services. ‘Milk VR‘—joining Milk Music and Milk Video—aims to offer a destination for curated VR video on the company’s Gear VR headset.

While Gear VR’s launch lineup was strong, it was also fairly limited. Today Samsung says it’s deploying a “technical preview” of the Milk VR application which will function as a destination for made-for-VR videos. The preview will be available to all Gear VR owners, with a full launch due at an unspecified later date.

See Also: Samsung Gear VR Detailed Review: Part Two – Experience, Gameplay Videos, and More

Samsung says that it wants to build up a destination of “regular VR user viewership.” Based on queues from the way it operates Milk Music and Milk Video Android apps, we’d expect to see Milk VR add more content over time—curated, not all-inclusive.

For now it isn’t clear what the initial video lineup will be, what tech it will be shot with, or whether or not it will be mono or stereo (3D) 360 video (though our best guess is on the former, for now). Going forward, there’s certainly an opportunity for Samsung to deploy content filmed with it’s yet-released Project Beyond VR video camera.

See Also: First Impressions of Project Beyond, Samsung’s 360 3D Camera for VR

What we do know is that the videos will be available for download at their full 4k x 2k resolution, or adaptively streamable for those with varying bandwidth. Whatever the case, Samsung says the content offered through Milk VR will encompass genres of music, sports, action, and lifestyle.

More detail to come once we’ve had a chance to try Milk VR for ourselves.

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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."
  • Don Gateley

    Humbug. They need to get the hell out of the way of providing and choosing content. I await that day before I open my wallet. If the mythical consumer RIft is similarly encumbered instead of using the open content model of the dev kits my interest in VR fades away. I see the controlling hand of Zuckerberg in this. It’s a damn shame you gave up control, Palmer.

    • Jacob Pederson

      Curated content is exactly what they need for wide acceptance to work. Why? Because even one experience with low frame-rate or incorrect fov or high latency leaves you ill for a couple hours. Think Nintendo seal of approval, with an eye toward preventing vomit. I totally agree with you that they should keep the Rift open on PC along side their branded storefront (like Steam provides a storefront, but doesn’t prevent you from installing GOG content.) One reason for openness is the uproar lock-down would cause among the grumpier folks out there, but a more important reason would be giving up the massive amount of free testing they get from the high-end enthusiast community. Frankly, because of the nature of the PC, it actually isn’t possible to completely lock a device to a certain storefront. Even if they did try to, it would be circumvented in hours :)