samsung odyssey+ — Image courtesy Samsung

Samsung Reportedly to Release “multiple AR and VR products” in Coming Months

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Jun 3, 2019

Samsung hasn’t really said much about VR since the release of Samsung Odyssey+, the hardware refresh to its Windows Mixed Reality headset that came to market in October 2018. However at Augmented World Expo (AWE), the company offered a few brief statements to underline their continued commitment to the space. In short: Samsung has more AR/VR products coming down the pipeline.

Farshid Fallah, Samsung’s director of developer relations for XR and gaming, took the stage at an AWE panel talk on Thursday to talk a bit about the upcoming AR capabilities for Galaxy S10.

As reported by Variety, Fallah remarked the company has plans to release “multiple AR and VR products” over the coming months.

While Fallah maintained that “Gear VR was a good entry point” for the company, he however admitted “things have moved on” since its initial consumer release in 2015.

Image courtesy Samsung

Case in point: the latest version of the Gear VR headset itself was released in 2017. While it does technically support an impressive 14 different smartphones from the company, the entrance of dedicated standalone VR headsets from Oculus seems to have taken the wind out of Samsung’s collective mobile VR sails.

Oculus Working on Update to Improve Rift S Audio

Fallah however further suggested that it’s not over yet for a ‘Gear’ branded AR/VR devices. “We have other plans for Gear,” he said.

Whatever the case, we’re hoping to finally learn more about what happened to what the company dubbed “next mobile VR system” back at Samsung Developer Conference 2017, where they spoke about a hypothetical 6DOF standalone headset that would, for all intents and purposes, be positioned to compete with Oculus Quest.

Ted Joseph

I recall seeing a “Visor” VR patent by Samsung. I wonder if this is what they are going to release? It would be a game change if they did. The first company that can get the 200 FOV visor, at a light weight, 6Dof, and high res is going to take VR by storm…
- kontis
  
  You just entered a fantasy land of technology not currently feasible.
  - Rudl Za Vedno
    
    @kontis It’s totally feasible for Samsung as they are the only company that produces cuved oled panels and have also patented 200 degree FOV optics solution without the need implementing individual distortion profiles bc of the curved panels. The only problem is price and GPU current limitations. So no, they will not go with 200 FOV but they just might with 140-150. You’d need 2×2160-1600p panels to achieve that without lowering current ppd (pixels per degree) which is totally doable and could be run with reasonable rtx 2060/1080 as a minimum spec.
    - Smokey_the_Bear
      
      And if they went and built that, it wouldn’t sell very good. PRICE MATTERS! Oculus knew this with the Quest, that is why it’s selling extremely well. I’ve owned a gear VR, Vive, Odyssey, Oculus Go, & Oculus Quest, and from all that, the Quest is the best headset on the market, by leaps & bounds.
- Brian Burgess
  
  The problem would be price. Every feature you listed is important, but unless it can be sold at a price consumers are willing to pay, it’s dead on arrival. That’s why Oculus has completely shifted its strategy, and it’s one of the main reasons why they will remain the market leader.
  - Who’s this?
    
    Well if anyone can do it, Samsung can. They have enough money to buy and sell Facebook.
    
    Samsung has screen tech to rival LG and Sony (these three are the top three in the world) and all three have small panel experience, especially OLED. Then we have the beautiful curved tech from Samsung.
    
    All in all, the manufacturing monster that is Samsung can kick ass for sure.
    
    Do you know the price of the Samsung Odyssey typically? $250. Yep. It’s that cheap, and if they threw on three more cameras it would likely be $350 at max, and it’s superior to the Rift S in every way. And it’s made in 2017 for goodness sakes. The Rift S is designed after the Odyssey (It’s based on WMR, made by Lenovo, Lenovo is great, but Oculus cut too many corners for Lenovo to work with).
    
    Samsung has reach, they have tech, they have brand loyalty to rival Apple. So yeah, I’d say Samsung will take the market leader position overnight if they actually make a product to compete with the Quest.
    
    Why? Because they can afford to lower that price. And if they partner with Microsoft and Valve, then hot damn will Oculus be done for… Because the SteamVR ecosystem is unrivaled. The only thing that comes close is VivePort.
    - Brian Burgess
      
      I think you raise some fair points, but I am not confident that Samsung would become market leader over night with a stand alone VR device. They have brand loyalty in device categories that have already been proven. VR is still new in the eyes of general consumers, and it’s not a category of devices that Samsung has gained much general consumer recognition in besides the Gear VR, which has long faded from relevancy. You mention the Samsung Odyssey +, and it’s cheap price, yet it has failed to sale very much in comparison to the Oculus Rift. I am certain it will be eclipsed by the Rift S as well, despite that devices short comings.
      
      General consumers know Oculus for being a VR company exclusively. Brand recognition matters greatly and is one of the main reasons why no on has ever dethroned Nintendo when it comes to dedicated gaming portables, despite the presence of consistently better hardware by competitors over the years.
      
      Oculus has captured the marketshare, and more importantly, the mind share of consumers. Samsung would have to go full throttle with an ad campaign to rival all add campaigns to make a dent in that mindshare. Sure, Samsung could easily appeal to VR enthusiasts, much like how Sony appealed to console gamers with the Vita, and they would lose just like Sony.
      
      But, you know, competition is always good. I hope Samsung does go all in with a Gear VR stand alone and puts a fire under Oculus. We would all benefit from that.
    - Seanm57
      
      I think there are some errors in your post. Most especially, the take on the odyssey vs Rift S. I have both. Odyssey doesn’t hold a candle to Rift S in tracking or comfort. The latter is of course just my opinion. The controller are also inferior to Rift S touch controllers. The Odyssey only wins with the screen.
      - Paul P Jr
        
        Odyssey+ wins in sound and display over Rift S as the controller is and tracking is almost good as the 4 camera Rift S and Quest only being two bigger cameras and the price is way less. The original Odyssey had better comfort, display, sound and cost than the Rift S still and that is older. So the Rift S only has a good library and it’s for price better than the older Rift and Vive but on par with the Odysseys. The Valve Index is a step up all around than the Rift S and Odysseys. Just costly. They are saying the Index is the end of the first gen not even the beginning of the next gen so I guess we are still waiting for that.
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- Fanatoli Guyoff
  
  High res would be a calamity for people who like to use their VR functionally though.
- Matt Wortman
  
  No way! Not unless they can massively increase the Pixels per degree! The industry has been now switching over to LCD for RGB stripe to decrease Screen Door effect just on 110 degree FOV headsets! Now imagine jumping that up to 200 FOV on such PPI display’s currently on mobile VR systems! For 200 FOV you’d need at least duel 4K screens, if not higher! That just can’t be done yet on mobile hardware unless they’d Foveated Rendering and Eye Tracking which they’ve not made established for Consumer VR yet! Increasing to 200 FOV on these sorts of panels, even with LCD full RGB Striped subpixes, would undoubtedly be the Blurriest Lackluster Headmoutned Display that’d be 1 step forward and a massive 3 steps back in regards to clarity than from the standards of clarity being pushed these days! What’s gonna happen is this.. Future renditions of mobile hardware is gonna get better, increases to FOV say to 145 degrees with higher resolutions but similar form factor and weight… It’s gonna remain this way for a few iterations / generations of headsets until finally a massive overhaul to the Form Factor is finally set into motion! That plus even higher fields of view of course! It’s gonna be at least a solid 4 to 5 years down the line mate.. until something like that happens, where 200 degree Field of View headsets are commonplace! VR still hadn’t managed to break into the mass mainstream just yet for that fact! It’s close, Oculus Quest I do beleive is going to accomplish that, that final push into making VR totally mainstream that is! We’ll know for certain in the upcoming next few months and past this next holiday season, to see the full ripple effect it has on the industry as a whole! What’s hilarious to me is just how fragmented VR has quickly become! It’s a literal Arms Race and all these companies once working together stabbing each other int he back trying to make their own VR systems and stake a piece of that Pie! Obviously as time goes on, a select few will emerge as the main contenders of good VR, whilst the rest either fall into obscurity, merger, get bought out, or fail entirely into Bankruptcy! Then of course the remaining Main-Stayers duke it out in competitive marketing to get consumers into their VR ecosystem. I feel that Vive, Oculus, and PSVR will be dominating the Industry going forward, and possibly Apple and Nintendo might join the battle later on in the years to come! Tis exciting times nonetheless! VR at least has gotten to a level of refinement now as opposed to a product of demos and prototypes! Currently at it’s stage of development and Evolution we’re at the Cusp of it’s mass adoption as a peripheral that’s fully established and matured, then the next phases will be about improving things about it, rather than just trying to get people aware of it’s existence! Also that newfounded demand will help accelerate it’s advancement as companies continue to compete for consumers, as well as more corporate interest / investors investing into the VR ecosystem as a whole in general due to it’s popularity! It’s been a long road coming to this, ever since 2012 / 2013 days of Oculus prototype and Kickstarter! Though we’re finally at the dawn of Ubiquitous Consumer ready and massively adopted Virtual Reality down the entire pipeline, from both hardware and software having finally caught up with each other in order to, as Captain Picard would say “make it so!”
- Jarilo
  
  200 FOV? lmao you guys are dreamers.
Downvote King

Wonder what the chances are one of their Gear devices could offer Quest functionality.
- Lucidfeuer
  
  Unlikely Samsung would get licensing from Oculus to cannibalise products, unless Samsung has turned to Vive.
  - Downvote King
    
    Doesn’t Gear basically cannibalize Oculus Go already? I though Samsung and Oculus had a pretty close relationship on that, Gear is essentially an Oculus product as far as I understand it. Oculus branding is on the Gear headset, and the app that runs it is even called “Oculus”. Most of the apps run on both Go and Gear the same as well.
    - Lucidfeuer
      
      Yup but not sure their relation is still in actuality
      - Downvote King
        
        Well, as of their current phone and Gear lineup it seems they still have an active relationship. There’s obviously the question of whether a cell phone could actually handle Quest functionality anytime soon, but given Quest already runs on a generation old cell phone chip it doesn’t seem like a stretch.
Manwell C

I still use my GearVR/S10+ more than my Odyssey+ Looking forward to what Samsung has next
MeowMix

“Compete with the Oculus Quest”
You can’t compete if you have no content.
- kontis
  
  To be fair Samsung is capable of making high profile partnerships and quickly getting all the popular titles, like beat saber and super hot.
  Considering that all this stuff is already optimized for android mobile vr and usually made in Unity, “porting” to Samsung’s device would be extremely easy and not even much of a port.
- Andrew Jakobs
  
  Who says they haven’t got any content? maybe they’ll have Oculus Store support.. You have no idea what partnership samsung has cocked up.
- The Bard
  
  Steam, you fool!
  - Caven
    
    Steam doesn’t support mobile.
    - The Bard
      
      Who cares about tetris-like experience of VR mobile. In 5 years, maybe. PC VR is the way to go.
  - Charles
    
    I imagined that being said by Gandalf.
The Bard

Yeeep. That’s what I was talking about :) Let’s wait for Samsung with Odyssey 2 :)
Yoshi Kato

Hopefully they can make an announcement before the end of June. I would like to see if they have something that can actually compete with the Valve Index or Pimax 5K/8K.

So far they’ve basically been copy cats in the VR arena, without any real innovation. Let’s see something that actually pushes the boundaries. They’ve got the tech and resources.
- The Bard
  
  ???? Odyssey+ is the best headset to date. With anti-SDE technology nobody has. Go, find a doctor.
  - Yoshi Kato
    
    Putting a glorified blur filter on the screen is at best a band-aid. The tracking technology is just sub par windows MR tech. Would they have even came out with a PCVR headset without the Microsoft reference design and platform? I’m talking about true innovation, not incremental improvements to mediocre headsets.
    
    I suppose if the only VR tech you’ve tried is 1 gen stuff or windows VR stuff, I guess it would be at the top. I would even recommend it to someone new to VR. Not a bad headset (especially for the price), but not a contender to the Valve Index or Pimax 5K. Hell, I would choose the Rift S or HP Reverb over it.
    - The Bard
      
      Rift S (hit) edition. Blurred image due to low resolution. Gray blacks due to LCD and intense tracking problems from the beginning. Everybody, beside Yoshi Kato knows it was just Steam Vr default subsampling setting of 100% (Vive was set to 150%) which caused the blur! Wake up man, O+ is the sharpest headset out there, with wonderful colors, wonderful AKG speakers… for 299$ !!!! 299$, not 500 or 1000 USD! You silly!
  - Ratm
    
    Anti sde tech.. dat a filter over oled screen that shouldn’t exist, it can only make things blurry , just like those anti sde subpixels that all they do it making the digital information roundy.. Just because its a way to cover edges.. All these is just cheap crappy technologies to slow vr market and increase profit, all this will pass in history.. Just like Palmer did.
Immersive_Computing

Wish to see Samsung move away from Windows MR tracking if they produce another PC class headset, otherwise its runs the risk of being another Reverb with a pretty display but crippled tracking.
- jj
  
  then they would need to create an entire base station system, which theyre not gona do
  - Immersive_Computing
    
    Simple answer, SteamVR lighthouse 2.0
    - jj
      
      As much as i like base station tracking, theyre not going to ship half theyre product bundled all relying on half being a valve product. as good as they are at partnering, thats just too much to rely on for longevity.
    - The Bard
      
      this thing doubles the cost. no sense.
    - fforcey
      
      The whole purpose of untethered headsets to compete with the quest is to move away from archaic stuff like base stations, it would defeat the whole purpose. Samsung would do much better to just focus on improving inside out tracking with more cameras on its headset (quest has only 4).
  - The Bard
    
    5 or 6 cameras like Quest, their own driver for Windows with entry to Steam VR and Open XR and they would be fine.
Rudl Za Vedno

Yes baby… Give me 200 FOV HMD you patented with RGB OLED panels and I’ll upgrade in a heartbeat. To be honest even O+ with better comfort and 140 H FOV would open my wallet.
- ShaneMcGrath
  
  Absolutely,
  Would love to see a new Odyssey with more powerful processor and more FOV,Also have a wireless adapter option for it.
TonyVT SkarredGhost

I bet on a standalone AR/VR hybrid. In an interview of some months ago, Samsung president told that he was intrigued by hybrid headsets
- Moe Curley
  
  I think AR is going to be flipped from current model of “content projected over reality onto clear visor” to ” reality projected from cameras into VR” like Pico just released with Volvo. No more 60 degree FOV in AR.
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Jarilo

Samsung Odyssey has been the king of WMR platform , you guys think one of the biggest display makers is going to let HP have this spot now? If you can hold off, you can take it to the bank that by the end of the year a new Samsung Odyssey 2 will be out that will smash the Reverb. Still same FOV though, will you guys let this go? we haven’t hit a good standard for clarity and resolution yet, so let this go or buy a Pimax.
- The Bard
  
  I hope Samsung will use curved OLED for 210 FOV. ANY OLED display from smartphone can do it now and we are not talking about 180 angle bending, but just 25% or so. It is only the will of Samsung to release wide FOV OLED, high-resolution Odyssey 2. Others don’t have the tech.
  - Jarilo
    
    Problem is you have to fill that FOV with pixels, meaning that to compete with the clarity on the Reverb you need an even higher res to match it. The Reverb demand has in a way proved that resolution is the #1 the VR market wants. Heck, people are paying 600+ dollars for the WMR platform with those controllers and only two camera tracking in 2019..a platform with sub-$200 dollars with the LCD 1440p display (that’s what I paid for the Acer).
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The Bard

…an complete silence. November 2019. Will they release Odyssey 2 before Christmas?
Agent86

I want it. Odyssey was the best one out of ALL that I’ve tried and I have purchased every single one as they come out.
Unfortunately the quality of VR graphics of ALL them are not quit that great yet. Odyssey was better, but I’m still waiting to ditch my triple screens for better image quality. I’m sure eventually video cards will be able to push the quality to higher quality VR but it’s not quite there yet. I look forward to purchasing the next gen Samsung model and prefer to be a Samsung Customer over Oculus, Pimax, HP or valve. etc. So let’s release this thing so I can buy it.