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My thoughts on Virtual Reality
10 years ago
It was awesome, but not as amazing as I had thought it was going to be.
First of all, I should start off by saying I was using Samsung Gear VR, it's a headset you place your phone into. The games were cool and worked really well. The 3d was perfect, by far the best 3d I've ever seen aside from real life, and by the way this 3d was just as good as real life. I never got headaches or felt sick, honestly my phone was the limiting factor and overheated eventually. Honestly, the thing keeping the Gear VR from being awesome is the screen and games.
It's still a phone so the games aren't too far off from your average phone game, but a few stand out. It's an unfinished game still where you can fly a dragon around. You guide it with the direction you look in and you can do flips, rolls, dives, and fly through rock formations. It's really fun and there were a few times where I felt my stomach drop as if I was on a roller coaster. Another game is a basic rts, you build bases and move your units around the map, but what makes it awesome is that the map is a hologram on a table in front of you, it's as if you're a commander controlling a battle that is many miles away from you. Another experience I really enjoyed was the theater. I was able to sit in my own imax and watch The Martian in 3D, it was really awesome! It really doesn't hit you until you look around, you're sitting in your chair watching a movie and when you look to your side, what do you see? More chairs and an isle leading to the top of the room. It really feels like you're there, and it all has scale, since it's in 3D you can see how big things are and it makes them feel real. You can also watch movies on the moon, in a home theater, in a dark void; and as the size of an ant in blades of grass, watching movies on a gigantic phone, there are even mushrooms growing behind it that look the size of trees.
Now for it's flaws. There is a thing called the "Screen Door Effect" and it's incredibly noticeable. To get the field of view needed to make VR on the phone to work, the lenses have to zoom in on the screen a lot. So much so that you can start to see the spaces in between the pixels. This causes several problems. The first is color, some of them look muddy because there aren't as many pixels to work with to make up the colors you see on the screen. Blurriness is another problem, while you're able to use a wheel to adjust the screen distance, I wasn't able to move it far enough away for my eyes, though my sister and I think parents could and it probably helps with the blurriness, but it's still there. Most things though were pretty darn good, i only really noticed blurriness while watching videos, the theater and games looked pretty sharp. The last thing is a problem I'm not really sure how to explain. It's like the graphics smearing sometimes. Like, if I look to my left or right, a pillar in the background of the room I'm in appears to smear across the screen. But actually I only recall it happening in that one room, so maybe it's just the environment.
The Gear VR, I've heard, is comparable to the Oculus DK2. It's not the best thing ever, but it really gives you an idea of what VR is. My family was deeply impressed by what they saw, and I keep telling them to just wait, because later this year we'll be trying out the first consumer Oculus Rift. And from my understanding, it blows the DK2 and Gear VR out of the water. The screen Door Effect I mentioned is totally gone, higher resolution, and is capable of anything developers can create rather than being limited to a phone. There were moments where I was sitting in my chair and I would look down at my legs, and my mind instantly thought the legs in-game were mine. It's such a weird feeling, but it's incredibly immersing. I can't wait for the Rift to release, I really believe VR is going to be the best thing ever.
First of all, I should start off by saying I was using Samsung Gear VR, it's a headset you place your phone into. The games were cool and worked really well. The 3d was perfect, by far the best 3d I've ever seen aside from real life, and by the way this 3d was just as good as real life. I never got headaches or felt sick, honestly my phone was the limiting factor and overheated eventually. Honestly, the thing keeping the Gear VR from being awesome is the screen and games.
It's still a phone so the games aren't too far off from your average phone game, but a few stand out. It's an unfinished game still where you can fly a dragon around. You guide it with the direction you look in and you can do flips, rolls, dives, and fly through rock formations. It's really fun and there were a few times where I felt my stomach drop as if I was on a roller coaster. Another game is a basic rts, you build bases and move your units around the map, but what makes it awesome is that the map is a hologram on a table in front of you, it's as if you're a commander controlling a battle that is many miles away from you. Another experience I really enjoyed was the theater. I was able to sit in my own imax and watch The Martian in 3D, it was really awesome! It really doesn't hit you until you look around, you're sitting in your chair watching a movie and when you look to your side, what do you see? More chairs and an isle leading to the top of the room. It really feels like you're there, and it all has scale, since it's in 3D you can see how big things are and it makes them feel real. You can also watch movies on the moon, in a home theater, in a dark void; and as the size of an ant in blades of grass, watching movies on a gigantic phone, there are even mushrooms growing behind it that look the size of trees.
Now for it's flaws. There is a thing called the "Screen Door Effect" and it's incredibly noticeable. To get the field of view needed to make VR on the phone to work, the lenses have to zoom in on the screen a lot. So much so that you can start to see the spaces in between the pixels. This causes several problems. The first is color, some of them look muddy because there aren't as many pixels to work with to make up the colors you see on the screen. Blurriness is another problem, while you're able to use a wheel to adjust the screen distance, I wasn't able to move it far enough away for my eyes, though my sister and I think parents could and it probably helps with the blurriness, but it's still there. Most things though were pretty darn good, i only really noticed blurriness while watching videos, the theater and games looked pretty sharp. The last thing is a problem I'm not really sure how to explain. It's like the graphics smearing sometimes. Like, if I look to my left or right, a pillar in the background of the room I'm in appears to smear across the screen. But actually I only recall it happening in that one room, so maybe it's just the environment.
The Gear VR, I've heard, is comparable to the Oculus DK2. It's not the best thing ever, but it really gives you an idea of what VR is. My family was deeply impressed by what they saw, and I keep telling them to just wait, because later this year we'll be trying out the first consumer Oculus Rift. And from my understanding, it blows the DK2 and Gear VR out of the water. The screen Door Effect I mentioned is totally gone, higher resolution, and is capable of anything developers can create rather than being limited to a phone. There were moments where I was sitting in my chair and I would look down at my legs, and my mind instantly thought the legs in-game were mine. It's such a weird feeling, but it's incredibly immersing. I can't wait for the Rift to release, I really believe VR is going to be the best thing ever.
