Gadgetory

the gateway to another world is here and it only costs $200 I'm Scott Stein maybe that sounds a little grand but you've heard of VR right virtual reality is in everything from the oculus rift to Sony's project Morpheus and that technology involves you plugging into a PC or a console but you can plug into your phone as well Google cardboard showed that it could be done and now here is the first one that you can really buy that's a rig this is the Samsung gear VR and is $199 accessory available only in the US for now that works with just one phone the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 it's really just a bracket for it if you open up this here you plug in your phone right at the top and it takes advantage of the note 4's 5.7 inch quad HD display inside there are two spherical lenses that bend everything and suddenly turn what you're seeing into an immersive 3d experience now what happens in VR we'll imagine you put this on and then suddenly you see perhaps a 3d concert somebody playing a guitar and you're sitting in their living room you can look at them up down all around it's everywhere behind you has a built-in accelerometer that tracks head motion it doesn't allow you to do full head tracking like some of the more advanced virtual reality rig scan so you can't bend down and explore the space but you can turn around in all directions like this and use a touchpad on the side to navigate or pair a Bluetooth controller to play games with right now in gear VR there are only a handful of apps and they all run through an oculus app that allows you to download the experiences they're all free and they range from games to panoramic photos and videos and immersive theatrical experiences what you feel like is that you're immersed in that space but the experience is a little bit limited because even though the screen resolution on that phone is fantastically dense when it's expanded out in virtual reality you begin to see the pixels individually and videos are a little more low res than you might expect still that immersiveness create something that's more eye-popping than I think I've ever seen before and I've shown this to so many people ranging on my family friends a lot of the tech experience cynics out there and nearly everybody is more often than not blown away by the experience and I can't think of anything since the debut possibly the iPhone that's created a technology so futuristic that everybody wants to line up and try it out we don't know how many more apps it'll support down the road but hopefully with the oculus partnership this is developed in collaboration with oculus that you're going to see a lot of stuff down the road what you get for your hundred ninety nine dollars is you get this headset you also get a micro SD card 16 gigs that's loaded up with some other experiences that you can put on it and you get this carrying case but if you have a samsung galaxy note 4 this seems like a really good treat to yourself to just dive in and have fun with it provided you want to play around with VR there will be a lot of virtual reality tech coming up in 2015 from a lot of different companies new types of input ways that you can reach out and explore and this limited set may not fully go there but it is an amazing first step if you want to be in a virtual movie theater swimming and aquarium explore the solar system play virtual arcade games that are floating in front of you and more the Samsung gear VR is the first available and right now it's definitely the best