Tired of being tethered to your PC while playing porn games on your Rift? Want desperately to be able to watch VirtualRealPorn.com videos while kicking it in the park, or in the back room at work (we do!)? Well consider your prayers answered as the long awaited Oculus/Samsung collaboration mobile headset – Gear VR – is finally available to the hungry masses – for the price of a Galaxy Note 4 and $200.
So just what exactly is Gear VR? While at first glance it may appear that the high-tech device is nothing more than a hyped up and possibly overpriced version of Google Cardboard, and though it is similar in the fact that they both allow you to turn stereoscopic material on your smartphone into an interactive Virtual Reality experience, the similarities stop there.
The current iteration of the gear, referred to formally as the “Innovator Edition” and aimed at (in Samsung’s own words) “innovative consumers, specifically VR enthusiasts, developers, mobile experts and professionals, and early technology adopters” is designed to (again, in Samsung-Speak) “enable users to fully immerse themselves in a cinematic virtual reality environment”; and from what we have seen, it does a good job of it.
Featuring a 96° Field of View and being completely un-tethered, the lightweight device could soon allow users to experience porn-on-the-go in a way that just isn’t possible yet anywhere else aside from plopping a laptop in a backpack and walking around with the Rift.
No cords means you could bring this thing pretty much wherever you wanted to be, so plane trips and commutes could become very interesting indeed; and rather than use the sensors already built into the Galaxy Note phone, the device features its own built-in accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope and proximity sensors to provide the smoothest experience possible on such small hardware.
The list of launch titles for the device is somewhat small, with only a handful of officially recognized material available at the moment and at the time of this writing there isn’t any porn made exclusively with the Gear in mind (in fact there isn’t any porn made for it at all), but we’re sure that will change soon enough. The headset is getting some pretty good reviews pretty well across the board and you can bet Samsung is already hard at work on the next – non innovator – (general public) iteration; and though the Gear VR isn’t as powerful as the Oculus Rift and it lacks a few features (no positional tracking in this version) users are reporting a rock-solid 60 frames, which if you’re familiar with the Rift you will know is a pretty big deal, and the Galaxy Note 4’s 5.7-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED 2560x1440p screen put this device at the top of the list in terms of clarity and reduction of the screen door, so when VR porn finally does hit the mobile market, you can bet it’s going to look good!
So what do you readers think? Is mobility essential for the future adaptation of VR and VR porn, or is being tethered to the computer something you don’t really worry about one way or the other?
If you happen to be a lucky owner of one of these devices we’d like to hear a bit more about your experience as well, so please leave us a comment and let everybody know just how great (or not) you think it is.
While I don’t have GearVR, I just got Google Cardboard (well, the Dodocase version) for my Android phone and have been tinkering with VR Player using VirtualRealPorn’s demo videos. I have to admit, I am a *lot* more impressed than I expected to be. If my cell phone and $25 worth of cardboard and lenses can be that… ummm… “immersive”, I can’t wait to see what’s on the horizon. Somebody please tell Oculus/FaceBook to get that consumer release cranked out!
(I’m still “dialing in” the right settings for VR Player; I find that VRP’s recommendations aren’t quite right. The action is TOO close-up. Once I do, they’ll be getting a new paying customer.)
Glad to see a new post on this site after a couple of months’ silence. If you’re going to be covering mobile VR porn and not just Oculus, I definitely think Cardboard’s poor-man’s-version of VR should be included in the discussion!
VirtualRealPorn has expanded their selection to support the Oculus 360 app in Gear VR, and they are also working on adding support for Milk VR (which gives you more control of playback). It’s very immersive! I hope more companies get on the bandwagon here soon! It’s a virtually un-tapped market! Tons of money to made!
Definitely some great advancements being made. 2015 is definitely going to be an exciting year for everything VR!!