Google Developing Stand-Alone Virtual-Reality Headset | Hacker News Reader

Google Developing Stand-Alone Virtual-Reality Headset

wsj.com

38 pointscryptoz9 comments

I think making a stand-alone VR headset makes a lot of sense. Dual-purpose devices don’t work out. VR is good enough for people to want to purchase a stand alone device. Or it’s not good enough, and then it doesn’t matter either way.

Also, a well made VR viewer that attaches to a phone (i.e. Gear VR) is just as big and almost as heavy as a stand alone viewer would be. So there are only marginal space savings to be made.

Making the best VR experience is not the same thing as making a mobile phone. Screens needs to be optimized differently, possibly using more than one screen. Chip cooling is a thing in VR. Faster sensors. Different appication stack. Support for positioning and control input. So many things are different from what needs to go into a phone.

Compared with desktop/console, the mobile eco-system is 10X the size and revenue and longterm this is where you want to build your product. Desktop and console VR, were the headset is attached with a cable to a big loud box, may make some sense in gaming and short term. But longer term that seems a bit silly. Look at the iPads benchmark scores - those things are already rediculously fast.

I disagree. Most people's purchase decisions are based on price and they would happily accept a device that has inconvenience of sliding smartphone VS just putting on glasses. This if, of course, given that experiences are pretty close in quality. There are technically no reason that quality would be too inferior with smartphone based devices as long as smartphones have some additional bells and whistles. The smartphone is a powerful computer already equipped with tons of sensors, CPU, GPU, batteries and a large screen. I think only the field of vision may be bit impacted but I highly suspect average people would want to shell out another $500 for bit larger FoV.

Perhaps there's a social barrier to VR being more than a niche device?

> There are technically no reason that quality would be too inferior with smartphone based devices as long as smartphones have some additional bells and whistles.

According to the Oculus folks, 90Hz is the minimal refresh rate for avoiding nausea in too much of the population. Their latency target with regards to refresh after head tracking input was 5ms, last time I read about it. There's a reason why their 1st commercially released device is going to cost $600 and require a hefty gaming PC.

I think they do both , in the spirit of competition.

One thing that worries me - i think that they chose this versus pc-based because they don't want to help or depend on microsoft.

But using pc's have financial advantages for users , and wireless low-latency connection between the headset and the pc seems possible , and i'm sure some startup is working on it.

Maybe. I think the market will be big enough that there is room for all sorts of configurations - stand-alone, one needing computer, one needing mobile phone, etc.,

The more expensive your niche device is, the more niche your device will be. I'd be shocked if the Oculus Rift outsold the Gear VR.

Blegh, paywall'd.

I have no idea if this article[1] is missing any key information from WSJ's but I found it via Google news and their primary source is the WSJ article.

Summary so far is that they're making two devices, one is an improved cardboard that presumably uses your device's screen but also provides additional sensors via Bluetooth/OTG.

The second device is a standalone headset.

No details so far on if these are both going to be HMD's or if this will be a Google Glass successor.

[1]: http://www.macrumors.com/2016/02/11/google-developing-standa...

It will be interesting to see what's meant by "standalone." Will it be a VR Android with a VR UI? A variant of an Android TV UI? Material design with actual z-axis displacement and parallax.

I wonder if it will be part of the nexus line; perhaps it will run apps targeted for the Nexus Player.

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