Oculus VR and Samsung’s first consumer ready virtual reality (VR) head-mounted display (HMD), Gear VR, will be launching later this week. The mobile-based kit will be arriving in the US on 20th November 2015 with dates for international territories soon to be announced. Fans can expect plenty of updates to the device in the coming weeks and months as Oculus VR and Samsung continue to update certain features and add new ones. Recently, Oculus VR CTO John Carmack has teased what some of the new additions could be.
Answering questions on Twitter this week Carmack confirmed that the ability to take screenshots on Gear VR – a feature that’s become standard when using any smartphone on its own – should be added in the next System Activities update. That said the feature will only be supported by apps that were built by using Oculus VR’s mobile software development kit (SDK) 1.0, so don’t expect titles that launched earlier in the year for Innovator’s Editions of the device to support it. There’s currently no date for the next System Activities update.
Elsewhere, Carmack also confirmed that the ability to stream titles from Gear VR, something that’s become commonplace on consoles and PC, will ‘probably happen’ at some point, but not for a while. “No streaming support right now, but it will probably happen eventually,” the developer stated. It will be interesting to see how features such as these work out given that, as with other VR systems, Gear VR’s display showcases two imagines side-by-side that appear in stereoscopic 3D when viewed through a pair of lenses. Without those lenses, will these features still hold up?
The consumer Gear VR costs $99 USD and supports Samsung’s 2015 line-up of phones. VRFocus will continue to follow the device closely, reporting back with the latest updates on its progress.
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