Re: Oculus Rift / Samsung Gear / VR in general?
I spent spent sometime last night using it to do something completely mundane. Specifically streaming netflix.
The app places you into a ski lodge, and you use netflix on a you would on a smart tv, moving your head around to browse.
What impressed me was the relative size of the virtual tv, which to me simulated a roughly 120" tv (guessing on size here). Combined with noise cancelling headphones, and the surrounding "virtual" area dimming, it makes for an interesting experience, with the only downside being the resolution. It's still vastly superior to the tv's most of us grew up with, but a far cry from 1080 or 4k resolution.
The only somewhat annoying part was that due to position tracking I couldn't lie down on my bed, or I'd end up staring at a virtual ceiling. Hopefully a future app update can address this, allowing the screen location to be re-centered, because a ceiling mounter tv, facing down, even a virtual one would be very comfy.
I hope we also see development of the ability to store content locally, for example the virtual theater modes would be absolutely fantastic for use on flights... plug in, and while a tad cramped you're in a movie theater watching a movie, instead of on a flight
Two things in VR that I see as potential pitfalls, one small, one big;
Lenses - even on the gear vr, the lenses already feel somewhat dirty to me after just ~3 hours of use.
Wires. With headphones on, even with it's limited resolution, and screen door effect, you do end up completely isolated from your environment. Viewing 360 degree phones I did swivel completely around many many times. Not exactly an option if you're hooked up to a computer. Which means that future vr systems will need to be better prepared to shift the environment around, hopefully tracking eye movement, and not just head movement, so as to not require a person to twirl around in one spot. I think simply adding an input for movement via a controller would go a very long way to address this.
