Oculus Gear VR

A few weeks ago I attended the Sydney Royal Easter Show only to be surprised that they had a VR goggle booth there! I was there mostly for the rides, show bags and animals so I had no idea they even showed tech, hence my excitement when I saw that booth. I was super excited and hyped to try the goggles on only to be disappointed with the experience.

I understand that it was not the Oculus Gear I was trying on, but it was similar as the goggles worked with a Smartphone. As soon as I put them on (thank goodness they worked with glasses) I was disappointed with the screen resolution. I wasn’t sure what phone they had in there but you could see every single pixel plus the home, back and menu buttons were still visible on the right side of the screen. I was expecting to see some pixels, but at least hide the menu bar! Also the field of view was just lacking. It did not feel like it had a wide field of view at all, it was just like seeing a large rounded square that was really close to your face, but magically, was still completely clear.

Talking about the demo they were showing, the goggles I got had a demo of a motorcycle game, and due to the game limitations I was not able to look around the environment which I was hoping I could do. The game was controlled by my head movements and tilting my head to the right would turn the motorcycle in the same direction. Now I’m not the best gamer out there, but I do play games once in a while and it was rather difficult to control. After a few tries I gave up (I would have tried longer but there was a line behind me), but I can imagine that it would be rather fun once you got the hang of it.

The movement of tilting, however was definitely awkward. At first I though you controlled the motorcycle by turning your head, but instead you tilt your head which in turn tilts the phone. It was pretty much like how you would play a racing car game by tilting the phone from side to side in order to steer the car. Maybe I was just expecting a lot of hi tech stuff but it felt no different from using your hands to tilt the phone except this time, it was strapped to your face.

So, during my research on the Oculus Gear, I came across this article on The Verge which looks at what the future of VR could possibly be. On the site there are two videos which I found immensely interesting and it talks about how VR is used to solved real life problems. The video about using the Oculus to help people with 'lazy eye' is what caught my attention because here we have a use of VR that is not just for entertainment, but for a medical purpose and it can potentially be implemented into the Oculus Gear for mobile use.

As the video explains, people with 'lazy eye' or Amblyopia are unable to perceive depth in their vision due to one eye being weaker than the other which forces the brain to only 'see' out of the good eye. In order to combat this problem most children who are diagnosed are forced to see out of the weak eye in order for the eyesight in that eye to improve. However, adults are unable to have this problem solved as their brains have matured and has already gotten used to seeing out of one eye. This is where VR comes into play.

The user sees the same object on the two screens inside the Oculus Goggles with the object seen in their good eye slightly darker so that the brain can focus on the brighter object that the weak eye sees. This allows the user to then see out of the weak eye and allow depth perception which they were unable to see before. The brightness of the object seen by the good eye can be adjusted until the user is able the perceive depth with both objects at the same brightness.

I think that this is great implementation of VR that is extremely helpful to people. Not only is it simple, but if it was accessible to users of the Gear VR, it could potentially no only be portable, but many people will have access to it. This is a great step into the future for VR and I'm excited to see it evolve even more.

For those who are interested, here's a link to the video I was talking about.

A quick search on Google with “What did the smartphone replace?” brings up a whole page of articles listing a whole range of devices that your smartphone has replaced. Most obvious on these lists is of course the phone, but there are so many more. Torches, GPS, maps, notepads, calculators, photo albums, music albums, camera, timer, watches, alarm clocks, newspapers, magazines, portable gaming systems, voice recorders etc. Also with the installation of specific apps, the smartphone is also your bank, wallet, teacher (education apps), and possibly even your friend (hands up who converses with Siri). The smartphone has become a multipurpose device that merges all of the above technologies and more into one hand held device and the Oculus Gear brings it one step further to make it a virtual reality experience.

Of course virtual reality itself isn’t a new concept, in fact virtual reality can simply be “an artificial environment that is created with software and presented to the user in such a way that the user suspends belief and accepts it as a real environment. On a computer, virtual reality is primarily experienced through two of the five senses: sight and sound. “ [http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/virtual-reality]