Samsung’s Gear VR headset won’t be the company’s only venture into the burgeoning world of Virtual Reality. During Samsung’s developer conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, head of R&D for software and services Injong Rhee revealed that Samsung is also working on a standalone VR headset. This standalone VR headset will use similar positional tracking to the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
“We are working on wireless and dedicated VR devices, not necessarily working with our mobile phone,” Rhee said. Translation: no phone needed for Samsung’s next step in VR.
While fully integrating all components needed for a VR system into one headset may compromise processing power, it also means that unlike with the HTC Vive, users won’t be tethered to their PC.
Samsung is also looking into hand and gesture tracking for their standalone VR headset, but it will be some time before the market sees another mature VR product from Samsung hit the shelves. “VR is amazing, but the industry is still at its infancy,” he said .
Of course, Samsung also plans to continue supporting Gear VR, with the Gear 360 camera to go on sale this Friday. “We think 2016 is shaping up to be the year of VR,” said Samsung director of software development Andrew Dickerson. The Gear 360 camera is expected to cost about $350, though no price has been formally announced.
Dickerson also announced the VR Upload SDK, intended to make it easier for creators to publish content created using the Gear 360 camera and other VR cameras. According to Variety, “This new SDK will allow camera makers to add the ability to upload content to Samsung’s Milk VR service directly to their own apps.”
Also on the table according to Dickerson: new upload editing tools to add interactivity to Milk VR content.
Google is also working on their own wireless VR headset, one that marks “a quality experience not tethered to an expensive PC or game console."
