Gear VR Cover Survey
If you want to keep your Gear VR foam clean and make the whole setup more comfortable get your Gear VR Cover now.
The Gear VR Cover is easy to put on and stays in place. You can use it with either foam (nose free and nose covered) that comes with your Samsung Gear VR.
The survey is closed. Please subscribe to our newsletter in the sidebar for updates or order your Gear VR Cover in our shop.
Cool Christmas VR Release & Free Oculus Rift 3D Model for Developers
Ho, ho, ho! The last days of the year are here and we wish you and your loved ones some relaxed and fun times during the holidays. We have built the Cool Christmas VR experience as virtual Christmas card. If you have a DK2 check it out.
People who have tried it, loved it and while your mileage may vary it should run pretty smooth in direct or extended mode for most people (works well with 7XX Nvidia cards and better).
Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without gifts, so we share the Oculus Rift DK2 3D model that we used in this VR experience for you to use in your own projects.
We release the Oculus Rift 3D model under the CC0 license into the public domain. That means you do not even have to credit us for using the model but we would of course appreciate a link back from your website to VR Cover or just a tweet about our products.
We are having a holiday from the 29th to the 5th of January but if you order your VR Covers now we make sure it gets on the way before that. We will have a couple of exciting news in early January when we are back in action.
If you want to stay up to date, subscribe to our newsletter. 2015 will be wild for virtual reality. Good time to wander the planet (and metaverse). Happy Holidays!
Organic Cotton Bamboo VR Covers for Oculus Rift DK1 / DK2
Thanks for the great feedback in the last couple of weeks. We have shipped now over 4000 VR Covers to individual developers, VR enthusiasts, universities and research institutions all over the world and many people have reported that they like the feel of our 100% cotton chambray fabric much more than just the foam on the Oculus Rift DK1 / DK2.
Today we offer a limited amount of 32 Organic Cotton Bamboo VR Cover sets with stitched logo to see how high the demand for this sort of “green” VR Cover is.
The fabric feels great on your skin and is weaved from 80% organic cotton and 20% organic bamboo yarn. No chemicals or colors were added throughout the production process. We bought this fabric directly from the yarn manufacturer so we were able to see how the yarn and fabric is made from scratch.
Head over here to get yours while we still have them in stock.
Final Shipping Update
Just a quick update. We have finally caught up with all orders and expect to ship all current orders until the 22nd and all orders that come in from now on until the 28th. After that we have VR Covers in stock to dispatch right away.
We are also going to announce some new features for the website next week. Please subscribe to our newsletter for updates and promotions.
By the way we ship now every day, so the date we mention just means the date until we definitely dispatch your order. Depending on when you ordered, chances are it ships a bit earlier.
Shipping Update & First Reviews
We keep shipping out more VR Covers daily now and if you did not hear from us yet, we did not forget you! We do our best and will send you your DHL tracking number 1-2 days after we shipped your VR Covers.
The first people received their VR Covers already. Here is a short unpacking video from /u/stormy3000.
Here is what he has to say about VR Cover:
So I just got my ‘VR Covers’ delivery.
Very pleased with the product.
Got 3 covers included in a tidy little bag made of the same cotton (at least it feels like cotton) cloth.
Each cover has the leather tag with the companies branding on.
They fit snugly to the DK2 without any fixing required.
It also includes a little velcro strap to hold the wires in place on top of my DK2.
Lastly it comes with a simple little set of instructions printed in a nice rustic way onto some thick brown paper.
Overall I’m very impressed, now I just need to find some spotty sweaty people to try out my rift and make use of the power of a washable cover.
The Virtual Dutchmen are also enjoying their VR Covers.
Oculus community manager Cybereality likes his new VR Covers as well.
I got mine today. Wouldn’t think I would be excited about a piece of fabric, but it actually works nicely. At first it didn’t seem like it would stay in place without elastic, but it seems OK. Only tested a few quick games, but it felt comfortable to me. The velcro strap is a nice touch. Good job.
Drash, the developer of Titan’s of Space also wrote a more detailed review of his VR Covers.
Just got mine in the mail! Here are some thoughts:
Comfort:
Love the material. Feels slightly cool on the face, which is a welcome change. Did not try for more than 5 minutes in a go to see what happens heat-wise, but that would be interesting to see as well.
Most importantly, there’s a bit of carefree-ness now, a lightness of heart. Because no matter what gets on the DK2 from my face, I can still demo this thing to others, and they can be carefree about it too.
Fit:
It fits very well over the bottom parts of the DK2, and is able to “catch” some pointy bits on the DK2 so it doesn’t seem to budge at all. The top center part does not hug the DK2 that much. I tried stretching it out, but it’s not too stretchy. It would probably help if there was something on the DK2 for it to grab onto, or if the cover had some elasticity in that region as the OP mentioned.
I normally pull the DK2 straight away from my face slightly before taking it off, but just as a test I tried just sliding the DK2 straight up and off as someone new might do, and the cover stayed put.
Extras:
The bag is nice, fits three covers. Not going to lose these.
I also really appreciate the velcro band for fastening the over-the-top cable in place.Pictures:
Thanks /u/vrcover! 🙂
Second Batch & General Shipping Update
We shipped the second batch of VR Covers today and if you were in this batch you should get your DHL tracking number in the coming days via Email. We change our shipping from next week and ship out daily so you get your VR Cover as fast as possible.
Right now, we work with our team of tailors 24/7 on this but because every VR Cover needs to be hand cut the production takes a bit of time. We have some more tailors joining us in the coming week and expect to have all current orders shipped within the next 3 weeks.
We are also working on the wholesale VR Covers and will have more news on this in the first week of November. For product updates and promotions please subscribe to our newsletter.
VR Cover First Batch Shipping Update
We are shipping the first batch of VR Covers tomorrow morning. On Thursday we get the tracking numbers from DHL and will email them to all of you who ordered early and receive their VR Covers with this first batch. We are now scaling up our production and are well on track to deliver all upcoming batches on time as well. We also have some more new products in the pipeline so make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date.
Samsung Gear VR
Samsung Gear VR is a mobile virtual reality headset developed by Samsung in conjunction with Oculus. It requires one of Samsung’s 2015/2016 flagship phones to operate. These phones are the Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S6 Edge+, Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge.
The phone is inserted into the front of the Gear VR headset and becomes the display and processor. The headset itself contains the IMU which is used to track rotation. Gear VR does not yet have positional tracking. The device is powered by the battery in the phone though there is a micro USB port on the bottom so you can have your device plugged in while inside the headset. This will only charge the battery if the VR is not being used, but if it is, it will prevent the depletion of the battery.
The sensors inside the Gear VR unit are lower latency than those used in the phones themselves. This combined with a low persistence screen with sub 20ms motion to photon latency is what makes the Gear VR stand head and shoulders about cheaper mobile VR headsets such as Google’s Cardboard.
The consumer version of the Gear VR, or simply, Gear VR, is it’s third edition. While it is considered to be the first full consumer release, the two previous versions, the Innovator Edition (compatible only with the Note 4) and the S6 Innovator Edition (compatible with the Galaxy S6/Edge, pictured above) we publicly available in smaller releases.
When the phone is plugged into the Gear VR, Oculus Home is automatically launched and other processes are killed or pushed into the background. Oculus Home is where games are purchased for use on the Gear VR, as well as acting as a launcher for those games. Because Oculus Home launches automatically the Gear VR can only be used as a Cardboard viewer if the Gear VR process is stopped by another application such as Package Disabler Pro or Cardboard For Gear VR. Both are available at the play store for a fee.
Oculus Rift
Rift is a virtual reality head mounted display developed by Facebook owned VR startup, Oculus. The headset is sometimes referred to as The Oculus, or The Rift but the proper name is simply, Rift.
Rift is the brainchild of Palmer Luckey who was 19 at the time that it was invented. With the help of John Carmack, Brendan Iribe, Michael Antonov, Jack McCauley, Nate Mitchell and Andrew Scott Reisse, he formed Oculus and had on of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns in the history of the crowdfunding site.
Rift is the first consumer headset in a line of headsets from Oculus including prototypes, some of which were publicly displayed, and some not, as well as two publicly available development kits.
Rift iterations: Duct Tape, DK1, HD Prototype, Crystal Cove, DK2, Crescent Bay, CV1; Many others that were never publicly shown
The Rift headset has 2 OLED displays at a resolution of 1080×1200 per eye, 90Hz global refresh, and low persistence. It has a rougly 110° field of view and comes with removable integrated headphones that provide 3D spatial audio.
Rift requires a powerful PC to run. The minimum recommended specs are:
Video Card: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD R9 290 equivalent or greater
CPU: Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
Memory: 8GB+ RAM
Video Output: Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
USB Ports: 2x USB 3.0 ports plus 1x USB 2.0 port
OS: Windows 7 SP1 64 bit or newer
Depending on the parts you choose if you have to buy the computer and the Rift together you will spend around $1200 – $1500 on the PC.
HTC Vive
Vive is a Virtual reality headset developed by HTC in conjunction with Valve. It differentiates itself from the competition with the use of the Lighthouse tracking system that uses lasers to track the headset in 3D space allowing for a large play area, termed room-scale, which allows the player to move about a 15′ x 15′ or smaller play space. It also comes packed with two controllers which are also tracked by the lighthouse system, bringing your hands into VR.
It was unveiled during HTC’s keynote at Mobile World Congress in March 2015. Preorders opened on February 29, 2016 and it launched April 5, 2016. It’s price is $799, which includes the headset, two controllers and two lighthouse base stations.
Specs:
Resolution: 2160 x 1200 (1080 x 1200 per eye)
Refresh Rate: 90Hz
Field of View: 110°
Positional Tracking System: 2 Lighthouse Base Stations
Weight: 555 Grams
Price: $799
