Virtual Reality - Gimmick or Not

[Ian S]

Currently I have a Samsung Galaxy S5 which has served me well for over two years and I had no plans to replace it anytime soon. However, thanks to another thread a few weeks ago, I learned that the Galaxy S8 was being offered directly from Samsung with a very generous trade-in offer of $200 for my old phone. Tmobile OTOH will only give me $34 as tradein value. Today I checked to see if the Samsung online offer was still active and now I see that in addition to the tradein value, they are offering a bonus gift of their Gear VR with Controller for free. Old fogey that I am, I've never played around with virtual reality tech since I assumed it was really just for gamers and so I was never interested (not being a gamer myself). Now I'm wondering if I would get any use out of such a freebie or would this just be something else to throw up on eBay (and get $60 for based on current auctions?) Thanks for any ideas especially from anyone who has used the technology.

 

[easysurfer]

Watched something funny on the morning news (forget if yesterday or today) related to VR and stress relief. In this situation, future possible explorers had to stay in a cramped place on the volcano rocks of Hawaii to simulate living in mars for about a year. I guess when some who were in the biosphere mars simulation years ago, weren't aren't speaking terms with each other when stay ended. So, not wanted to to repeat a similar situation, if folks get on each other's nerves, they'd use their VR setup to escape.

As for day to day use, I haven't tried so can't comment on.

 

[donheff]

My nephew makes VR videos and some are pretty compelling. I have watched of few of them using an iPhone with a Google Cardboard viewer and was impressed. That said, the whole thing is a bit of a PITA so I don't know how likely it is to affect mainstream audiences. Gamers should be a big market.