I would anticipate some significant losses in fidelity---Oculus has an IR sensor to record head displacement, not just head tilt. There's a subtlety to the way your head moves since the pivot is not directly behind your eyeballs that the Oculus captures by monitoring translations in addition to rotations; trying the Cardboard vs. Rift was a night-and-day experience for this reason, and I didn't see anything today that suggests they have a solution for that part.

But on the flip-side, this and the GearVR are the only solutions I'm seeing that remove the cords dangling around. So that's a big win.

Google have implemented their own version of asynchronous time warp in the Google VR SDK (can't remember what they call it atm), so that ought to make it on par with Gear at least, until either gets positional tracking.

I'm not shocked. Carmack laid out the basics of what became ATW in a post in his .plan file in the mid-90's, during Quakeworld's development.

I haven't had any experience with the Gear, I'm afraid. Can you compare it to the Rift?

GearVR doesn't have positional tracking, has a slightly worse field of view than the rift, and obviously can't compete with a gaming PC in terms of graphics performance. That being said, not being tethered is a huge plus. Carmack likes to talk about how great the Gear is with a swivel chair; I think he's completely right on that point. You're not going to get the 'presence' you can achieve in the vive, but there's something to be said for the type of immersion you get when not getting tangled up in a cord. Its great for viewing 360 photos and watching videos, and if you like the low-poly aesthetic there are some diversionary games.

Edit: also, as others have mentioned elsewhere, the focus wheel is fantastic feature on the Gear, especially if you're passing it around in a group.

Note that 'worse field of view' corresponds to 'better effective resolution' for a fixed number of pixels. There's always a tradeoff between FOV and pixel density. I think the Gear made a good compromise for more passive experiences, for what it's worth.

Yes, a lot of things.

But most significantly, the auto calibration and focusing. (Currently, if you have a VR headset and want to use it with a phone, you have to go through a painstaking process of making sure the phone is in the dead center. Sometimes even when you have centered it, it can get a little bit off if you shake the phone really hard or whatever... and then you get headheaches if it's not properly aligned). This is a pretty big deal in my view.

Other than that, the whole integrated environment and the new joystick-like interface thing is a pretty big deal too.

That's only compared to Cardboard though. Gear VR locks the phone in place, so there's no calibration step. Gear VR also has a focus wheel, which while not perfect, does let you hand it to a friend who can adjust it to their vision. Not as good as just putting glasses inside, but glasses come in lots of sizes, and I'm sceptical of claims to be glasses-friendly, which so far haven't proven to be the case (Vive, Rift, and Gear are far from it).

Plus isn't the GearVR limited to specific Samsung phones? The Daydream headset seems more like a nicer version of cardboard in that it's a "dumb" headset and the phone does all the work.

Ordered a Pixel to upgrade my Nexus 5 but not buying the headset so I guess I'll find out when I plop it into my Cardboard headset to test it out.

Daydream is limited to specific Daydream certified phones.

If you preordered a Pixel from Google's site you'll receive a promo code for the headset in a few weeks.

The controller is a big plus, but otherwise not too much. Comfort factor seems nice, but I'd have to try it to say what's better.

I'm worried about apps being able to run at 30fps on Daydream, because even 60fps like the Gear has can be slow for good VR.

That said, this looks like it will do well and I'm pretty stoked for it. OC3 starts tomorrow, so I'm hoping for some announcements from Oculus/Samsung to compete with this!

The latest rev of the GearVR headsets has a more generalized touch input on the side (what was originally a 4-way controller is now a square touchpad with support for swipe gestures). Oddly it seems a variety of content on the Oculus store is actually using this as an in-game control now, e.g., swipe/tap on the side of your head to shoot your laser pistol. I haven't tried these for long enough to tell if it's an effective control scheme or gets tiresome, but it works surprisingly well on first blush. Curious how much of a difference this remote makes; without in-world positional tracking I'm not convinced it's adding much to the experience.

The touchpad has had swipe support for a while, and works pretty well depending on the game, but it's still stuck to the side of your head. We joke about getting a gorilla arm from extended use...

Daydream has a definite advantage with their remote, but I think Samsung offering a bundle with their gamepad could close that gap a little bit, or even offering something similar to the Daydream remote.

The Rift remote looks very similar too, minus the positional tracking, but is still really handy for casual Rift games.

I think the big differentiator Gear can play on is social games. Oculus has been putting an increased emphasis on their social platform, and I think we'll see more of that this week too.

I don't think the actual device is really any different. I mean its just two lenses in a box, really. I think the idea (who knows how this will play out) is that Google is going to create a meaningful VR ecosystem, which currently does not exist at all for GearVR.

1. Hand controller 2. Breathable soft fabric 3. Lighter 4. Fits better over glasses 5. No electronics in the headset 6. Forward compatible with future phones, both from Google and others (Gear VR requires a new headset for each new phone)