Other Stuff

Universal Menu

universal menu

The universal menu can be launched at any point by holding the Back button above the trackpad. This brings up a menu with a row of buttons across the bottom: Oculus Home, Passthrough Camera, Reorient, Do Not Disturb, Brightness, and Comfort Mode.

The Oculus Home button takes you back to Oculus Home, naturally. Passthrough Camera turns on the Note 4’s camera, allowing you to see through to the outside world. Reorient redefines your forward-direction, though oddly enough the button is offset from center. Oculus might take into account exactly how far offset that button is, and factor it into the reorientation, but it would seem more intuitive to have the reorient button directly in the center of your view. Do Not Disturb can be toggled on and off, suppressing calls and notifications. Brightness has a slider to control the screen brightness using the trackpad, though I’ve never felt the need to make an adjustment. Comfort Mode makes the screen give off warmer colors, sort of like f.lux, though again I’ve never felt the need to use it.

Passthrough Camera

gear vr passthrough camera

The Passthrough Camera button activates the camera on the Note 4 and projects its view of the real world into the virtual space. The projected view is set correctly to the camera’s field of view, which gives it the appearance of being a little window into the real world. It’s kind of weird, given that it’s much more limited in field of view than your actual eyes, and it lacks 3D so you have no sense of depth, but it’s very useful and I think people will absolutely want something like this on the Oculus Rift consumer version (CV1).

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The Passthrough Camera makes it particularly easy to grab a controller, put on headphones, interact with people, or even eat sushi, all without taking the headset off.

I only wish there was a faster way to enable it, maybe a double-tap and hold on the back button?

I could definitely see VR enthusiasts asking Samsung to include a wider field of view and 3D camera on the Note 5 to make the passthrough camera even more useful.

Notifications

I had figured that the easy way for Oculus to handle notifications would be to simply suppress them completely. To my surprise, they’ve tapped into Android’s notification system and present them right inside VR as they come. For the most part it’s read-only; there’s currently no way to see more than the message type (email/text) and a tiny preview. But at least you won’t miss that crucial email while immersed in VR (unless you want to shut out all signs of the real world by enabling Do Not Disturb).

Even phone calls are represented in VR. You’ll see a green phone icon appear to the top left of the forward position. Looking at it will expand to show the caller, phone number, and a contact photo. Sadly, calls can’t be answered in VR, but you can dismiss them by looking at the red icon and tapping on the touchpad.


See Also: Samsung Gear VR Detailed Review: Part One – Design Comparison to Oculus Rift DK2

Between Part One and Part Two, we’re now up to 7500 words on Gear VR—and there’s still more to say. Stay tuned for Part Three, where we’ll dig into the performance of Gear VR with items like battery life, heat, and head tracking.

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Questions? Drop us a line below.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • pizzy00

    Hey Ben. What did you use to cap video? Chromecast?

  • Don Gateley

    Great review, Ben. I am saddened to hear about the total sandboxing of applications and experiences. As much as I want one and as close as I was to pulling the trigger I’m going to remain on the side lines until that breaks down and anyone can create content for it and move it through the regular Android app store or via a side load. I’m not willing to let Oculus be the only curator of this experience. I want the developers and the market to control what I can get for it and will wait for that. I’m getting an Apple scent and until that stink clears I’ll wait and see.

  • JohnWANG

    hello Ben

    I am excited about the experience you shared.
    If I buy gear VR from US, is it possible to access to Note’s VR library based on Chinese mobile operators ?

    thanks

  • brantlew

    Nice reviews Ben.

    – My favorite is also the 360 photos and is for me the most practical use for GearVR. As 360 cameras become more commonplace and easier to use, I think this will be the killer app for the mass market. Sharing “vacation” photos with friends and family in this way is unrivaled by any other media and the convenience of the GearVR makes it easy to do so. The real estate industry could be hugely impacted by this as well since these 360 views feel like they convey 10,000x as much information about a space. On my recent home search, I wish I had this feature handy so I could show my wife homes that I had visited and have her intuit the space the way that I had.

    – Odd that nobody has mentioned the strange eye position of the pass-through camera. Early-on at Oculus we experimented with pass-throughs and one of the things we found bizarre is having your point of view originate a few centimeters in front of your true eyes. It subtly changes your perception of everything – head turning feels exaggerated, your arms feel short, etc. There are optical solutions for extending the light path that can correct for this but in it’s most basic implementation (ie. GearVR) – while still quite usable it does feel slightly “off”.

  • Gazzelle

    I am just wondering if screen door effect that is shown in the YouTube videos of the games is at all representative of how it actually looks, I am wondering because if it is then is that at all distrating, I feel like it would be distracting to me.

  • Linkman81

    Did they ever say what the trick was to playing Google Play apps in the Gear VR. There is an awful lot of content in the play store that I’ve used with my own version of google cardboard that I would like to try out in the Gear VR. That “trick” they spoke of would be much appreciated but I wasn’t able to find it in the article. I didn’t read it all though. Not concerned about the descriptions of all the games. They probably hid in there somewhere.

  • Alterkonto

    Will we ever see the part three? :(