OCULUS GO: The missing camera

Few weeks now I've discovered the Phonecast VR of Samsung, and it is exactly what I was looking for since the day I weared the Gear VR headset.

The possibility to run a 2D application directly in the virtual reality desktop.

But the story doesn't stop there. The Phonecast VR coupled with the controller took me far from my initial expectation!

I discovered that it could run augmented reality apps!

Since that day all my chakras were opened ;-)

This was the missing gate between two universes which ignore each other: AR is not VR, VR is not AR and more funny: AR>VR or VR>AR...

Strange war. I'm tech agnostic: I'm an enthusiastic end-user who is looking for interesting experiences!

I've posted many videos on the subject.

Please don't stop at the videos: do the experience! Then come later to discuss.

This is not an ultimate solution: it is perfectible. Most of the actual AR apps doesn't work well. Lot of lags. (shhhh don't report this to @Bob Stone, he'll laugh). No one should be blamed for that. It is at this time a simple trick. It will be better if the developpers take it seriously for this purpose (content providers included).

I'm quite sure that it was not the plan of the Samsung's dev team to create an AR viewer... They knew from the begining that AR apps could be runned like that. The sensitivity of the market forbids them to talk about this or they never planned to use it like that.

But I'm an end-user ... I can :0)

I make the bet on this paradigm : " Running AR in VR headset will become a norm".

Not saying that it will be the only way!!

But it WILL be, because it will help pushing some nice Augmented Reality applications in the market, like for example the AR PORTAL ones.

The advantage of this approach is that the well developped existing apps won't need huge refactoring...

The new AR apps coming should take this approach into account. This means that they should correctly handle the horizontal position.

Now let's talk about the Oculus GO.

This is a great move from Facebook!

The standalone headsets are the best way to make VR mainstream!

(Don't forget to make a tribute to all the pure players in China who did this before. ;-) )

I didn't test it yet, but I can't understand why they didn't put a camera on it!

It would open the possibility for having AR apps into it... that's why it's a disappointment for me.

As I'm sure that an application will be released (may be from Google and/or Apple or someone else) which will make this approach (AR through VR headset) common for all the brands so I'm sure to win my bet ;-)