Samsung’s Vice President has revealed that its next VR headset will feature inside-out tracking. Samsung has been making a big push in the VR market as of lately, with the recently-announced Odyssey desktop VR headset being the latest addition to its product lineup, but to further complement its products, the company is said to be working on a standalone mobile VR headset. At the South Korean giant‘s Developer Conference, its Vice President, Taeyong Kim, confirmed that it would be bringing a number of high-end features to its next headset, among which is inside-out tracking.
The upcoming VR headset is set to go head to head with the Oculus Go and HTC’s Vive Focus by introducing inside-out tracking technology, meaning the tracking camera will be placed on the headset itself. As well as this, Samsung plans on including 6 degrees of freedom (6DoF) controllers, up from the 3 degrees of freedom that the current Gear VR offers. This should allow for room-scale tracking and a much more immersive experience. Speaking of the experience, in order to improve upon the current one Samsung is working on improving the UI in the hope of making it more intuitive while also trying to reduce any possible motion sickness. Currently, Samsung’s Gear VR and Odyssey headsets target very different audiences. The lower-end Gear VR is aimed at mainstream consumers looking to experience virtual reality through their smartphones. But the recently-announced Odyssey, on the other hand, is a much more sophisticated device, powered by Windows and designed to be connected to desktop PC’s, thus catering to a smaller market segment. Because of these differences, the price tags of these devices also sit at completely different spectrums of the market, leaving a big gap in the middle.
Samsung’s upcoming device is expected to sit directly in between its current products, therefore offering the best of both worlds -a small, compact body like the Gear VR and an in-depth experience like the Odyssey. It’s rumored the standalone VR headset will sport dual-OLED displays, with a 110-degree field-of-view and a resolution of 1400 x 1600p. Alongside this, built-in AKG headphones are said to be included to further improve the experience on offer. For now, though, there is yet to be any official confirmation from the company in regards to the headset.