The Olympic games, whether the Summer games or Winter games, are always a big to do and are always a great experience for sports fans. This year, though, the 2018 Winter Olympic games, is an even bigger and more exciting experience for a very specific reason. Virtual reality. Even just a couple of years ago when the Summer games happened, VR was still a newer technology and there wasn’t a lot of content yet available for any of the platforms that consumers were able to get their hands on. All that’s changed in just a short two-year time span. A couple years prior to the Summer games was the last time the Winter games took place, and VR was just hitting the scene in the form of Google’s Cardboard viewer at this point. These days virtual reality technology is a lot more advanced and there are numerous platforms to choose from, and all or most of them are offering ways to experience the Winter Olympic games like never before.
For starters, you could take the easiest and least expensive route, which is to use Google Cardboard. This is a relatively cheap headset as you can find them for about $25 or less. Usually less. Of course if you have a compatible device, like any of Google’s Pixel phones, then you can opt for the Daydream View or the second-generation Daydream View and get a much better viewing experience. With either of these headsets you can pick up the NBC app which will offer various things in regards to the games, like times of the different events and alerts for the ones you don’t want to miss, and it even lets you view live coverage in VR so it should feel a little more like you’re actually there.
If you’ve got a Galaxy device, like the Galaxy S8 Plus for example, then you can view the NBC app through Daydream View as well, now that it’s compatible, but you can also use the app with Gear VR if this is your headset of choice since the app is listed as being compatible with Gear VR. The same kind of features and offerings apply here, with the ability to check times for events, receive alerts for things you want to see and then the ability to watch live.
The last headset you can use to watch the games, and through the same app (the NBC app as NBC is the exclusive network to air the games) will be any number of Windows Mixed Reality headsets. This means you can use the most recently released headset, Samsung’s Odyssey headset, or you can view the games with the NBC app through the Acer headset and any other available options on the market. Since this is still the same app that you’ll be using, schedules, alerts, and live coverage are all available here and you can configure things pretty tightly so you catch everything that interests you. As with the other respective headsets, you’ll need to install the NBC app from the store that corresponds to your headset, which in this case is the Microsoft store.
Interestingly enough, the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR aren’t compatible with NBC’s application, which means you can’t use them to watch the same live coverage as the other headsets. That said, you can still view plenty of Winter Olympic games coverage on the PS4 system itself, or on your PC, if you’re so inclined. Otherwise, any of the four above-mentioned platforms will do you just fine and should make for some pretty cool experiences as opposed to just watching events on the TV through regular broadcasting.