Skip to main content
jherico
Inspiring
September 3, 2014

Samsung Gear VR SDK...

The announcement of the Gear VR headset and the 'mobile SDK' seems promising, but left some ambiguity. Will the mobile SDK support only the Samsung hardware, or will it also support DK1 and DK2 hardware connected to an android powered device, such as the Ouya, nVidia Shield or Kindle Fire TV devices?

    6 replies

    donp3yote
    Participant
    September 3, 2014
    And with the iPhone 6 coming out soon which is near comparable screen size it would be sensible to include that platform as well, esp given the App's store financial success rate.
    rjoyce
    Participant
    September 4, 2014
    Based on some of the comments by Carmack (I'll only pretend I understand everything he says) it seems like they did some device level optimization that may be specific to the Samsung Note. However, I may be completely wrong, it may just be OS level stuff that should port to any Android device -- however I see a strong reason (i.e., $$ from Samsung) for Oculus to keep it Samsung exclusive, at least for now.

    The closed ecosystem of the iPhone 6 means it would take a near miracle for Oculus to working there.
    Cgpnz
    Up and Coming
    September 4, 2014
    "rjoyce" wrote:


    The closed ecosystem of the iPhone 6 means it would take a near miracle for Oculus to working there.


    What, you pay 99usd and get a year licence to code. Nothing miraculous about that.
    rjoyce
    Participant
    September 4, 2014
    "Cgpnz" wrote:
    "rjoyce" wrote:


    The closed ecosystem of the iPhone 6 means it would take a near miracle for Oculus to working there.


    What, you pay 99usd and get a year licence to code. Nothing miraculous about that.


    "license to code" is based solely on their API's and subject to their approval. With Android, and working with an OEM, you can replace the kernel and/or device drivers to fit your need. That will never happen with Apple.

    For a simple example, when you're using Gear VR the device to gives the VR app priority over all background threads to ensure a smooth framerate. Not possible with Apple's iOS SDK.

    Yes you can develop a VR app on an iPhone and they even exist already (Fov2go, etc) but the point is we won't see an Oculus iOS SDK anytime soon, or an immersive device like the Gear.
    mungewell
    Up and Coming
    September 4, 2014
    I was recently gifted a Cube-i which has a fairly powerful CPU/GPU (for a 2" cube) and was looking forward to playing 'Rift' with it... it can run Android as well as regular Linux. Mobile SDK would be nice to have.

    One interesting thing from Carmack's speech was the mention of special kernel drivers. Not a huge difficulty as the tracker is a simple HID device, but they must have devised some form of interface for the SDK to bind to. This should be re-usable on regular Linux and the source should be available (unless they're playing tricks to get around the GPL.... please don't do that).

    For the Gear-VR they are (apparently) doing things like 'racing the raster' (oh, getting all nostalgic with phrases like that) so parts of the rendering are going to be Samsung specific. Hopefully Mobile-SDK will have multiple render paths, allowing for generic device support.
    jhericoAuthor
    Inspiring
    September 4, 2014
    "mungewell" wrote:
    One interesting thing from Carmack's speech was the mention of special kernel drivers. Not a huge difficulty as the tracker is a simple HID device, but they must have devised some form of interface for the SDK to bind to. This should be re-usable on regular Linux and the source should be available (unless they're playing tricks to get around the GPL.... please don't do that).


    The kernel stuff is almost certainly related to getting the most out of the hardware on the Note 4. An external Rift shouldn't have the same issues since you're dealing with the existing hardware (the Rift itself) that's already built to the required specifications and communicates over USB.
    Brad Davis - Developer for High Fidelity Co-author of Oculus Rift in Action
    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement