During a recent event in San Francisco, Samsung President and Chief Strategy Officer Young Sohn discussed where he believes the future reality is headed as well as his company’s future plans for the burgeoning technology.
With other manufacturers like Intel and Qualcomm jumping into the standalone VR game after revealing reference designs for standalone virtual reality headsets in an attempt to fill the gap between high-end VR and low-end devices like Samsung’s Gear VR, it makes sense for the South Korean company to be considering jumping into this area of the industry too.
While Samsung has previously stated that it’s working on a standalone VR headset, Sohn says the company is now adopting a wait-and-see approach when it comes to developing a mid-range standalone VR device. Sohn describes his company’s dilemma as a “chicken and egg problem right now” with there being so many VR platforms on the market right, but little content actually available for them.
Sohn does, however, believe that next-generation VR devices will feature pixel densities “at last two times” the size of current headsets, suggesting a 4K future for Samsung’s mobile devices, an upgrade that would negate the screen door pixelated effect featured in every virtual reality device’s display, even high-end hardware like the Vive, PlayStation VR and the Oculus Rift. He also mentioned that building a 10K mobile display would require an investment of “at least $5 billion to $10 billion” from Samsung.
One thing that is clear from Sohn’s presentation is the fact that Samsung is taking virtual reality seriously, though it looks like the company has plans to stick with its Gear software rather than adopt Google’s upcoming Daydream virtual reality platform.
While VR headsets that utilize smartphones for processing and display functionality are a great entry into virtual reality, moving to a standalone setup is important for the future of virtual reality.
[via]Android Authority[/via][source]Tech Crunch[/source]
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