Sixense has announced that its STEM system will be compatible with Gear VR, so we can use one of the STEMs to add absolute positioning to the device developed jointly by Samsung and Oculus, thus filling its main lack with respect to the DK2. We don’t know if Sixense will ship devices to developers who are working on Gear VR experiences, but it would be a good way to start promoting it.
At the beginning of the year, a small expedition from Samsung flew to the offices of Sixense to show them a demo of Gear VR. At Sixense they were quite skeptical and were convinced that mobile virtual reality needed at least 5 years to be ready, mainly because of the power of the devices. However, the Gear VR demo with a Galaxy S4 blew them away, and at that moment they began to work together to prepare STEM. Thus, the Sixense SDK will be compatible with Android and Gear VR. The Jedi lightsabers, the shooting gallery and the rest of the demos that Sixense has shown to date will be able to be tested together with Gear VR at the Samsung Developers Conference that will take place between November 11 and 13. For the demo they will use a STEM controller that will communicate via Bluetooth with the Galaxy Note 4 used in Gear VR to provide complete absolute positioning. The latency will be 7.5 ms, a really impressive figure considering that the signal is transmitted by Bluetooth, and at Sixense they are convinced that it is more than enough to offer absolute quality positioning.
Skip to minute 2:27:16 to hear this information
There is no doubt that Gear VR is becoming more and more interesting, and in the absence of a higher refresh rate, it can offer superior features to the Oculus DK2, limited by the power of the Note 4. But as we have always said, you can create experiences that leave us with our mouths open without the need to perform a graphic deployment only within the reach of several GPUs working in parallel. Over the next few weeks, Gear VR will be launched and the first STEMs will be shipped, so we can’t wait to see how they work together. We will keep you informed, since we will have both devices.
