Samsung may unveil ‘Gear VR’ virtual reality headset at IFA 2014

Along with smartwatches, manufacturers have begun investing time in other wearables segments like virtual reality headsets too. While Sony is working on Project Morpheus and Facebook sent ripples across the tech world after acquiring Oculus Rift, Samsung is also rumoured to be working on a virtual reality headset.

A report by SamMobile now confirms that Samsung is working on a virtual reality headset, and plans to name it ‘Gear VR’. The report states that the device will be announced alongside the Galaxy Note 4 at the IFA consumer electronics trade show to be held in Berlin in September.

Unlike the Oculus, the Gear VR won’t be a completely standalone virtual reality headset. The company has reportedly developed a modular design that will allow users to dock in a Galaxy device into the Gear VR via USB 3.0. The virtual reality effect will be achieved through head tracking, and the company will also employ its AMOLED display technology. The headset will rely on sensors integrated in the smartphone to track motion, instead of integrating the sensors directly in the headset.

“This design should allow Samsung to massively cut down manufacturing costs and introduce the headset at a low cost. However, it’s Samsung, and Samsung usually doesn’t like to equip its first product in a new product category with an inexpensive price tag. You might say that this is exactly like Google’s Cardboard VR headset, which was handed out to I/O 14 attendees, and you would be right! The main concept behind Gear VR is the same,” states the report.

The Gear VR is likely to come with an elastic head band and soft padded cushions on each side to ensure that it’s comfortable to wear.

Talking further about the design, the report reveals that we can expect a ‘see-through button’ on the right side. It uses the smartphone’s rear-facing camera sensor to offer a video feed of the real outside world. This is said to be the distinguishing factor from others like Oculus, and Sony as users won’t have to remove and wear the headset again and again. One will also find a touchpad under the see-through button to navigate through the user interface on the Galaxy smartphone.

While the hardware is developed by Sony, it has been working with Oculus VR for the software. It also plans to build a separate section of Samsung apps just for the headset. Soon after the announcement at the IFA, Samsung will reportedly make the Gear VR SDK available to developers.

Goodbye mouse? This 3DTouch device could change how you interact with computers

A thimble-like device called 3DTouch that sits at the end of your finger and allows you to interact with the virtual world in three dimensions may render the indispensable computer mouse obsolete.

The way in which humans interact with computers has been dominated by the mouse since it was invented in the 1960s. However, when we use the device, we’re limited to two-dimensional movements.

Anh Nguyen and Amy Banic from the University of Wyoming in the US have created an intelligent thimble that can sense its position accurately in three-dimensions and respond to a set of preprogrammed gestures that allow the user to interact with objects in a virtual three-dimensional world.

According to MIT Technology Review, Nguyen and Banic aimed to create a cheap device that works as a universal input for more or less any computing device. They want to make it as small and unobtrusive as possible so that it can be easily transported. The 3DTouch sits on the end of a finger, equipped with a 3D accelerometer, a 3D magnetometer and 3D gyroscope.

That allows the data from each sensor to be compared and combined to produce a far more precise estimate of orientation than a single measurement alone. The 3DTouch also has an optical flow sensor that measures the movement of the device against a two-dimensional surface, exactly like that inside an ordinary mouse.

For now, the device is hooked up by wire to an Arduino controller which combines the data from all the sensors. The fused data is then streamed to a conventional laptop. ”This wired connection later could be replaced by a wireless solution using a pair of XBee modules,” researchers said.

Researchers have also built in a number of mouse-like gestures that allow a user to interact with 3-D objects, by selecting and dragging them. They have tested their new device to measure its pointing accuracy and say that it is reasonably good.