AirVR - VR Headset for iPhone and iPad

[Stonent]

I saw this mentioned briefly in another thread but didn't find a separate thread for it.

http://getairvr.com/

The Kickstarter page has a video but the product to me looks like just a 3D printed case with a strap on it.  There's lots of references to websites that indicate some kind of endorsement but clicking on any of them takes you to their home page.

I'm not getting a warm fuzzy about this.  Unless there's something special about that headset, China will be selling them for 5 dollars a piece in no time.

Some of the features they list in their video are things like "Touch screen, retina display, 3g" those are all features of the iPhone, not the plastic strap...

[janoc]

That is nothing more than a strap with a holder for your iPad and two lenses. The only thing interesting on that is the high resolution of the iPad display, nothing else. There are tons of similar things around:

Samsung Gear VR (uses Galaxy Note 4):
http://www.tested.com/tech/concepts/464299-samsung-and-oculus-vr-announce-gear-vr-innovator-edition-hmd/

Durovis DIVE (also ex-Kickstarter):
https://www.durovis.com/dive.html

VRASE (another Kickstarter):
http://www.vrase.com/

If you want to build one yourself, there are even several cardboard versions:
http://www.roadtovr.com/google-cardboard-vr-smartphone-adapter-vr-toolkit-sdk-io-2014/

It is hardly new and hardly anything sensible has been developed for these gadgets - e.g. the DIVE is our for several years and you will find about 5 apps total on Google Play that support it. And most are just Durovis demos.

These strap-your-phablet-to-your-face gadgets are fairly pointless - without having a way to interact with the device (e.g. a gamepad or something to track your hands) you are limited to viewing panoramas or non-interactive demos. That gets old very quickly, especially because it induces a lot of motion sickness, and has nothing to do with virtual reality - the ability to interact is essential there.

Also some sort of universal support for these is next to impossible, because the software must pre-distort the image to compensate for the lens distortion - and that depends on the lenses and display size/resolution which differ between the different phones/tablets that are being used, fragmenting the market. That's why Samsung offers this only with the Note 4 phablet and nothing else - that is the same display used in the Oculus Rift DK2 development kit, so they have easier time to develop software for it, using the Oculus SDK.

To conclude, I am working on VR applications for some 13 years now and I am really sceptical of the practical utility of these things beyond the 5 minute novelty effect. Unless you are a developer interested in working on it, don't bother. There is little to see there for a lay user so far.