With the big VR war of 2016 set between the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive virtual reality headsets, it’s easy to forget that Samsung was actually the first company to bring a consumer VR headset to market. Its Gear VR, however, was built as an entry-level experience, and put together with cooperation from Oculus. Its next offering, though, is likely to be far more impressive.
And now we know what it might be called. Thanks to a trio of trademark logo applications filed by Samsung in its home country of South Korea, we now know it has something new in the works called Odyssey, alongside a stylized “VR” logo. The third logo is a little ambiguous, but is thought likely to be Samsung’s VR calling card, much like the Oculus and HTC Vive logos.
If there was any suggestions that these logos had something to do with an entirely different Samsung product, the descriptions reference things like “virtual reality game headsets,” and “virtual reality game software,” according to SamMobile.
Unfortunately, this is where the trail runs cold for now. We still don’t have a lot of details on what Samsung’s next virtual reality effort will be like, though we were told previously that the headset would feature positional tracking — something currently only found in the higher-end solutions like the Vive, Rift, and OSVR HDK2.
However, we’re not the first to wonder how Samsung plans to achieve this. Positional tracking has traditionally required some sort of camera or laser-based solution to figure out just where the user is in the virtual space. If Samsung has figured out how to do that without either of those costly bits of hardware, it could have a very interesting product on its hands.
Throw in the fact that if it’s smartphone based, it will most likely be mobile, which gives it an advantage over both other big-name headsets from the get go.
What features would you like to see in a Samsung Odyssey VR headset?
