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Watch the Olympics in stunning virtual reality with the Samsung Gear VR

By Christian de Looper August 5, 2016

Samsung Gear VR 2 — Jeffrey Van Camp/Digital Trends

This time around, you’ll be able to enjoy the Olympics much more intimately. That’s right, Samsung is teaming up with NBC to bring virtual reality to the Olympics, something that would have been impossible four years ago.

Owners of the Samsung Gear VR will be able to watch all kinds of events, including the opening ceremony. Events won’t be streamed until the day after they take place, however, so if you want to check out the opening ceremony with your headset, you’ll need to wait until Saturday.

According to Samsung, the most iconic moments of the Olympics will be available to watch at any time, and there will be as many as 85 hours of virtual reality content in total — everything from basketball to gymnastics. Not only that, but those without a Samsung phone or Gear VR headset can still get a piece of the action, as long as they live in New York. Samsung will be showing events to guests at its Samsung 837 showroom throughout the duration of the games.

It seems as though Samsung has really been the go-to for virtual reality content of late, especially when it comes to sports. For example, the Bayern Munich vs. Real Madrid match was recently streamed through the headset by NextVR, and more events are likely to come in the near future. Still, it would be nice to see more headsets making the same waves that Samsung is in virtual reality, especially considering the fact that the Gear VR is only usable by those with a Samsung Galaxy phone. In particular, it would be nice to see access to such content simply with any Android phone through headsets like Google Cardboard. Perhaps content will open up to more people once Google launches its new Daydream virtual reality software.

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Christian de Looper

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