While the Oculus Rift isn't a consumer product yet, that hasn't stopped a lot of fans (this author included) from investing in a Rift development kit, just to get a taste of what the future of virtual reality will look like. The user experience greeting those users is about as unfriendly as you'd expect a development environment to be. Setup involves not just tethering a bunch of wires to the computer and motion-tracking camera, but also downloading and installing an SDK and runtime environment, fiddling with OS-level monitor settings and hard-to-move focus adjustment knobs, and often figuring out how to launch beta/demo apps with the proper settings to get them to simply show up correctly on the Rift.

The Gear VR Innovator Edition might not be a mass consumer product yet , according to Oculus, but after spending a few hours with it, I'm impressed with how much progress Samsung and Oculus have made toward making VR a truly plug-and-play experience. Out of the box, the most complicated bit of hardware setup consists of looping the top strap through the hooks on the front and back of the unit and adjusting the velcro straps so they are attached on the correct sides. After that, you simply pop off the translucent protector on the front, snap the Galaxy Note 4 into its USB cradle, and... take it right back out of the cradle.

Yes, the oddest moment of setting up the Gear VR is the moment you plug it in and hear a robotic voice coming from the phone's speakers telling you to take it right back out again. That's so you can download the Oculus Home app and other utilities onto the phone in a boring, old, 2D, non-VR handheld Android interface. The downloads amount to a few hundred megabytes altogether and took a surprisingly long time compared to similar downloads over the same Wi-Fi connection (thankfully, a good deal of the larger audiovisual demo content is preloaded on the 16GB microSD card that comes with the Gear VR).



















After the download, I was ready to plug the phone in for good and strap the device to my gourd. Adjusting the velcro straps was a bit difficult at first, since the rigid vinyl straps had semi-permanent bends around the connection points, set from their positioning during packaging. After some adjustment (and a bit of massaging), though, I managed to get the straps to the right lengths and had the unit resting pretty comfortably on the bridge of my nose.

Unlike the Rift development kits, the majority of the weight and pressure of the Gear VR seems to rest on nicely cushioned portions of the straps, located on the back of the skull and the upper forehead. There's still a little bit of ski goggle-style pressure around the eyes/sinuses, but it's much more manageable than the elastic death grip of the DK2. The lack of tethering wires pulling on the units also helps in the comfort department. We're not quite at the point where VR goggles feel like a pair of sunglasses, but we're getting there.

Getting comfortable

After a quick focus adjustment using an easy-to-turn knob on the top of the unit, I was greeted with an over-the-top introductory video, with a narrator seriously intoning promises of being transported to other worlds over 360° video scenes, such as a meal in a remote Asian village and a Cirque du Soleil performance. The system then took me through a quick tutorial explaining how to navigate menus by looking around, tapping and swiping on the touchpad near my temple, and using the back button just above that touchpad. It's a pretty intuitive system that should be usable even by people who struggle with the concept of a computer mouse.

The Oculus Store interface makes the days of downloading Rift dev kit demos seem downright archaic. A series of Windows 8-style boxes seems to float in a fixed position in the air, with nice big pictures and text that's easily readable on the screen. The most surprising thing about the store was the way each app and game comes with its own "comfort rating": a third-person title like Herobound is "comfortable for most," while a first-person experience like Dreadhalls is "comfortable for few." It appears that Oculus and Samsung are still very concerned about the motion sickness problem.



















So far, I haven't had any real issues with motion sickness, though. Through menus and a number of apps I tested, there was none of the judder, motion delay, or smearing that can make virtual reality environments seem nauseatingly fake. The only time I felt even a little bit nauseous was if I accidentally leaned my head forward or backward quickly, causing the entire VR "world" around me to shift along with my position.

For the most part, though, the lack of positional tracking wasn't apparent as I swiveled around in my office chair and tilted my head to look all over the place. I got so lost in a series of VR worlds that, when I took the device off, I was surprised to find I was facing 180° opposite of where I thought I was. Personal tolerances are going to differ, and app design is going to be important, but my first impression is that we've reached a minimum viable VR comfort point for at least some portion of the public.

I haven't had a chance to dive into the full selection of 16 or so apps in the Oculus Store yet, but I tinkered with some of the less-interactive apps while waiting for some games to download and install. I feel like the 360° video tours have the potential to be a killer app for the VR experience. Even at a relatively low resolution, the ability to go on convincing, three-dimensional flybys of scenes like horses running through Scottish fields, melting Arctic glaciers, and the skyscrapers of downtown New York City is downright breathtaking. It only loses its impact if you try to focus on bits in the distance, where the resolution of the video makes everything look a bit muddy and smeared.

The 360° 3D photo panoramas are much crisper and more detailed, but they lack the gentle, floating motion that makes the videos so arresting. If someone can combine the fidelity of the 360° photos with the liveliness of the 360° videos, I'd buy that in a second.

I also tried watching a couple of film trailers and clips in the Oculus Cinema, which puts a 3D film on a flat screen in a virtual theater (or a virtual moonscape, or a virtual underwater scene, etc.) It was a competent if unexciting experience in VR, made a bit more interesting by a few trailers that extended the scene in a "multiscreen" format, with angled virtual displays extending off the side of the main screen. It's a cute gimmick, but I'm already not sure if I'd want to watch a full movie in this way.

A few other miscellaneous notes from my first couple of hours with the Gear VR:

Holding down the back button brings up an always-accessible system menu, where you can activate a halfway decent passthrough camera function that lets you see your surroundings without taking the unit off. You can also turn on a "do not disturb" mode, so notifications about e-mails and texts don't pop up and ruin the VR experience.

You really need to keep the handset screen clean. The tiniest bit of dirt or hair is remarkably apparent when it gets in the way of a VR view.

The Note 4 automatically goes to sleep when you take the Gear VR off and comes back to life when you put it back on. My best guess is there's a tension sensor in the head strap that figures out when it's on a head.

My first two hours of pretty constant and intense VR use took the Note 4's battery down from about 80 percent to about 20 percent.

You can plug in headphones even with the front cover on, through convenient slots in the side.

We'll have a much fuller review in the days to come. For now, though, the Gear VR makes a strong first impression that ought to get even virtual reality neophytes into the concept quickly and easily.