Hands On: Lenovo's Mirage Standalone VR Headset

LAS VEGAS—Lenovo'due south Mirage Solo is the first standalone Daydream View headset we've seen, and it's a huge leap forward for Google'due south VR system.

Smartphone VR is awkward. There'southward no debating it. You lot have to shove your smartphone into a headset, in that location are some weird UI things well-nigh operating it one time information technology's in there, and you lot get interrupted past notifications sometimes. It's really just for aficionados. Then instead of relying on a phone like the Google Daydream View, the Delusion Solo uses its own smartphone-similar hardware to produce a VR experience.

It uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor with a 5.5-inch Quad Hard disk LCD, 4GB of retentiveness, and 64GB of storage, putting the Mirage Solo in line with high-terminate Android phones, in terms of hardware. It attaches to your Google Play account and lets you download VR apps. You can also utilize your smartphone to set upwardly apps and content in your business relationship and then picket them on the headset, which is the best of all possible user interfaces.

The standalone device looks like the Fantasize View, with a fairly small visor held in place by a headband. It'southward certainly less bulky than the Acer Windows Mixed Reality Headset, a VR brandish designed to piece of work with Windows x PCs.

The headset is quite comfortable, although information technology's bulky; comfort comes from the large brace that goes over your head. And strikingly, it has six degrees of freedom (6DOF), which means that, like with the HTC Vive only different with all smartphone VR and then far, you tin actually walk around in your VR experiences. With no cords! That'southward a huge leap frontwards, sometimes literally. You operate the VR world using the little Daydream remote, which is included with the headset and features a clickable trackpad and buttons for app selection, accessing the home carte du jour, and adjusting volume.

The Mirage Solo uses dual cameras for motility tracking, in improver to the usual combination of gyroscope, accelerometer, and magnetometer. They can't provide you with a passthrough epitome of nearby walls, but can warn you when y'all're nearly to meet something.

This combination is similar to Windows Mixed Reality headsets, which besides rely on outward-facing cameras to rail headset position. It's likely a more accurate organisation than simply using motion sensors like with smartphone-based VR systems, though based on our tests with the Acer Windows Mixed Reality Headset it might not be every bit accurate as sensor buoy-based VR systems like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Nevertheless, the Mirage Solo'south position tracking, called WorldSense, isn't necessarily the same every bit Windows Mixed Reality position tracking; we'll simply conclusively find out how accurate and responsive it is when we become the Mirage Solo in for testing.

Its success is dependent, as always, on the software ecosystem. I played a snowboarding game that chosen on y'all to stand up up to play, and and then jump and duck for real when you ran into obstacles. I got a petty nauseous, actually, from tilting my head to steer and ducking a lot, but that would probably happen in real snowboarding, too. Right at present, I don't run into people flocking to Daydream—or any smartphone-based VR system—because of the lack of games and apps available. There are going to be even fewer 6DOF games and apps. For this to work, we need to see more 6DOF Daydream headsets, and somebody needs to beginning writing stuff for them.

Lenovo Mirage Camera

Lenovo is as well launching a VR camera to complement its new headset. The Lenovo Delusion Camera with Daydream is a meaty device with twin 13MP sensors and fisheye lenses, capable of capturing a 180-degree field of view. It tin can capture footage compatible with Google's VR180 format, which enables easy uploading and sharing over YouTube and Google Photos.

The photographic camera is a little white rectangle with no viewfinder. Initially, that's a trivial disconcerting, but then you realize that the 180-degree field of view is just taking a picture of whatever's in front of it. You can hook the camera up to a smartphone to use every bit a viewfinder, but then you're juggling ane likewise many things. Buttons on the back let y'all toggle betwixt still, movie, and livestreaming mode; it's very uncomplicated to utilise.

It'southward a little scrap of a misnomer to phone call the Mirage Photographic camera a "VR" camera. It's more like a 3D camera, from those old days when we used to take stereoscopic 3D photos. It has depth, only the 180-degree field of view feels very, very not VR—things and people fade in and out of the frame as they enter the field of view. Yous tin can't walk through your pictures, and information technology isn't fifty-fifty really worth turning your head, as all you lot run across are the edges of the frame. Your VR headset, essentially, becomes a pair of fancy 3D glasses. And although the photographic camera supposedly shoots at 30 frames per 2d, one of the sample videos I watched had skips and jerks, which Lenovo chalked upwardly to early firmware.

The Mirage Camera will compete with 360 cameras, which requite a much more than complete VR experience. They're likewise much more of a pain to orchestrate, as y'all need to effigy out where to put yourself in the frame. But I think that in one case you lot have a headset on, you might every bit well be able to look around.

Lenovo plans to transport both the Mirage Solo with Fantasize and the Mirage Photographic camera with Daydream in Q2 2022. The Delusion Solo volition have a suggested retail price of $449.99 and the Mirage Camera a suggested price of $299.99.

Lenovo Smart Brandish

Lenovo's Smart Display fills the gap in Google'south product lineup for a vox-enabled assistant with a screen, and wonder of wonders, it has YouTube. Only before we say "motility over, Echo Show," nosotros'll desire to run across a more final model; Lenovo says the unit we saw is half-dozen months from retail.

Lenovo won't take the only Assistant-powered Smart Display; Google says they're coming from JBL, LG, and Sony as well, although we haven't actually seen whatsoever of those yet.

The Smart Display comes in two sizes, eight-inch and 10-inch. Both have big speakers and a sort-of folded stand for a back. The smaller one's back has a gray rubbery texture, while the bigger one has a swish bamboo paneling.

The displays run Assistant over Android Things, and y'all tin can say "Hey Google!" to inquire questions or run routines. That'south where things in our demo got a footling mysterious. The displays were in a fixed-part demo mode, and lots of aspects of the software weren't set notwithstanding.

Nosotros know they'll play music from Google Play and video from YouTube; read and evidence recipes; testify directions from Google Maps; respond internet queries; and video chat using Google Duo, for case. But back up for other video services is up in the air, and Google hasn't all the same figured out how third parties will write deportment for the screen (although they certainly will be able to.) Will they take a night fashion, so they can exist used equally an alarm clock? We don't know that, either.

The displays are definitely more than imposing than an Echo Bear witness, and much larger than an Echo Spot. They reminded me much more of kitchen tablets or digital picture frames than the blocky Evidence or alarm-clock-like Spot does. They speak to rooms with large, airy spaces, not cramped little apartments.

With another half-year to become before we see the Smart Displays, they seem to currently serve equally a way for Google to say, "hey, we're going to compete with the Echo Bear witness!" than a product we tin really recommend ownership however. We'll be very interested to see their final class this summer.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/vr-headset/19029/hands-on-lenovos-mirage-standalone-vr-headset

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