VR demo - no headset required
So, what you need a headset for is for two things, firstly to give you some lenses to be able to focus on a screen right in front of your eyes, and secondly to house the gyroscopes etc. to be able to track where your head is pointing.
For mobile VR, the head tracking is taken care of by the phone's gyrosccope, so the headset is only there to give you some lenses.
So if you don't care about the visuals, you can still get a sense of what VR is about - i.e. 3d positional audio combined with head tracking - just from a smartphone and a pair of headphones.
The easiest way to see what the fuss is about is to watch a 360 + spatial audio video on youtube. Unfortuately the iOS youtube app doesn't support it, but if you can get hold of an Android phone, the following video in the youtube app (important - must be the app, not the youtube website):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uayp7VRoL3Y
The once it is playing, hold the phone close to your face, screen facing you. If you're wearing stereo headphones you should now be hearing binaural audio, you are standing in the middle of a room surrounded by band members all around you in a circle, and you should be able to tell where in 3D space the different instruments are. Listen for where an instrument is, for example if the piano is off to your right, and turn your body to face that direction. That instrument should now be in front of you.
That should be able to give you the gist of what 3D audio + head tracking is about. And VR devs are big on audio, lots of investment is being poured into binaural audio as a result of VR. It's needed for immersion for all players, but also has nice potential for more immersive experiences for blind gamers too.
If you're on iOS you could give this a try, it's a collection of 360 head tracked videos that have spatial audio, but you'll need sighted assistance to get one of them playing: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jaunt-v … 52748?mt=8
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