Will Google’s New Daydream Beat the Gear VR?

Image credit: HTC and Samsung

Google’s recent announcements at last week’s I/O conference demonstrated that Google is serious about virtual reality hardware and software. New headsets, new Daydream software, new rendering technology, and new tracking technologies could bring Google’s version of virtual reality to the masses like never before. That said, they will have a giant hurdle to overcome and this hurdle is Samsung.

Image credit: HTC

Their Gear VR headset is the most popular virtual reality headset currently on the market. If Google aims to dominate the field of VR, they must beat Samsung’s Gear VR in both sales and most importantly mindshare. With all this in mind, this article discusses the technological capacities of Google’s new Daydream tech in comparison to the Gear VR. As a result, this exploration foretells which headset set will potentially become, or remain, The King of Mobile VR.

Gear VR with a Samsung Galaxy S8 Versus HTC Daydream stand-alone/all-in-one

GearVR. Image credit: Samsung

To be clear, I will be comparing HTC’s new stand-alone headset with Samsung’s new Gear VR running on a Samsung Galaxy S8. Although information about HTC’s new stand-alone headset running Daydream is sparse (because its release is fall 2017), we can assume and generally speculate on the basic technologies that it will include (CPU, GPU, Tracking, Sensors, Software, Display, etc). I will start with what most people consider to be the most important element of virtual reality – the graphics.

Graphics and Visuals

In terms of silicon, Google’s new Daydream headsets built by HTC and Lenovo are probably pretty evenly matched with Samsung’s newest Gear VR offering powered by the Galaxy S8. For users that are stateside, the Samsung Galaxy S8 includes a Snapdragon 835. The HTC stand-alone headset will also contain this snappy lizard beast processor as well.

Processor: Tie

Although the processor choice was not given during Google’s I/O talks, multiple press sources have confirmed with Google that the new stand-alone headsets like those produced by HTC and Lenovo will indeed include the Snapdragon 835. If this is truly the case, Samsung’s Gear VR and Google’s new Daydream headsets could be considered akin to cloned racing horses. In other words, they will run neck and neck. This will result in extremely similar graphical performance.

Image credit: Qualcomm

With the same silicon pumping graphics, the next comparison regarding visuals would be the displays themselves. Once again, we can not be exactly sure about the resolution of HTC’s new headset. That said, we do have some good clues. Most of the gadget press is saying HTC’s headset will include a display with a resolution of 2560×1440. Is this resolution based from leaks or speculation? It is impossible to know, however, I believe I can speculate that this resolution is indeed the correct number because:

1) there are an only a few standard resolutions commonly used for VR,

2) extremely high resolutions generally require more power than chips like the Snapdragon CPU can provide making a 4k resolution out of question, and…

3) HTC usually uses great displays in their tech, so low-resolution displays are of the speculative table, so to speak.

With all this in mind, it is most likely HTC’s new device with feature something extremely similar or close to a 2560×1440 AMOLED display.

The aforementioned resolution is becoming a first gen VR standard. The screen door (see picture below for example of improvements of screen door in Oculus Rift developer headsets) is visible on such displays but not distracting. On the other hand, Samsung’s headset has a 2960 x 1440 display. Although there appear to be quite a few more pixels at play here, the difference between the two displays will be negligible. Users of the new S8 and the Gear VR say that the new GearVR experience is pretty much the same as last year’s model that used a 2560×1440 resolution like HTC’s new baby. The extra pixels found on the S8’s display are a result of Samdog’s new extra long 18:9 infinity display.

Screen door effect compared on early Oculus Rift developer kit 1 and 2 (dk1 and dk2). Image credit: Oculus Forums

Resolution: Tie

All and all, the displays will provide very comparable experience. The silicon that powers these displays is also very similar. This means that the graphical capabilities and output should also be, more or less, the same. That said, other software features that I will describe in the rest of this comparison (this week) could make important differences in the kind of virtual reality experiences these headsets can provide.