The 2016 Rio Olympics is offering a very new experience, VR. Those people who have a Samsung GearVR headset and compatible Samsung phone can install a dedicated 7VR app that allows you to experience up to 100 hours of live events and highlights from Rio in Virtual Reality.
As the Olympics are shot from multiple camera angles, you get to play director and select from a number of camera angles to stream from.
To get started, its really easy, just pop on the GearVR and there’s a heavily promoted feature tile, basically its hard to miss. Just download, install and then get started.
Once you’re in the app, you get to look around the gorgeous landscape that is Rio, with a selection of events and highlights available for you to interact with. As you’d expect, just look to move your pointer over a button, then tap to select the content, its really easy enough for anyone to navigate.
When Samsung were giving away GearVR’s with sales of their S7, not many users would have been thinking of the Olympics, but now this experience is here, those who scored a GearVR will certainly get more value from their purchase.
For those that don’t have a GearVR, we’ve recorded a short video to let you see the experience you’re missing out on.
After using the app for some time now, it certainly isn’t bug free. The video at time will drop out and display a solid blue, which really takes you out of the experience.
Its also pretty disappointing that the VR camera location is almost the worst seat in the house. This makes it difficult to see the athletes during the opening ceremony.
@Olympics you could have got the VR cam a better seat #Rio2016 https://t.co/3NCL55cX6w pic.twitter.com/OyxcBmhZB0
— techAU (@techAU) August 6, 2016
