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Moonshots: Samsung outs a '4D' VR headset, shower singing app, and the Waffle social platform

By Daniel P.

Mar 14, 2016, 4:26 AM

Moonshots: Samsung outs a '4D' VR headset, shower singing app, and the Waffle social platform

Samsung is pushing its Gear VR headset pretty heavily these days, giving it away to early adopters of the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge, and everyone else, like HTC or LG, hopes you will get on the virtual reality bandwagon soon enough. Well, not so fast, as one problem with current '3D' VR headsets is that you might go through the made-up worlds in front of your eyes swooshing like a ghost, but your body is not actually feeling the movements, so you are a kind of a spectator which can make you pretty dizzy.

As if to aleviate these concerns, Samsung came up with a few proof of concept ideas from its C-Lab shop to present at the SXSW tech expo, and one of them is a new Entrim 4D VR headset. The Entrim excites your inner ear with electrical impulses, the so-called Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation (GVS), and Samsung's proprietary algorithms do the rest to make your body feel like it is an integral part of the motion in front of your eyes. You feel like you lean and bob just like the subject that is flying through those worlds, which sounds pretty neat, and not at all spooky. Not.

Next up is a prototype of a Samsung social media platform that encourages creativity, dubbed Waffle for its interface grid. It allows the users to corroborate and share content on a topic together and with gusto. Waffle is a kind of topical graffiti wall where anyone with an interest in the thread and things to share can post, and is not limited only to photos, but also sketches, quotes, hashtags, etc.

Last but not least of the concept innovations that Samsung showcased at SXSW is the Hum On! app for all of us aspiring shower singers. It records the humming that you voice at the moment, runs it through its tuning algorithms, and pops up with beautiful melodies acompanied by various instruments. Hey, you can even make a symphony out of your humming, that would be a good way to idle away the hours when bored for sure.