Lumia 950 with a Homido VR Headset Review - A very good match and experience

[hirsti99]

I have recently purchased the Homido VR headset - Homido, virtual reality headset

The 950 fits the headset perfectly and focus and quality is very good.
I don't think the 950XL would work very well as it would be too big as the 950 screen only just fits the opening.
The headset is very comfortable except the nose piece which may require some extra padding as it can dig in, just stick some spare sponge or something there to fix it. The Headset comes with very good optical lenses that are adjustable with swappable holders to change to accommodate for shortsighted, normal or long sighted so glasses shouldn't need to be worn. It also allows you via a spin wheel on top to adjust the distance between each lens for people with wide set eyes or narrow set eyes, just like binoculars do.

The Homido apps are only for Android or Apple.
However there are some excellent alternatives on the Windows Mobile store.

To experience the 360 VR (where you turn your head and the view changes) then download the Video 360 app, this in conjunction with tubecast will give you access to HD and 4K quality video, works brilliantly.

To watch your movies or video that were shot in 2D (normal) on the headset you can get the VR Video app from the app store, this is just a video player that takes a normal mp4, wmv, mkv and puts it into side by side video (stereoscopic) which means when you view through the headset you will see a huge screen and a single image. There is no included video for this you have to provide your own but it pulls the location of any video from Films & TV and will play it side by side, or point it to your SD card. For me the best app for the headset by far. The experience is like watching at the cinema minus the annoying people in front, just plug in some earphones and get some popcorn, you will be in multimedia heaven.

Real Life Lag is a nice showpiece, it uses the back phone camera to show you the view in front of you on the VR headset, you can adjust the lag to screen which causes a surreal experience when trying to walk or move, good fun but watch out for breakables

There are a number of VR games available on the Windows store, just search for VR, one such popular one is InMindVR which works great.
You may need to interact with some games so if that is the case you would have to purchase a Bluetooth controller as the Headset doesn't have any magnet or external controls.

I have tried the headset with an iphone 6S and also a Samsung S6 and I personally feel the experience is more seamless and better on the windows phone than the others, hopefully more developers out there will release new VR related apps and games in the future but for now I think there is plenty to justify purchasing any VR headset (I would recommend the homido)

 

[ceno666]

Thanks for the write-up, do you tried the GearVR as well, would be interesting how the combination Lumia950/Homido is compared to GalaxyS6/GearVR
How is the picture quality when watching a movie?

 

[nasellok]

Ive tried the Video 360 app with Google Cardboard - it doesnt seem to work, maybe im doing it wrong. How do you make a normal MP4 file play without it being completely distorted? Any suggestions?

 

[hirsti99]

Have not used Gear VR so couldn't compare.
The picture quality is very good, 720p video is very watchable, 1080p is excellent.
The only issue which you get on all VR is that is can blur on fast movement but it is not bad

 

[hirsti99]

Ive tried the Video 360 app with Google Cardboard - it doesnt seem to work, maybe im doing it wrong. How do you make a normal MP4 file play without it being completely distorted? Any suggestions?

Video 360 isn't for that, it turns normal video into a VR experience, so you either have the option to see it in VR which for a non VR video isn't very good or you can watch it on a full screen which isn't viewable in the headset. Use VR Video app which takes a mp4 file and displays it in SBS (side by side) which then when viewed through the headset becomes a single image

 

[shadedp]

Please can some tell me which VR headset that work with Lumia 950xl. I want to be able to play games and watch videos on it.

 

[moin_23]

are the vr cases independent of phones(platforms)?
like google cardboards and other vr headsets will work with 950xl?
if not then what will?suggest a few.
how do we get the content, does wp store have enough?