Samsung’s VR headset for Windows 10 — the Odyssey — is equipped with OLED display panels.
We saw the headset leaked recently but now a page on Microsoft’s store was noted on Reddit that reveals the Samsung headset is priced around $500 with motion controllers included and Nov. 6 listed as its shipping date. It features a resolution of 2880 x 1600, compared with 2880×1440 on other headsets from Microsoft’s partners.
The Odyssey headset joins its LCD-equipped siblings in the holiday push. As we understand it both types of displays used in the new wave of VR headsets powered by Microsoft’s tracking technology are essentially low-persistence. This means they are only “illuminating the pixels on the screen for a tiny fraction of each frame length,” as Oculus once described the technology. This helps because “low-persistence eliminates the outdated display data that your eyes would normally see between frames.” The LCD screens other Microsoft partners are using for Windows 10-based VR headsets have “impulse backlighting” meant to “specifically target scenarios for immersive headsets.”
We’ll report back as soon as we go eyes-in with the Samsung headset to see if the OLED panels and resolution differ in significant ways. Samsung’s OLED panels are used on practically every existing high-end VR headset, with Microsoft’s other partners like HP and Acer using LCD screens to presumably lower cost.
