Experts are saying that 2016 will be the year when virtual reality gadgets will finally receive mainstream attention and maybe even success. While you have the Gear VR, Oculus Rift, Microsoft’s AR Hololens or Sony’s PS VR and others, over there in China, there isn’t much locally-made VR headsets available. FiresVR, which calls itself “the Xiaomi of China’s VR industry” is now introducing the first mobile phone VR hardware with built-in high performance IMU and interactive buttons, called JiDome-1.
The Chinese market has actually been producing a lot of Google Cardboard-type VR accessories based on its open-source SDK. But the JiDome-1 is the first “serious” VR product that can be comparable to the Gear VR and its ilk. It is able to adapt to any screen size of mainstream mobile phones and unlike the Gear VR which is only compatible with Samsung phones, it can support any Android phone as long as it meets the designed parameters. However, most of the major mobile phone manufacturers don’t have support for it as of yet.
The JiDome-1 also has a high-precision 9-axis gyroscope and proximity sensor, interaction buttons that were previously considered weak in the lower-end VR devices, and an air-cooling system to help your device to not overheat and also to minimize the working noise. As stated earlier, there is only a limited number of compatible smartphones so far, 30% of those in the market to be exact, but they are working on increasing that to 50% by next year.
The JiDome-1 will be available for developers by the first quarter of 2016 and will be priced at $30. There is no SRP yet for the consumer version but you can expect it to hit the market by the second quarter.
SOURCE: FiresVR
