A final note about the Gear VR and the lenses fogging up.  Every time I put this one the lens fog up on me.  To fix this I went to a sky shoppe and bought defogging liquid for the lens.  It works great for one use, but once it drys, then you are back to where you started.  This is a first try at a VR HMD for Samsung and they made it clear this is a developers version, so I’ll give it a pass for now.

Oh and use earplugs.  Worth it.  Many of these demos lose something when playing sound through a speaker.

Unlike other sites, I will put the list down here first, then I will create a page per app because each one make the list for a different reason.

10.   Playhead

I was really on the fence with Playhead because it did not appeal to me, but I appreciate the effort and the imagination that went into this effort.   I’m sure this would be higher on other peoples lists.

9.  DarkNet

8. Titans Of Space

7.  Vanguard V  :  Nightitme Terror  : Lunsee

6.  Dreadhalls

5.  Anshar Wars

4  Herobound: First Steps

3. Matterport VR : Gyeonju VR Museum

2.  Esper

1.   360 Video’s .  BTW the NBA videos look good but still wish the video was a bit more HD.  In a few weeks we are suppose to be able to watch the All Stars game.  Not sure if we get to see the whole game, or highlights or what.

Temple VR did not make it because they violate a basic rule in VR, do not move a users point of view too fast.  When you dodge from one side to another you will get VR sickness pretty fast.

The panel we were using in our prototype was a 5.6” LCD with a resolution of 1280×800. This screen is a great size for a VR headset and it has an impressive pixel density for the year it was produced. Nevertheless, it has flaws: it isn’t particularly bright, the contrast ratio is low, and the color accuracy is abysmal. The two biggest issues, though, are its poor fill factor and high switching times.

Pixel Fill Factor

Fill factor is a combination of several things, but it boils down to this: there are displays that have very little space between the pixel elements and others that have a meaningful amount of black space between pixel elements. DLP projectors are an example of a display type that generally has a very high fill factor with negligible space between pixels; LCDs, on the other hand, often suffer from a low fill factor where a large portion of the panel is occupied by the black space around the pixel elements. On very large screens, this makes it seem as if the image has a fine black grid overlaid on it, often referred to as the “screen door effect”.

On our original 5.6” panel, the screen door effect was easy to see under magnification of the Rift’s optics. You don’t notice it as much when you’re playing, but it’s still an unfortunate artifact. Luckily, the new 7” display has a much higher fill factor! This means that the screen door effect is significantly reduced, resulting in a better looking image.

Pixel Switching Time

The second major flaw was the switching time, the amount of time required for a pixel to switch from one color to another. Our old panel begins switching colors very quickly, which was good, since it reduced the latency between movement and the image responding. However, it’s weakness was that it took a very long time to fully switch colors. This sometimes resulted in motion-blur effect as the frames switched, especially during quick movements of the head.

Our new 7” panel has a switching time that is about twice as fast! This makes a big difference in the perceived responsiveness of the system and helps alleviate the undesired motion-blur.

Other Benefits of the 7” Display

There are several other minor enhancements: the contrast ratio is greatly improved, which can especially help with games like DOOM 3: BFG Edition where you have bright lights in dark environments; the color accuracy is better as well (though it can be hard to tell if you don’t have both panels side by side to compare); and the total light output of the new display is higher, resulting in more vibrant bright scenes.

We’ve also changed our drive electronics! The control box is attached to the headset with a thin and durable cable carrying video, USB, and power. The box contains a custom control board that we designed to minimize video latency. It has easily accessible buttons for contrast and brightness adjustment and it’s much smaller than the control boxes we’ve been showing with our prototypes.

Being forced to switch panels was certainly a challenge, but in the end it should result in an improved Oculus Rift developer kit and a better VR experience overall.

Check out the Vid towards the bottom.  They spend too much time talking about how cool it is, but still worth watching.  Also, watch the names and faces all familiar to us in the gaming world saying they are behind it!

You can get in at $300.

Pledge $300 or more

EARLY RIFT DEVELOPER KIT + DOOM 3 BFG: Try the Rift for yourself now! You’ll receive a developer kit, perfect for the established or indie game developer interested in working with the Rift immediately. This also includes a copy of Doom 3 BFG and full access to our Developer Center for our SDK, docs, samples, and engine integrations! (Please add $30 for international shipping)

Est. Delivery: Dec 2012

Here is more from the site.

Even though the consumer version of the Rift is still a ways down the road, the early developer kit’s hardware design is cutting edge, with technical specifications above and beyond other consumer headset available today.

Technical specs of the Dev Kit (subject to change)
Head tracking: 6 degrees of freedom (DOF) ultra low latency
Field of view: 110 degrees diagonal / 90 degrees horizontal
Resolution: 1280×800 (640×800 per eye)
Inputs: DVI/HDMI and USB
Platforms: PC and mobile
Weight: ~0.22 kilograms

And we’re confident we can make the consumer version even more impressive, all without increasing price or sacrificing an ounce of quality.

The SDK makes integration easy.

We’re already hard at work on a robust Oculus SDK that developers can use to integrate the Rift with their new and existing games. Our team has built great SDKs before and we’re excited to do it again.

All of the Rift dev kits include access to the Oculus Developer Center, which provides the SDK, technical support, and serves as a community for Oculus developers.

The SDK will include clean well-documented code, samples, and tutorials to make integration with any 3D game or application as easy as possible. We’re also working on out-of-the-box engine integrations for Unreal Engine and Unity, so that anyone interested in working with the Rift, including indie developers, can get started right away!