Gear VR

I own a S9+ and a oem headset, I have made gearvr software works, installing it and using in developer mode. What games do you recommend me to play?

As the Oculus store is officially dead, it may be a bit harder to come by Gear VR apps and games. This website (the gearvr.net vault) aims to provide an archive of many Gear VR apps.

If you have a Galaxy S10 (or S10e / S10+) with Android 12, it won't work with Gear VR. There is a small chance that you're still able to downgrade to Android 11, but sadly it's very unlikely.

To check if your device can be downgraded, find its BIT / BINARY value.

From my research looking at the ROMs on samfw.com, it seems that your BIT has to be E or lower. In other words, if your S10 has been updated in any way since May 2022, it will have a too high BIT value to downgrade to Android 11.

Even though the Oculus Login doesn't work anymore, you can still use and "initialiize" Gear VR in 2024.

Prerequisites:

• a phone capable of Gear VR and a matching Gear VR HMD (Compatibility Guide)
• your phone has to running Android 11 or below
• (a working internet connection)

Guide:

Start by inserting your phone into your Gear VR. It should launch first time setup and prompt you to take it out again. Go through the first time setup and let it download all the necessary Oculus services.

After downloading, you should get prompted to login. From my attempts there isn't really a way to login, unless you have certain legacy accounts linked to a Meta account properly. But don't worry - there's another way.

Go into your phone settings -> apps -> Gear VR Service -> Storage -> Manage Storage. Now tap "VR Service Version" multiple times, until you get a message telling you that Developer mode is now enabled.

You should now see the following settings:

1. Developer mode
2. Add icon to app list
3. Allow VR API without OSIG
4. Mirroring mode

If they aren't enabled already, enable the second and third settings. You should now see "Gear VR Service" in your app drawer. You can use this to launch any installed Gear VR app. Simply install APKs and the apps will show up here.

To launch an app, select it in the Gear VR Service app, and you should be prompted to insert your phone into your Gear VR.

As you aren't logged into Oculus, Oculus Home won't work properly. This means you will have to take your phone out of your Gear VR to switch apps.

One of my first hurdles with Gear VR was trying to cast my (Pop! OS) laptop screen to my Gear. There are some low latency solutions using a proprietary Nvidia app or Moonlight, but as the S7 in my Gear VR isn't capable of running non-VR apps in VR, that was a no go.

The solution is very simple. As long as your computer and Gear VR phone are on the same network (also works if your laptop is on your phone's hotspot or vice versa), you can use the FOSS software Deskreen on your computer (Mac, Windows, Linux) to stream your screen to other network devices.

After installing Deskreen, simply open the Oculus Browser on your phone (for me on my S7 it doesn't work with Samsung Internet) and navigate to the URL given to you by Deskreen. After then accepting the connection on your PC, you can fullscreen the stream on your Gear VR.

Done! Now you have a reasonably low-latency stream of your computer in your Gear VR.

Hello fellow Gear VR enthusiasts,

I recently found a very cheap used Gear VR (SM-R322), and as I had an S7 sitting in a drawer collecting dust, I thought I'd try it out.

Even though it's been discontinued for over 3 years, the platform is still surprisingly usable. The only major drawback is that you can't login to the Oculus app anymore, which means (at least according to my current research) you need to take the phone out of the Gear VR whenever you want to switch apps. (As Oculus Home doesn't work without being logged in).

During my search for stuff to do with Gear VR, I noticed that it has a decently sized subreddit, but no lemmy presence, so I decided to fix that!

If you have questions about the platform, want to show off a cheap find, or anything else, feel free to post here!