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iPhone VR - its all virtual

Occipital is bringing room-scale VR to your phone, and that’s a big deal
iPhone VR

[I could not have said it better myself. Yep - iPhones offer Virtual Reality. They want to be all things to all people and many of you want to yield that option. I bet many of you are the same people who bleated long and loud about the Australia Card and its various iterations in this country and others....there is no way I'm going to hand over all my private information you said. Now you can't wait to do it - giving all your information to the world's largest health insurers with your Fitbits and the like, giving all your travel information to anyone with basic technology, allowing them to track your every footstep through your phones. And now lets all have a Virtual Reality!!? That's the world you want.
I would much rather have a phone that makes phone calls and a few other things, acknowledging there may be little I can do about tracking - but you can turn your tracker off. I would rather have a credit card that was safe and secures my hard-earned money than have my whole life in a mobile phone - a mobile phone I cannot take onto a plane, or charge in a terminal, only use to tap'n'go at a few vendors up to $100, or carry in my pocket or car for fear it will burn or explode and injure me or damage my property. Its virtually impossible to explode a credit card. Yes please leave me to my credit card and lets try to make them better for the future.]

It's inevitable that any high-volume, low-margin market is going to be filled with its fair share of crap. And sure, there's a lot of naff mobile VR out there right now, but there's also a lot of good stuff. Overall mobile is going to be key to propelling VR into the mainstream.

Which is why we're incredibly excited any time a big development happens in this space, such as Occipital's new room-scale motion tracking.

The company has released a development kit that brings room-scale tech to smartphones when paired with the company's Structure Core 3D sensor, reports UploadVR. Like the HTC Vive - undoubtedly the best example of VR room-scale tech right now - Occipital's offering lets users walk around in the virtual world as if it were the real one (albeit limited to a restricted space).

Read next: The essential guide to Oculus Touch

The thing is, the Vive is prohibitively expensive for many people who want a room-scale virtual reality experience, and though we've already started seeing the technology being brought to more affordable standalone headsets, like Intel's Project Alloy, getting it on smartphones would be a big deal.

And don't worry - Occipital's tech also includes the necessary depth sensors to stop you smacking your face into a wall.

It's also significant in that Occipital's tech is bringing more VR to iPhone users, who will be looking on enviously when Google reveals more about its Android-only Daydream platform on 4 October. Yes, there are some VR options out there for iPhones right now, but between Daydream and the Samsung Gear VR, Android users definitely have it better.

The Occipital dev kit is open now for $500, and we hope this is just a glimpse at what's next for mobile VR. Ideally Apple, Samsung and other smartphone makers will start thinking about including these technologies within the handsets themselves before long.