NextVR

NextVR
Type: Sports Videos and a few other vids
Image Quality: Very Good, some buffering problems
Scale: Somewhat too small when seated
Length:Huge, given full length NBA replays
Cost: Free

If like me you are a sports fan, you will enjoy this experience. While I'm not a huge NBA fan, the presence of complete 2 hour game replays is amazing on a free app. Note that it also sucks bandwidth, so if you have a cap be careful. Speaking of bandwidth, I have 20 meg DSL that does 25-28 on speedtests and depending on the day and the hour, I had some buffering issues. As an NFL fan, I can simply download the half dozen or so videos, but the NBA games you obviously have to stream.

Again not huge on wrestling these daze, but some fun highlight videos from Wrestlemania and the like really show off NextVR and are among the best videos I've seen on the platform. They also illustrate an odd feature of some VR vids in that your height directly effects the video size. When seated, the athletes seem to be maybe 2/3rds normal size, but when standing they seem to be almost full sized. To me an image being a bit small is far more manageable than the image being three times too big. However someone online hated the app because the people looked half size. As with much in VR your mileage will vary. I always worry about standing up for VR, but will sometimes with my back against a door so I can feel where i am. This is an ideal standing up candidate.

As I'm noting and discovering, VR can be a very personal experience. I personally am a Denver Broncos fan and the video of the Broncos losing to the Raiders was one of my all time best VR moments to date in the 2 days I've had VR. I can only imagine if they had a vid from the Manning days! If you are a fan of any of the teams with a highlight video or better yet a full NBA game, this will blow your mind. It is about 90% like being on the field and standing in front of Von Miller or whoever. Again the scale is an issue, mild to me, and especially in football and futbal, the field size means that many plays are fuzzy. The Oculus has an ideal distance of roughly 6 feet and this works pretty well in basketball where you can view offensive plays from the rim and transitions from courtside. The grass fields are so big that only the edges are truly in focus.

While not perfect, to me this is one of the showcases of VR video and the Broncos highlight film will have a place in my VR memory for a very long time.