Samsung releases beta web browser for Gear VR

Likewise, adult content publishers are barred from the Oculus store, but a number of adult websites have started to target Gear VR owners with dedicated 360-degree videos.

“As a pioneer in the mobile VR industry, Samsung has continually worked to provide our users with a fully immersive mobile experience in the evolving world of virtual reality”, said Chan-Woo Park, Vice President of Product Strategy Team, IT & Mobile Communications Business at Samsung Electronics.

In an effort to boost the appeal of the Samsung Gear VR as an immersive media consumption device (VR or not), Samsung is launching a new optimized web browser for the headset. And using the headsets Gaze Mode feature, you can select menus simply by looking at them.

But it should be noted that the nature of how web content has been created, for the most part, for conventional use – not VR.

And now for the cool part, the app will offer access to 3D and 360-degree video streaming, such as what is available on YouTube’s 360° Channel (as well as 3D ads), as well as normal 2D HTML5 video. It is a beta version at this point, but it will go a long way towards expanding the VR content available to users of the device.

We’ll take a look and share more once we’ve experienced it. That being said it would be interesting to see how web content changes once VR becomes a more common means of web browsing. There are bookmarks, which you can import from Samsung’s Android browser app, along with a Tab Manager for quickly jumping between different sites and Quick Access shortcuts.