Freefly Mobile Virtual Reality Headset & Glide Wireless Bluetooth Controller

I ordered this item for kicks and giggles. It arrived on time, nicely boxed, and in good shape. It seems to be nice quality and comes with a carrying case. I had predownloaded some VR content but when I finished the set up of the device, it directed me to some FreeFly recommended vr content. One in particular caught my eye: VR Rollercoaster. "Oh goodie!" I thought. I downloaded the app and put the headset on and was going up and down hills and twists and loop de loops. It was amazing. For a moment. Then I passed a little man holding a sign that said, "Don't forget to look down!" When I did, it appeared as if I were at a great height and suddenly everything I ever ate in my entire life wanted out of my body. I quickly removed the headset and to my utter surprise I wasn't where I thought I was in the room. I was completely disoriented and I ran to the bathroom and held on to the sink. Copius vomit ensued. Suddenly, it was like my house had tilted or I was on a boat in a storm. I was holding on to the sink and gravity was no longer my friend and constant companion. It was pulling me away from the sink where my head was hung and otherwise occupied. I put a cold towel on my eyes and sat in complete darkness without moving a muscle. Waves of nausea and dizziness kept me out of commission for three days. I had to lie flat on my bed in cold darkness with my head pressed into the pillow to make sure it wouldn't move in the slightest. I tried to watch television during this time, but the logos that would scroll across the bottom of the screen on the Science channel started out as ripples and then turned to great waves of nausea. Your mileage may vary.

I ordered this just six days ago and it came today. Great headset. Nice wide field of view, well made, both my iPhone 4 and my Galaxy S6 fit fine.It came with a controller, which, unfortunately, had no instructions with it. It took a little bit of fiddling to figure out that you plug it into a USB cord to charge it (it didn't come with one, but my Galaxy S6 charger worked fine on it). Then you press the tiny start button in the middle and hold it down. It helps if you have a flashlight, since the labels of the buttons are in black -- on a black background. Then I had to go into my phone's settings, under Bluetooth, enable Bluetooth, wait for it to find the device, and select it.I tried it with the DebrisDefrag for Cardboard app (the first one I could find that needed the controller). To shoot things, I had to switch the little slider on the left to "game" and then press the X button to shoot down the space rocks. The explosions were very satisfying.Wearing it does get a little hot, since the leather is padding is tight against your face.It is EXTREMELY immersive. I also tried it with my favorite app -- the Go4DVR app from Goggle Tech, where you're walking around a space station. It really felt that you were there. I kept reaching out for things, and ducking under stuff.So why not five stars?No adjustment for distance between the two lenses, and the distance between the lenses and the phone. Most other mid-priced headsets have at least one of those, usually both.The Freefly guys say there's a reason for this, because of the extra-wide lenses they use or something like that, and they picked the distance that would work for most people.I do have funky vision and wear glasses sometimes, and I do appreciate it when I have the opportunity to adjust the lenses.With the Freefly, everything seemed a little out of focus to me, especially when there was text on the screen.I have a couple of other headsets -- a Goggle Tech C1-Glass, which is open sided, a couple of cardboard ones, and a Sunnypeak.The Sunnypeak would be the closest comparison in terms of price and form factor. The Freefly is much, much lighter than the Sunnypeak and is much more comfortable to wear. It also seemed a big sturdier and better designed in the way it was put together and how the phone fits into it. But the Sunnypeak has both kinds of lens adjustments, so everything is in focus.The Sunnypeak had a narrower field of view -- the Freefly screen took up pretty much your entire field of vision, thanks to those special lenses.And the Sunnypeak also didn't come with a controller, but the Freefly controller worked fine with it (since it actually works with the phone itself -- the headset is just a plastic holder.)If you don't have vision issues, of the two, I would definitely recommend the Freefly. If you do have vision issues -- well, you definitely can't wear your glasses with the Freefly (I just tried -- nope, nope, nope). Check the return policy before you buy it, or have a friend get it and try theirs, first.It's currently $85. I got mine with a promo code for about $60 (sorry, the promo already expired). The controller is sold separately for $10, so, the headset itself cost me about $50 -- and it is definitely worth the price.Especially compared to, say, the $37 Sunnypeak. And if not for the everything-slightly-out-of-focus thing, it would be worth the full $85 to me.Oh, and the Freely also comes with a nice padded carrying case. So that's another plus there.

I'm giving four stars for the product itself, it is a good quality product and I liked it.I tried Google Cardboard, and I was very excited in the beginning, especially when I found that one can stream videogames stereoscopically from PC (using Trinus and Tridef, for example (both have free trial periods)). So excited that I decided to spend $80 and get this VR set.Freefly VR headset itself is nice. It's comfortable to wear, has decent lenses, but they are not perfect, blurry edges are present, and "sweet spot" is very much visible. Phone positioning is very convenient, they also have a nice app, that allows you to align it properly. Controller is nice, but there are no instructions how to use it with Google Cardboard apps, no buttons trigger touch event, so it's unusable in most Cardboard games. I see there is some review here stating how to use it, but I didn't try it.There aren't any lens adjustments, which is a con, especially for people with prescription glasses. QR code doesn't provide fully compensated profile, I still could see warped image, I had to create my own profile to compensate for lens distortions and to correct IPD,Mine came with a crack on left lens, so it was destined to be returned from the beginning. But crack didn't obscure much, so I decided to give it a try.And quite honestly, I'm disappointed. Not in this particular headset, but in mobile VR in general. Mildly speaking, it's in an infancy stage.1) Firstly, VR heats my Nexus 5 like crazy, I can use VR apps without throttling only for 10min, and then everything becomes laggy, until my phone finally overheats and turns itself off (about 30 minutes). On Youtube you can find videos with other devices: the same issue (like Samsung Gear VR with Galaxy S6). And VR apps also drain battery very fast. But if I stream from PC, heat is not a big issue. And here comes the second point.2) Nausea and sickness. Everyone, whom I gave my mobile VR, experienced it. And this is because of a noticeable lag and because it tracks only head rotation. VR must have a full 6D head positioning in order to eliminate (or at least alleviate) motion sickness. Half-Life 2 gave me the worst, I literally wanted to vomit after 5 minutes of playing. In addition to that, you cannot really play PC games, because some info stuff (like health bars) is usually placed on periphery, which is blurry. But it's OK, it was not created for VR. However, stuff from Google Play Store, that was developed for VR from scratch, is not much better. It's somewhat OK, if you only rotate your head, but if you move it say laterally, you're screwed (well, most probably according to statistics). This is actually a medical fact, which PC VR developers (like Oculus) are seriously taking into account. Interestingly, once I know how it works, it actually makes mobile VR experience even more nauseating. Oculus Rift DK2 doesn't have this problem (or it is significantly less noticeable), because it's tracking your head fully (3 angles + 3 cartesian coordinates). And here comes next part.3) Apps. There are actually quite a lot of apps now in Play Store, but majority (if not all them) are just some kind of demos for several minutes, and usually with very crappy cartoonish graphics. Due to hardware limitations I don't think mobile VR will change much at least for the next couple of years.Taking all of this into account I decided just to return my Freefly VR headset (because of the crack), and not to replace it. It's too good and overkill for current stage of mobile VR. I will wait for PC VR devices (which most likely will be another not so good experience and will quickly be outdated by new releases). When I want to quickly produce "wow effect" on someone, who never tried VR, I will pull out my Google Cardboard, which is perfectly suited for what we have now.