Virtual Reality. Two words I had scarcely heard and probably even more scarcely thought about before taking this course. So naturally, on Wednesday while trying out the Samsung Gear for the first time I had no idea what to expect.

I'm supposed to move my head left to right, up and down. Okay. It's going to look like I was there in person, ideally. Okay. Eventually devices like this will allow us first row seats to basketball games and simulate an around the world adventure, for potentially a much cheaper cost than actually going to these places. Awesome.

But do I wear my glasses? My glasses are for distance, and even though these devices portray depth, they're still putting a screen mere inches from your eyes, so do I really need them? I get motion sickness, will this experience make me dizzy or give me a bad headache? Will it seem more like yet another video game rather than a breathtaking experience? These are the questions that went racing through my head as I anxiously awaited putting on the goggles and headphones.

I put on the goggles sans glasses and thought I put on Waves of Grace. Instead I accidentally put on a clip also titled something with waves that was about a couple's romantic getaway at a beach, this is clearly not Ebola in Africa. Great, probably should have worn my glasses.

I enter the scene and see all these people off into the distance. I become frustrated because it doesn't appear like there's anything else in the scene worth looking at, but I can't move forward and approach the people. Finally I crane so far to the left that I can't any further and I see a boat. But there's no people on it, so it just seems like something they threw in to look at by utilizing the feature of being able to look left to right.

Then talking begins, the people are still too far away to tell who is talking, it all seems like witnessing something as an alien, you know something's happening but you can't tell what and it's frustrating. The talking stops, the people are dispersing to leave I think. No one ever approaches towards my end of the screen. Then a conversation between two people becomes much louder as if I'm right next to them, but there are no people.

A couple of minutes later I finally think to look at the boat again after a wave crashes and hits where I think my feet would be. Oh, there's two people. You'd think they could have hinted at that one better. A lady runs through the ocean struggling to get past the waves, and eventually climbs onto the boat and embraces the man. Fade to black.

I think, what can I take away from this? Well being able to look in all directions is a fun feature, but then it frustrates you when you can't also move forward and back to try to go closer to different objects in the scene. The crashing of the wave felt like the most real thing of the whole story, I really liked the way that experience was created. That being said, the rest of the story fell short for me. All I got from it was a couple embraced after the woman raced out of the ocean, cue cheesy romantic movie. What was the plot? Why should I care? These story elements lacked for me.

From a motion sickness standpoint, I was impressed with how good I felt after watching. I credited that to the designers. However within ten minutes after taking off the set I was met with a motion sickness headache, so anyone attempting VR with a history of dizziness or motion sickness should probably go into it realizing small quantities of VR will go a long way.

Technically speaking, I think the screen resolution could have been a bit better, but wearing my glasses may have helped. I was pretty fascinated that for goggles that are maybe 3-4 inches from your eyes that they were able to portray depth and field of vision the same way as looking into the distance in real life. Sound was probably the strongest element this story had for me. The crashing of the waves was so real, the use of dynamics made me feel and comprehend subconsciously approximately how far I was from each person and object. The sound felt like a surround sound experience, and mimicked the motions I made.

Head tracking was fairly smooth, the picture kept up with me, I experienced no lags. However, it sometimes felt like I was craning my neck further than I should have had to, in real life I could have turned my whole body instead. That part felt unnatural, and it left me thinking that someone like my mom who has neck problems, would never be able to enjoy an experience like this. The wireless feature is nice, it lets you focus on your experience without worrying that your movement may pull a cord out of the wall. Some graphics like the waves and sand felt fairly realistic, while others like the boat and people felt very animated like in a cartoon or The Sims.

If I had to grade this experience, I'd give it a B-. I felt as though more needed to be done to give the viewer a purpose for watching, through both more depth in the story plot as well as a better job of making the viewer feel as though they were participating over being a confused observer. Sound was great, but more could be done with the visuals to make it seem fully real over partially animated. Motion tracking could be scaled in a way so that less neck movement was necessary to see all the scene had to offer, so that it felt natural turning your neck rather than that you were craning as far as you could to grasp what was happening.

VR is very much an up and coming field, that's rapidly changing and improving. So where it certainly leaves things to be desired in its earliest versions, I fully expect more streamlined versions in the near future to live up to and exceed high expectations. It will be fun to watch as story elements improve through technological advances in graphics and motion tracking allow viewers to become more fully immersed in the stories they watch.