This is what virtual reality was made for, right? Gear VR owners can now immerse themselves in a virtual art gallery to view cat photos, cosplay, sloths and whatever other pictures inhabit the galleries of Reddit and Imgur.
The $3 VRIB app is available in the Samsung portion of the Oculus store on Gear VR. It was made by Brad Herman, who happens to work at Dreamworks and runs their DreamLab innovation center. The app features a set of galleries to click on as well as the ability to search both subreddits and Imgur.
Images appear to load one at a time, which is a bit of a letdown as I would much prefer to be virtually drowned in Internet cat photos — cats to my left, cats to my right, cats under my head, cats when I look up, cats sneaking up behind me. I asked Herman about it on Twitter and he said “one at a time lets you slow down, pause and enjoy the image. Also keeps app from running out of ram.”
Search is accomplished with an on-screen keyboard. Look at a letter and tap the touchpad.
With a “VR Internet” browser also apparently in the works for Gear VR, this image-browsing app is likely just the beginning of a flood of attempts to bring the Web into VR.
Folks, this is just the beginning.
