Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2017 December 27

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December 27

Help Translating Phone Specs Into Quality Of Experience For VR

So, for something to do over the winter months, I decided I wanted to buy either an S8, S8+, or Note 8 and a Gear Headset to play with VR. Trying to determine which of the three would give the best experience got me curious in general about how much of a factor screen size plays in the experience. For example, all three phones have the same resolution, but they each have a different size screen - from what I have seen online, people say that the smaller screen will have a higher pixel density, thus a better image. Which leads me to my question: while it does make sense that higher pixel density would look better, in what other ways would the image look different (in the headset) compared to the larger screen? Ultimately, a larger screen will have a larger area devoted to the same piece of the image, so, it would take up more of your field of vision - thus, would you see more of the scene on the smaller screen than the larger screen? Would this effect quality? Does ppi strongly determine quality at the resolution of these phones? I'll admit, since this is going to be an almost $1000 purchase, I would like to get the highest quality experience; but, not being able to find a great deal of quality information, I'm, now, curious in general about what factors contribute to quality, and in what way.

To continue on this topic, I bought a very cheap $20 headset at Walmart and played around with my friends Note 8 for about an hour; would the more expensive Gear Headset have provided a better quality experience? In short, what does the headset contribute? How does it effect quality? Apologies if these are vague questions, most of the information I can find is just enthusiasts not saying anything technically clear or reviews of the devices as phones or spec sheets - I'd like to get a better understanding of the what's, how's, and why's of the different factors.

General interest aside, I have two (additional) questions that would help with my actual purchasing (if anyone is inclined to chip in on that note). I read online that the Note 8 doesn't default to its maximum 1440 resolution, but instead 1080 - I highly doubt that my friend adjusted this, so would the VR video player I installed have used 1080 or 1440 for the display? I ask since I wasn't that overly impressed with some of what I watched, but I'm not sure if this is because of the headset, because it just isn't that developed yet to give good results, or because the display was forcing a lower res than the video. And: supposing the smaller screened S8 (or S8+) would give a better experience because of higher ppi, would it be worth it over the Note 8, despite that the Note has an extra 2Gb of ram (in short, would the extra ram give a smoother experience and ensure there is less/no lag or stutter when running more intensive vr apps or videos)?

A final curiosity: Does a 360 VR video have lower quality than a 180 VR video? In other words, does the resolution of the video mean over some set angular area or over the whole video? Since if it is over the whole video, the area behind your head would be using some of the pixels that a 180 version could devote to the front - is that accurate? I ask since I watched a handful of videos and did notice some differences in quality, despite all of them having the same listed resolution; I'm not sure which were which, since I didn't have a lot of time to test, but I came up with this hypothesis when I was driving home, I was curious if it was correct.

I know there are a lot of questions here, I'm really just looking for any information beyond the vague accounts gotten from forums posts; thank you for reading:-) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.3.61.185 (talk) 10:44, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

😂

How does one type 😂 without copy/pasting it from somewhere? When I'm sending a Facebook message, I can type 🙂 by simply doing :-) and the messenger converts it to 🙂. However, I don't know how to type 😂 and don't expect to (I just encountered it a few minutes ago for the first time), and it seems like it would require a rather complex emoticon. Maybe it's a smartphone thing (I have a Samsung SPH-M400; no article); do smartphones have a Chinese-characters-like thing where you supply a name and it gives you a list of related emojis? Nyttend (talk) 22:58, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

That's U+1f602. How you'd enter it depends on your OS' Unicode input method. On Linux, I did Ctrl+⇧ Shift+u, release, 1f602↵ Enter -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 23:09, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

Of course, in practice, real people don't memorise pages of obscure unicode codepoints for weird icons they almost never use. Either you are stuck with cut and pasting it from somewhere, or your device has a menu which lets you browse through lists of such things. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 22:28, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

On Windows 10 you can enable the onscreen keyboard, which lets you input any emoji you want by clicking on it -- 83.142.58.162 (talk) 14:46, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Related, Category:Samsung mobile phones has almost 300 articles, including SPH M100, M300, M310, M520, and M620. Where would I find references for an M400? A quick Google search found lots of informal sites like the one I linked above, but I couldn't find anything to support an article; it would be nice to have an article (I could supply a picture) if someone knew where to find the sources. Nyttend (talk) 23:00, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

https://www.cnet.com/products/samsung-m400-sprint/preview/

https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2412938,00.asp

https://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/product/m400-sprint

(((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 06:59, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

@Nyttend: see above. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 19:48, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

@Nyttend: Try using emoticons :'‑) or :') (based on Wikipedia's article List of emoticons). --CiaPan (talk) 21:56, 29 December 2017 (UTC)