Is Samsung's Bedtime VR Stories app the future of parenting?
Owen Hughes
Samsung Bedtime VR Stories is an immersive virtual reality storytelling app
Samsung
For parents who can't make it home for bedtime, Samsung has
created an app that allows you to read your kids a bedtime story through
virtual reality.
Bedtime VR Stories is a multi-user storytelling app, that
lets parents take their kids through a computer-simulated fantasy world.
With the parent using a Gear VR, Samsung Galaxy S7 smartphone and headphones - and the child using a Samsung Galaxy S7 and Google Cardboard headset, equipped with a character mask - both are taken through a virtual reality cartoon as the parent narrates a story.
The first story Samsung has released is called The
Most Wonderful Place to Be, and sees parent and child transported to the
Arctic to befriend a penguin, followed by a jaunt with prehistoric era
dinosaurs and finally, into outer space for a "musical finale".
Samsung hasn't said when the app will be available to
download, but the company said it is currently testing the tech with
families in the UK.
Conor Pierce - the vice president of Samsung UK &
Ireland's IT and mobile division - added: "At Samsung, we're committed
to driving innovation to create technology that will make a difference
to the way people live their lives. With Bedtime VR Stories, we're
hoping that this prototype will show an important new exciting genre of
virtual experience – and something that will define the use of virtual
reality over the coming years.
"We've harnessed the power of VR to reunite parents and children for a
unique storytelling experience, giving us a glimpse of what the
traditional story time may look like in the very near future."
While we love the idea, we have reservations about how many parents
out there can really afford to buy a Gear VR and two Samsung Galaxy S7s.
Then again, you can't put a price on love.
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