As I was testing the Gear VR Innovator Edition and its Oculus software, I noted that while it was the best quality consumer VR headset I've used, there still were noticeable hardware limitations. This seems to be a rapidly developing field where there's still plenty of room for major hardware improvements.

Nick DiCarlo, Samsung's General Manager of Immersive Products and Virtual Reality and the person who was behind Gear VR's development when he ran U.S. product strategy, would agree with that. DiCarlo said the "Innovator Edition" label was meant to "illustrate that this is [a] new and emerging medium that will evolve very rapidly." He said Samsung wanted to target developers, early adopters, and innovators, but to "manage expectations" and avoid the hype that often accompanies emerging technologies.

The current Gear VR delivered the first high-quality VR experience, but it was not known how consumers would accept the experience, he said, noting that most people haven't tried VR at all. Still, it was important to provide something to developers. Samsung could have chosen to build a high-end product at $20,000 or so, he said, but it instead released a "minimum viable product," which costs $199 plus a Note 4 smartphone. It chose the latter route because it let more people experience it, and provided an easier platform for developers, even though by tying it to the Note 4, it meant the platform had a limited market.

One major innovation of the Oculus system over most of the VR solutions I've tried before is that the screen updates faster when you move your head, so you don't notice any disconnect. DiCarlo noted that in the case of the Gear VR, effectively a second Gear VR operating system is running on top of Android, yet it still offers less than 20ms latency between when you move your head and the screen updates. The goal is to move so fast that people don't get nauseous. I noted that a number of people who tried the system reported getting a bit dizzy, and he said that generally that's a matter of things happening that they don't expect rather than people getting physically ill; and said that improves after an acclimation process. I did notice it less over time.

One of my concerns was pixelation, the way you can easily see the pixels in video running on the device with a "screen door effect." DiCarlo said that earlier kits, including the Oculus DK2 developer kit, were limited to 400 pixel-per-inch (ppi) displays, but the Gear VR used the Note 4's Quad HD display with 515 ppi that reduced the pixilation. Even the Galaxy S5 at 440 pixels per inch is too pixelated, he said. Still, you are effectively looking at the screen by holding it up to your nose and looking at it through magnifying glasses, which is why you can see the pixels.

In the future, he said, this offers an opportunity for higher pixel density displays, such as a 4K phone-sized display, which would be very helpful for VR.

The processor also is a bit of a bottleneck. DiCarlo noted the processor in the Note 4 (a Qualcomm 805) is capable of playing back 4K video at 30 frames per second. While that's great for watching video on the (lower resolution) display or on a TV, in VR that 4K by 2K image is wrapped around your whole head, so if you have a 96-degree field of view, you can see only about 1,000 pixels of video stretched along the long dimension. VR could use a more powerful processor, one that could display 10K of video at 30 frames per second.

Similarly, I noted that in some of the 3D videos, you could see "seams" where different parts of the image didn't completely line up. DiCarlo agreed that the cameras used to capture real-world VR content could be improved as well. Currently, the company's Milk VR content is captured with 30 mostly custom cameras. Samsung captured some content with GoPro cameras with mounts, and is also working on what it calls Project Beyond, a 3D capture system that involved 8 pairs of cameras in a circle, intended to live stitch the video together, to eliminate the seams.

It's not surprising that VR software is still developing: after all, platforms like Oculus are still quite new and creating content really designed for a VR platform takes time. But I'm equally intrigued by how the hardware – the processor, memory, screen, and camera – has room for big improvements as well. DiCarlo said in all these areas it was a "natural technology evolution." It will be fun to watch.