Samsung's HMD Odyssey Windows Mixed Reality headset was already one of the more premium designs out there, but the company is ramping things up with the new Odyssey+, a headset that looks very familiar but packs a couple of very nice upgrades.
The biggest change between the original Odyssey and the Odyssey+ is that Samsung is promising to kill the dreaded "screen door effect" – the visible lines that appear on VR displays that make it look as if you're viewing content through, well, a screen door. Samsung says it has accomplished this through its use of the headset's "exclusive" Anti-Screen Door Effect (Anti-SDE) display, which creates the perception of 1,233 PPI, which is double the display's actual PPI. The added clarity, in theory, eliminates the visibility of the fine lines that separate pixels on the display, which should boost immersion if it works as advertised.
The Odyssey+ also includes a slightly updated design that should aid in comfort for extended mixed reality sessions. Most importantly, the nose guard has been widened a bit to better accommodate a variety of face shapes. Samsung is also talking up the adjustable headband and display positions, along with the dedicated wheel for adjusting inter-pupilary distance (IPD).
Apart from the display and comfort tweaks, the Odyssey+ looks strikingly similar to its predecessor. There's a 3.5-inch 1440x1600 per-eye AMOLED display, integrated AKD premium headphones, and included controllers with six degrees of freedom tracking.
The Samsung HMD Odyssey+ is set to launch today at the Microsoft Store and Samsung for $500, but neither appears to have the headset available just yet (as of this writing). We'll update this post once it is available. For now, you can save $150 on the original Odyssey at Microsoft, bringing it down to $350.
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