Hulu has added some social and personalized elements to its virtual reality apps for the Samsung Gear VR and the Oculus Rift.

Its app for the Gear VP now supports Avatars and Rooms, which are “private virtual spaces” where users can get together to watch Hulu content together, including a batch of 360-degree video content that does not require a separate Hulu subscription.

The Hulu VR update for the Rift adds personalized Avatars and support for Oculus Touch controllers with full positioning tracking. That latter addition lets users of the app control objects in the Hulu VR environment while watching the OTT provider’s 2D library.

Hulu launched its app for the Oculus Rift last June, which followed the March 2016 launch of an app that’s optimized for the Oculus-powered Gear VR, which needs to be paired with a compatible Samsung smart phone.

RELATED: Hulu VR App Reaches the Oculus Rift

Watch this promo about Hulu’s new VR features:

Global revenues for virtual reality headset products are poised to reach $895 million this year, according to a fresh forecast from Strategy Analytics.

New, premium products from Oculus (Rift), HTC (Vive) and Sony (PlayStation VR) will drive 77% of the value, despite accounting for just 13% of the volume, while lower priced smartphone based devices, such as the Oculus-powered Samsung Gear VR, will dominate the 12.8 million VR units shipped during the year, the firm said, calling 2016 a “pivotal” year for the emerging platform.  

Strategy Analytics believes that high-end VR headsets that must be tethered to PCs and came consoles (the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and coming PlayStation VR), will be lucky to exceed 1.7 million devices shipped globally this year because of “prohibitively high pricing.”

“At the same time, smartphone toting consumers are being bombarded by low cost and often bundled-in VR viewers like never before,” Strategy Analytics said, adding that they effectively are a “gateway drug” to upsell consumers on higher-end platforms. Of that group, Samsung has been bundling the Gear VR (regularly $99) with its new S7 smartphones.

As volumes go, smartphone-based VR headsets will represent 87% of the category volume in 2016, versus game console-based systems (9%), and PC-based products (4%). Game console-based VR platforms will represent 46% of the revenue share in 2016, versus 31% for PC-based VR, and 23% for smartphone-based systems, the research firm said.

"Consumers will soon be exposed to an incredible diversity of virtual reality options ranging from ultra-low cost to super premium,”  Cliff Raskind, director of Strategy Analytics' Wearable Device Ecosystems service, said in a statement. “While we expect smartphone-based viewers to take the lion's share of VR headset volumes in 2016 at 87% of shipments, PC and Game Console powered headsets will absolutely dominate value share commanding 77% of revenues." 

Apparently happy with the consumer response to its inexpensive Cardboard virtual reality viewer and pursuing the next leg in its VR strategy, Google is reportedly pushing ahead with a next-gen, self-contained VR headset that won’t require users to pair it to a smartphone, game console, or a high-octane PC.

Google, which recently tapped company vet Clay Bavor to head up its VR team, is also preparing to release a more advanced version of its entry-level Cardboard viewer later this year that will be made of plastic, but will still need to be paired to a smartphone, according to The Wall Street Journal. That offering, The Financial Times reported earlier, will be similar to the Oculus-powered Samsung Gear VR headset, which is compatible with certain Samsung smartphone models (here’s our review of that platform).  

But Google’s purported plans for a self-contained offering would seemingly take aim at high-end VR platforms such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, which will be required to be linked to powerful PCs.  An Oculus Rift bundle is available for preorder starting at $599 and will start shipping in the spring; preorders for the HTC Vive are expected to begin on February 29. Sony, meanwhile, is expected to launch the PlayStation VR, a headset that will work in tandem with the popular PlayStation 4 gaming console, later this year.

Google hasn’t announced plans for what’s coming after Cardboard. Word of those plans could come at its I/O developer’s conference in May.  The WSJ said the timing of the release of Google’s new self-contained VR headset isn’t clear, but that Google could use I/O to unveil its more advanced smartphone-based VR viewer.

Speaking on the company’s earnings call earlier this month, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said Cardboard “is just the first step,” in its VR strategy, noting that more than 5 million of the inexpensive viewers had been shipped so far.

Virtual reality and 360-degree video have become a growing priority for the pay TV industry, particularly among programmers, so I dipped my toe into the platform to see what all the fuss is about.

My first experience with VR was with Google Cardboard, a very inexpensive way to get a taste of the technology and some of the content that’s being developed. There are plenty of Cardboard apps available, and I found the whole apparatus easy and accessible, though the experience had that poor-man’s VR feel to it.

More recently, I’ve been kicking the tires on the Merge VR, a sturdier, foam-based and higher-end display that supports all of the Cardboard apps and some other features and functions — such as easily accessible control buttons — that aren’t present in Google’s entry-level set-up. It’s a nice step up, and certainly a big step up from Cardboard.

But late last year, I was gifted a Samsung Gear VR, the Oculus-powered mobile headset that works with select smartphones, including mine, the Galaxy S6 edge plus.

The Gear VR presents a far more immersive, tightly integrated experience, offering a 3D world and a small but growing walled garden of content, including games and an array of short videos and VR experiences from partners such as Discovery Channel and Syfy. The platform’s accurate head-tracking navigation is another plus.

However, the quality of the content is hit and miss. A zip through a desert in a Star Wars setting was a fuzzy, pixelated mess, but Titans of Space, a downloadable journey through the solar system and beyond, was a sharp and interesting visual delight. VR productions/clips of recent boxing matches from Showtime and Fox Sports gave me a ringside view of the fight game that I’ve never had before.

I also enjoyed GrooVR, a funky, thematic VR experience driven by the beats and tones of one’s own music; it went as far as allowing me to link the app to my Spotify account. A puzzle/adventure game called Land’s End was another visual pleasure.

But I also couldn’t tolerate staying in these environments for more than 30 minutes at a sitting, which fits in well with why the current video focus for VR is on shorter-form fare. I did enjoy experimenting with the Netflix VR app for Gear VR, but I’d be hard-pressed to watch an hour-long TV episode on it, let alone a two-hour movie.

User tolerance, though, is just part of what would prevent me from staying in the experience for much longer than 30 minutes. A big problem is that the smartphone that connects to and powers the Gear VR headset becomes a hot potato in 20 minutes or less. More than once, I saw this message: “Your Gear VR needs to cool down to maintain optimal performance.” 

Soon after that message appeared, the video from any game I was playing would stutter, sputter and flicker, and I’d have to set everything aside so it could cool down.

For what it does well and not so well, Gear VR could serve as a gateway to even higher-end platforms. I’m not ready to make the investment required for the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive (the Oculus Rift, for instance, starts at $599, but I’d also have to spring for a high-octane PC), but I will certainly be in the market for the PlayStation VR because it will work with a device I already own — the PlayStation 4.

Editor’s note:  For much more on the emerging market for virtual reality and 360 video, check out our special section on those topics in the February 15 edition of Multichannel News.  In addition to features on how programmers and studios are experimenting with this new medium and how VC dollars are pouring into the sector, we’ll also have a Q&A with Littlstar founder and CEO Tony Mugavero.

HTC will start to take pre-orders for Vive, its high-end virtual reality headset/platform, on February 29 and reach commercial availability in April, according to the Telegraph.

HTC top exec Cher Wang told the pub that the Taiwan-based CE giant will refocus on VR and less so on smartphones. “Yes, smartphones are important, but to create a natural extension to other connected devices like wearables and virtual reality is more important," she said.

HTC has not released pricing on Vive, a headset developed in partnership with game developer Valve (Portal, Half-Life) and built on the Steam VR platform.

Oculus opened preorders on the Rift last week for a package that starts at $599 and includes the headset, Oculus remote, requisite cables, an Xbox One Controller, and two games; shipments are expected to start in April, about the same time Vive will be hitting the market. 

On the high-end VR front for self-contained platforms (Samsung’s $99 Gear VR headset must be paired with a compatible smartphone), the PC-powered Oculus Rift and Vive will tangle with Sony’s PlayStation VR system for the PS4. However, a review of Sony’s system (via a demo at last week's CES in Las Vegas) calls it a “mid-ranged alternative” to Vive and the Oculus Rift.

Whether it’s been tablets, smart TVs or the latest, greatest streaming device,  one can count on Netflix to be among the first to jump on board a new platform. That goes for virtual reality, too.

Working in tandem with Oculus, Netflix is among the first video streamers to develop an app with an interface that’s optimized for the Samsung Gear VR, the virtual reality headset that needs to paired to a Samsung smartphone. Others such as Hulu and Twitch will be joining the mix soon.

While this doesn't give the actual VR experience justice, this YouTube video from Road to VR offers a sense of what the app is like:

Meanwhile, John Carmack, the CTO of Oculus, who did most of the development work on it, offered a bunch more technical detail about the effort in this Netflix blog post, noting that the core app uses two Android Surfaces – one for the user interface layer and another for the decoded video layer.

“Despite all the talk of hardcore gamers and abstract metaverses,” he wrote, “a lot of people want to watch movies and shows in virtual reality.” And getting the leading streaming service on board was key, in Carmack’s point of view. “A year ago, I had a short list of the top things that I felt Gear VR needed to be successful. One of them was Netflix.”

Oculus and Netflix, he explained, were able to get the UI running in VR within two days, with video playback capability following “shortly thereafter” using an app called VR 2D Shell that “functioned like a very simplified version of our Oculus Cinema application.”

Still, it wasn’t all easy peasy, as it was a challenge, Carmack explained, to provide smooth playback, and that the engineers had to use a special set of code just for the viewscreen portion of the VR view to ensure a high-resolution image.

And here’s more detail on how the video streaming challenge in a VR environment was met for this initial app:

“Still, it is drawing a 1280 pixel wide UI over maybe 900 pixels on the screen, so something has to give. Because of the nature of the distortion, the middle of the screen winds up stretching the image slightly, and you can discern every single pixel in the UI. As you get towards the outer edges, and especially the corners, more and more of the UI pixels get blended together. Some of the Netflix UI layout is a little unfortunate for this; small text in the corners is definitely harder to read.

“So forget 4K, or even full-HD. 720p HD is the highest resolution video you should even consider playing in a VR headset today.”

Samsung Gear VR, a virtual reality headset that is paired with the company's smartphones, is poised to expand its media menu with the addition of compatible apps from Netflix, Hulu and Twitch, with several more partners on deck.

Oculus co-founder and CEO Brendan Iribe announced the partnerships today at the Oculus Connect conference, The Verge and other media outlets reported.

He said Netflix will be available today on the Gear VR store, and said Vimeo and  TiVo will be coming to the platform in the near future.  Samsung and Oculus also introduced a new Gear VR mobile headset that will cost $99 (half the price of the current, heavier version) and work with Samsung’s full 2015 smartphone lineup, as the existing version only works with the Galaxy S6 and Note 4. It’ll ship this November, in time for Black Friday.

Hulu, meanwhile, offered some additional detail on a Hulu VR app that will become avaialbel this fall. It will feature “immersive 3D environments that will allow subscribers to stream Hulu’s 2D library of content as well as original virtual reality short-form” content, starting with a film called The Big One from the creators of Hulu original RocketJump: The Show that’s being produced  by Lionsgate and RocketJump.

Hulu said it will announce an official release date, updates on content and device availabitly at a later date. Hulu noted that subscribers will be able to log directly into the Hulu app via their virtual reality device, noting that the experiences will include a virtual living room.

“Providing viewers with dynamic environments of their choice and themed around their favorite shows provides a whole new level of engagement, which together with our cinematic VR experiences makes Hulu an exciting VR destination,” said Julian Eggebrecht, Hulu’s VP of device platforms, in a statement.