Carl Zeiss unveils a $99 virtual reality headset

While the world awaits a true consumer version of a virtual-reality headset like the Oculus Rift or Sony’s Project Morpheus, the smartphone is emerging as an amuse-bouche for the VR appetite: Demo versions of the Samsung Gear VR already are appearing in Best Buy stores. But at a rumored $200, and another four times that for the Galaxy Note 4 phablet you need to use with it, the Gear VR is a steep investment for people looking for a holdover. To address that gap in the market, several manufacturers are developing cheaper versions of the Gear VR’s “viewfinder” model—stripped of all hardware and relying on your smartphone’s display and accelerometer/gyroscope array to provide a virtual experience. Most, like the Dodocase Smartphone VR Viewer, ape Google’s Cardboard kit, which the company distributed at their I/O conference earlier this year. They’re cheap and they’re clever, but they’re leaving a fairly wide gap in the market. Now, one company has decided to jump into the gap, and it’s a surprising one.