Is Samsung's Bedtime VR Stories app the future of parenting?

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.