SteamVR Controller Controlling Addressable LEDs

March 1, 2025 by Lewin Day 6 Comments

[Chris] had an idea. When playing VR games like BeatSaber, he realized that spectators without headsets weren’t very included in the action. He wanted to create some environmental lighting that would make everyone feel more a part of the action. He’s taken the first steps towards that goal, interfacing SteamVR controllers with addressable LEDs.

Armed with Python, OpenVR, and some help from ChatGPT, [Chris] got to work. He was soon able to create a mapping utility that let him create a virtual representation of where his WLED-controlled LED strips were installed in the real world. Once everything was mapped out, he was able to set things up so that pointing the controller to a given location would light the corresponding LED strips. Wave at the windows, the strips on that wall light up. Wave towards the other wall, the same thing happens.

Right now, the project is just a proof of concept. [Chris] has enabled basic interactivity with the controllers and lights, he just hasn’t fully built it out or gamified it yet. The big question is obvious, though—can you use this setup while actually playing a game?

“I just found the OpenVR function/object that allows it to act as an overlay, meaning it can function while other games are working,” [Chris] told me. “My longer term goals would be trying to interface more with a game directly such as BeatSaber, and the light in the room would correspond with the game environment.”

We can’t wait to see where this goes next. We fully expect flashy LED room setups to become the norm at VR cafes hosting BeatSaber competitions in future. We’ve featured plenty of other coverage of VR lately, too.

Continue reading “SteamVR Controller Controlling Addressable LEDs” →

Man using a table saw with a VR headset on

Chop, Chop, Chop: Trying Out VR For Woodworking

February 15, 2025 by Heidi Ulrich 23 Comments

Virtual Reality in woodworking sounds like a recipe for disaster—or at least a few missing fingers. But [The Swedish Maker] decided to put this concept to the test, diving into a full woodworking project while wearing a Meta Quest 3. You can check out the full experiment here, but let’s break down the highs, lows, and slightly terrifying moments of this unconventional build.

The plan: complete a full furniture build while using the VR headset for everything—from sketching ideas to cutting plywood. The Meta Quest 3’s passthrough mode provided a semi-transparent AR view, allowing [The Swedish Maker] to see real-world tools while overlaying digital plans. Sounds futuristic, right? Well, the reality was more like a VR fever dream. Depth perception was off, measuring was a struggle, and working through a screen-delayed headset was nauseating at best. Yet, despite the warped visuals, the experiment uncovered some surprising advantages—like the ability to overlay PDFs in real-time without constantly running back to a computer.

So is VR useful to the future of woodworking? If you’re a woodworking novice, you might steer clear from VR and read up on the basics first. For the more seasoned: maybe, when headsets evolve beyond their current limitations. For now, it’s a hilarious, slightly terrifying experiment that might just inspire the next wave of augmented reality workshops. If you’re more into electronics, we did cover the possibilities with AR some time ago. We’re curious to know your thoughts on this development in the comments!

Continue reading “Chop, Chop, Chop: Trying Out VR For Woodworking” →

UEVR Project Converts Games To VR, Whether They Like It Or Not

January 14, 2024 by Donald Papp 18 Comments

UEVR, or the Universal Unreal Engine VR Mod by [praydog] is made possible by some pretty neat software tricks. Reverse engineering concepts and advanced techniques used in game hacking are leveraged to add VR support, including motion controls, to applicable Unreal Engine games.

The UEVR project is a real-world application of various ideas and concepts, and the results are impressive. One can easily not only make a game render in VR, but it also handles managing the player’s perspective (there are options for attaching the camera view to game objects, for example) and also sensibly maps inputs from VR controllers to whatever the game is expecting. This isn’t the first piece of software that attempts to convert flatscreen software to VR, but it’s by far the most impressive.

There is an in-depth discussion of the techniques used to sensibly and effectively locate and manipulate game elements, not for nefarious purposes, but to enable impressive on-demand VR mods in a semi-automated manner. (Although naturally, some anti-cheat software considers this to be nefarious.)

Many of the most interesting innovations in VR rely on some form of modding, from magic in Skyrim that depends on your actual state of mind to adding DIY eye tracking to headsets in a surprisingly effective, modular, and low-cost way. As usual, to find cutting-edge experimentation, look to the modding community.

See Some Of The Stranger VR Ideas From SIGGRAPH

September 4, 2023 by Donald Papp 15 Comments

[Devin Coldewey] shared his experiences with some of the more unusual VR concepts on display at SIGGRAPH 2023. Some of these ideas are pretty interesting in their own right, and even if they aren’t going to actually become commercial products they give some insight into the kinds of problems that are being worked on. Read on to see if anything sparks ideas of your own.

In the area of haptics and physical feedback, Sony shared research prototypes that look like short batons in which are hidden movable weights. These weights can shift up or down on demand, altering their center of gravity. [Devin] states that these units had a mild effect on their own, but when combined with VR visuals the result was impressive. There’s a video demonstration of how they work. Continue reading “See Some Of The Stranger VR Ideas From SIGGRAPH” →

Beautifully Rebuilding A VR Headset To Add AR Features

July 25, 2023 by Donald Papp 12 Comments

[PyottDesign] recently wrapped up a personal project to create himself a custom AR/VR headset that could function as an AR (augmented reality) platform, and make it easier to develop new applications in a headset that could do everything he needed. He succeeded wonderfully, and published a video showcase of the finished project.

Getting a headset with the features he wanted wasn’t possible by buying off the shelf, so he accomplished his goals with a skillful custom repackaging of a Quest 2 VR headset, integrating a Stereolabs Zed Mini stereo camera (aimed at mixed reality applications) and an Ultraleap IR 170 hand tracking module. These hardware modules have tons of software support and are not very big, but when sticking something onto a human face, every millimeter and gram counts.

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Closing In On A PC Enabled PSVR2

July 23, 2023 by Donald Papp 25 Comments

When the PlayStation VR2 headset was released, people wondered whether it would be possible to get the headset to work as a PC VR headset. That would mean being able to plug it into a PC and have it work as a VR headset, instead of it only working on a PS5 as Sony intended.

Enthusiasts were initially skeptical and at times despondent about the prospects, but developer [iVRy]’s efforts recently had a breakthrough. A PC-compatible VR2 is looking more likely to happen.

So far [iVRy] is claiming they have 6 DOF SLAM (Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping), Prox sensor, and stereo camera data.

Most of the juicy bits are paywalled behind [iVRy]’s Patreon. We’re hoping the jailbreak process will eventually be open-sourced.

The PS VR2 headset is quite unlike a PC VR headset in a number of ways, and it has not been historically easy to work with Sony’s products from a reverse-engineering perspective, whether it’s an attempt to improve the user experience of an annoying headset, or an attempt to understand the not-even-remotely-sanely-designed protocols behind the Sony Memory Stick. Getting the PS VR2 headset to work in a way it wasn’t intended was expected to be an uphill battle.

It’s not a finished job, but judging by the progress regularly shared on [iVRy]’s Twitter account, it might only be a matter of time.

Behold A Gallery Of Sony’s PS VR2 Prototypes

July 22, 2023 by Donald Papp 3 Comments

Every finished product stands at the end of a long line of prototypes, and Sony have recently shared an interview and images of their PlayStation VR2 prototypes.

Many of the prototypes focus on a specific functionality, and readers who are not familiar with building things might find it a bit wild to see just how big and ungainly un-optimized hardware can be.

Finished product (bottom) contrasted with functionally-identical prototype (top).

The images are definitely the best part of that link, but the interview has a few interesting bits. For example, one prototype was optimized for evaluating and testing camera placement with a high degree of accuracy, and it hardly looks like a VR headset at all.

The controllers on the other hand seem to have gone though more iterations based on the ergonomics and physical layout of controls. The VR2 controllers integrate the adaptive triggers from the PlayStation 5, which are of a genuinely clever design capable of variable resistance as well as an active force feedback effect that’s not quite like anything that’s come before.

There’s a lot of work that goes into developing something like a VR headset, as we see here and we’ve seen with Facebook’s (now Meta) VR research prototypes. But even when one can leverage pre-made modules as much as possible and doesn’t need to start entirely from scratch, making a VR headset remains a whole heap of work.