vr

126 Articles

Behold A DIY VR Headset Its Creator Will “Never” Build Again

July 10, 2023 by 13 Comments

Unsatisfied with commercial VR headset options, [dragonskyrunner] did what any enterprising hacker would: gathered parts over time and ultimately made their own. Behold the Hades Widebody (HWD), a DIY PC VR headset that aims for a wide field of view and even manages to integrate some face and eye tracking.

The Fresnel elements hugging the primary lenses provide a way of extending the display into the wearer’s peripheral vision.

[dragonskyrunner] is — and we quote — “NEVER building one of these again.” The reason is easily relatable to anyone who has spent a lot of time and effort creating something special: it does the job it was created for, but it also has limitations and is a lot of work. If one were to do it all over again, there would be a host of improvements and changes to consider. But one won’t be doing it all over again any time soon because it’s done now.

The good news is that [dragonskyrunner] made an effort to document things, so there is at least a parts list and enough details for any suitably motivated hacker to replicate the work and perhaps even put their own spin on it.

The Hades Widebody has a dual-lens arrangement and wide displays that aim to provide a wider field of view than most setups allow. There’s a main lens in front of the user’s eyes and a cut Fresnel lens providing a sort of extension to the side. [dragonskyrunner] claims that while there is certainly not a seamless transition between the lens elements, it does a better job than an Ambilight at providing a sense of visuals extending into the wearer’s peripheral vision.

The DIY spirit of making a piece of hardware to suit one’s own needs is exactly the sort of thing that would fit into our 2023 Cyberdeck content, and while a headset by itself isn’t quite enough to qualify (devices must have some form of usable input and output), it just might get those creative juices flowing.

Enhance VR Immersion By Shoehorning An Ambilight Into A Headset

July 9, 2023 by 5 Comments

Everyone wants a wider field of view in their VR headsets, but that’s not an easy nut to crack. [Statonwest] shows there’s a way to get at least some of the immersion benefits with a bit of simple hardware thanks to the VR Ambilight.

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Simple Cubes Show Off AI-Driven Runtime Changes In VR

May 30, 2023 by 6 Comments

AR and VR developer [Skarredghost] got pretty excited about a virtual blue cube, and for a very good reason. It marked a successful prototype of an augmented reality experience in which the logic underlying the cube as a virtual object was changed by AI in response to verbal direction by the user. Saying “make it blue” did indeed turn the cube blue! (After a little thinking time, of course.)

It didn’t stop there, of course, and the blue cube proof-of-concept led to a number of simple demos. The first shows off a row of cubes changing color from red to green in response to musical volume, then a bundle of cubes change size in response to microphone volume, and cubes even start moving around in space.

The program accepts spoken input from the user, converts it to text, sends it to a natural language AI model, which then creates the necessary modifications and loads it into the environment to make runtime changes in Unity. The workflow is a bit cumbersome and highlights many of the challenges involved, but it works and that’s pretty nifty.

The GitHub repository is here and a good demonstration video is embedded just under the page break. There’s also a video with a much more in-depth discussion of what’s going on and a frank exploration of the technical challenges.

If you’re interested in this direction, it seems [Skarredghost] has rounded up the relevant details. And should you have a prototype idea that isn’t necessarily AR or VR but would benefit from AI-assisted speech recognition that can run locally? This project has what you need.

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Jump Like Mario With This Weighted Wearable

May 11, 2023 by 5 Comments

Virtual reality has come a long way in the past decade, with successful commercial offerings for gaming platforms still going strong as well as a number of semi-virtual, or augmented, reality tools that are proving their worth outside of a gaming environment as well. But with all this success they still haven’t quite figured out methods of locomotion that feel natural like walking or running. One research group is leaping to solve one of these issues with JumpMod: a wearable device that enhances the sensation of jumping.

The group, led by [Pedro Lopes] at the University of Chicago, uses a two-kilogram weight worn on the back to help provide the feeling of jumping or falling. By interfacing it with the virtual reality environment, the weight can quickly move up or down its rails when it detects that the wearer is about to commit to an action that it thinks it can enhance. Wearers report feeling like they are jumping much higher, or even smashing into the ground harder. The backpack offers a compact and affordable alternative to the bulky and expensive hardware traditionally used for this purpose.

With builds like these, we would hope the virtual reality worlds that are being created become even more immersive and believable. Of course that means a lot more work into making other methods of movement in the virtual space feel believable (like walking, to start with) but it’s an excellent piece of technology that shows some progress. Augmenting the virtual space doesn’t always need bulky hardware like this, though. Take a “look” at this device which can build a believable virtual reality space using nothing more than a webcam.

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Tactile Feedback In VR, No Cumbersome Gloves Or Motors Required

April 26, 2023 by 9 Comments

This clever research from the University of Chicago’s Human Computer Integration Lab demonstrates a fascinating way to let users “feel” objects in VR, without anything getting in the way of using one’s hands and fingers normally. Certainly, the picture here shows hands with a device attached to them, but look closely and you’ll see that it’s on the back of the hand only.

There’s hardware attached to the hands, yes, but only to the backs. Hands and fingers can be used entirely normally while receiving tactile feedback.

The unique device consists of a control box, wires, and some electrodes attached to different spots on the back of the hand and fingers. Carefully modulated electrical signals create tactile sensations on the front, despite originating from electrodes on the back. While this has clear applications for VR, the team thinks the concept could also have applications in rehabilitation, or prosthetics.

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Autopsy Of A Drifting Thumbstick Reveals All

April 12, 2023 by 34 Comments

Analog sticks have become a core part of modern video game controllers. They also routinely fail or end up drifting, consigning expensive controllers to the garbage. [sjm4306] recently did a repair job on an Oculus VR gaming controller with drifting analog sticks, and decided to do an autopsy to figure out what actually went wrong.

A microscope reveals gouges in the resistive material, caused by the metal contacts inside the analog stick. This happened via regular use.

The video starts by taking apart the analog joystick itself by prying off the metal case. Inside, we get a look at the many tiny individual components that make up a modern thumbstick. Of most interest, though, are the components that make up the potentiometers within the stick. Investigation revealed that the metal contacts that move with the stick had worn through the resistive coating on the thin plastic membrane in the base of the joystick, creating the frustrating drift problem.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Analog sticks in modern controllers could be manufactured with higher-quality components that don’t wear so easily. After all, it’s hard to imagine a 90s video game controller wearing out as fast as this modern Oculus unit. But everything is built to a price, at the end of the day, and that’s just how it goes. Video after the break.

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Blinks Are Useful In VR, But Triggering Blinks Is Tricky

April 9, 2023 by 8 Comments

In VR, a blink can be a window of opportunity to improve the user’s experience. We’ll explain how in a moment, but blinks are tough to capitalize on because they are unpredictable and don’t last very long. That’s why researchers spent time figuring out how to induce eye blinks on demand in VR (video) and the details are available in a full PDF report. Turns out there are some novel, VR-based ways to reliably induce blinks. If an application can induce them, it makes it easier to use them to fudge details in helpful ways.

It turns out that humans experience a form of change blindness during blinks, and this can be used to sneak small changes into a scene in useful ways. Two examples are hand redirection (HR), and redirected walking (RDW). Both are ways to subtly break the implicit one-to-one mapping of physical and virtual motions. Redirected walking can nudge a user to stay inside a physical boundary without realizing it, leading the user to feel the area is larger than it actually is. Hand redirection can be used to improve haptics and ergonomics. For example, VR experiences that use physical controls (like a steering wheel in a driving simulator, or maybe a starship simulator project like this one) rely on physical and virtual controls overlapping each other perfectly. Hand redirection can improve the process by covering up mismatches in a way that is imperceptible to the user.

There are several known ways to induce a blink reflex, but it turns out that one novel method is particularly suited to implementing in VR: triggering the menace reflex by simulating a fast-approaching object. In VR, a small shadow appears in the field of view and rapidly seems to approach one’s eyes. This very brief event is hardly noticeable, yet reliably triggers a blink. There are other approaches as well such as flashes, sudden noise, or simulating the gradual blurring of vision, but to be useful a method must be unobtrusive and reliable.

We’ve already seen saccadic movement of the eyes used to implement redirected walking, but it turns out that leveraging eye blinks allows for even larger adjustments and changes to go unnoticed by the user. Who knew blinks could be so useful to exploit?

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