HMDs, experiences anyone?


MrConfusion

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Apr 11, 2013
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So, I'm considering getting one of these hippy toys. I want to resume where I left in the 90s (two lenses on a cardboard contraption in front of a 14" CRT with VGA resolution (i.e. 120x100 pixels/eye :) from the book "Virtual Reality Creations").

Note that I don't intend to do gaming related stuff! So no SteamVR or whatever, I just want to tweak and then when I get bored with it I'll just pass the unit on. BUT I hope to start from a reasonable, working starting point.

Basically if I can read the gyros and draw pixels to the headset screen I'm a happy camper for a looooong time :).

This on Linux with preferably old hardware (I wouldn't want to invest in a new PC and the best I got is an old laptop with Core i5 + mobile Radeon 5xxx or 6xxx or somesuch I forget which...) BUT I'm ok with low resolution and scaling - IF I get bitten and start wanting more, I'll just get a monster machine then.
I do have a "vision" of where I'm going with this... but it is more than likely I'll bounce to something more interesting before I fulfill that vision :).

I mainly see two options:

Playstation VR can apparently be attached to a PC and is then visible as some gyroscopes (USB and from quick googling people are already deciphering their output) and an external FullHD display!?
Or does it need some additional magic?
I've found diagrams (from the net) that still have it hooked up to a PS4 (which I don't own and don't plan to own) and diagrams that ditch the console entirely... so which is it, required or not? Anyone tried?
Pros:
FullHD is doable for my existing machine (slow, but doable, at least in Windows... come to think of it I don't think it has ever been tested with Linux...). So if I can turn on the screens and extend desktop to it the main deal is done.
Is already gaining traction among hackers - always a good sign.
Easy to get - just pick one up from the shelf the next time you get milk and cookies for the kids :).
Probably extremely easy to sell away when I loose my focus and interest!
Cons:
I'm still unsure whether the blasted thing can be made to work!!!-(
It's inferior tech for roughly the same price. as...

HDK2 was pointed out to me as an alternative. It is technically better on paper and they claim it is open source (a term which I've found... flexible... :-( ). Solid information in the context of what I hope to do is just as hard to find as for PSVR. Instructions exist (scattered all over the place...) for SteamVR, Unity etc. But I just want to do simple OpenGL from scratch! It is promising in the sense that I can download all the stuff right away and start spending time even before a purchase... but as some have pointed out in their own forums, Linux support is "lacking" to say the least and thus I'm afraid I'd end up tinkering with "non related stuff" (porting from Windows?) just as much as I would with PSVR, but for somewhat different reasons.
Pros:
Theoretically better for tinkering and theoretically better supported for such purpose.
Technically superior, but...
Cons:
...because of the higher resolution I'm not even sure this thing would play nice with that limping laptop I got to begin with. So I might need to invest in a new x86PC build
Probably nearly impossible to pass on for a reasonable price?

Since this seems so darned complicated I'm now wondering: if all I want to do is draw OpenGL in a monitor that looks unconventional, has this, at some point, been made so complicated I got no chance to do it without having wrapper upon wrapper upon wrapper upon Unity or some such? I.e. am I screwed with the whole idea?
Because back in the 90's I just drew the damn triangles on screen side by side, slightly different perspectives with _elementary_linear_algebra_ in the end and it all worked like a charm and I was happy until it got boring.
Why all the black magic now? What a world, what a world... ;-)

Any thoughts and especially experiences are appreciated!
 
This the same things as VR headsets? No interest in those personally - I don't want to cut myself off from the rest of the household any more than I do naturally ;)
 
I have and old style HMD, it has two separate 800x600 screens at 100Hz but it only works with old nVidia cards like the gf6900. I also played with the PSVR, Oculus Rift and the Vive, all cost some money.
The cheapest option is to put a conventional smartphone into a VR holder, I think they start at $10, and the phones mostly have motion/axis sensors in them.
 
This the same things as VR headsets?
Yep...

The cheapest option is to put a conventional smartphone into a VR holder, I think they start at $10, and the phones mostly have motion/axis sensors in them.
Factoring in the cost of a new phone that's not so cheap. And even if my years old Windows Phone had a bigger display and reasonably quick innards, I would have to seriously invest time into learning to code for it (which I, after some initial little "Hello worlds", never got around to...).
But yeah, that's not a bad idea, I need to check how the 300-400 euro Androids would fare. No-one's forcing me to use it for anything else :). Of course tinkering with Android when you constantly have to test on the device is not as much fun as simply taking off the headset and recompiling on the PC, for the PC.

As for a "proper" HMD, at the moment it is starting to look like the PSVR would be the best bet. But I seem to have a problem with even that: The HDMI out I got in my laptop is apparently HDMI1.3something, NOT the 1.4 the PSVR apparently requires in order to get switched to proper 3D display (? there's a "Cinema mode" in it too, but that's not what I'm after at all...) :-(. I figured since it supports 60Hz FullHD it would be OK... but possibly not. Of course taking one for a testdrive for a weekend and returning it if it's no go might be an option, though it would suck for the shop I would do that to :-(.

As such the whole proposition feels a lot less alluring: I see little need to buy a new PC, when my current ones are already mostly just collecting dust (... incidentally I'm typing this on a Raspberry PI, because it's always on and totally quiet... ;-)). I was basically hoping there was a 400-500 euro solution with which I could just hook it up and start coding and tinkering... doesn't look like there is.
 
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