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DIY YouTuber builds cheap VR headset and makes it open-source (www.notebookcheck.net)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 51 points 1 year ago* (7 children)

I am wondering about the software side. Is it just a glorified monitor for your face, or does it have some kind of internal control/OS like a Quest or other commercial headset?

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  • [–] 50 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    It seems to only have an Arduino as processor, so presumably the former i.e. you need a PC to plug this into. It seems to have highly simplified tracking compared to something like a Quest - a single Inertial Measurement Unit. All enough for sim racing which is this guy's jam, but I wonder how well the tracking stays calibrated.

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  • [–] 42 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    The critical thing with these is response time. If it's even slightly too high (I think 20-30ms is easily too high), some/many people get very motion sick. Getting that time down as low as needed is also not trivial.

    With it only being 60 Hz on the controller itself, that's basically impossible to hit. That's 16.6 ms already. Then the processing, sending to the PC, and the PC reacting has a budget of just a few ms? Yea, not happening.

    I'm assuming he's really not sensitive to this. As it's open source now the people who are sensitive can improve it. That's the beauty of open source after all.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago

    Looks like it has an inertial sensor to control the view, here's there relevant bit from the article:

    The parts he purchased online include two displays that max out at 2880×1440p and 90 Hz refresh rate, two lenses, an IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) sensor, and an Arduino microcontroller board. The other parts of the headset were 3D-printed.
    ...
    The headset features individually adjustable IPD, interchangeable faceplates, and head tracking. But it does have downsides — at full resolution, it only runs at 60 Hz. Also, it only has three degrees of freedom (3DoF), which means it tracks looking up and down, left and right, and tilting the head left and right. He explained he didn't bother equipping it with 6DoF as 3DoF was enough for his sim racing.

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