Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

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Chriky
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by Chriky »

@ sambeckett

I seem to remember Palmer saying it coudl use DVI natively.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by rajveer »

Nick3DvB wrote:Its the combination of the two sets that no one seems to have gotten right yet, great to see you're working on it! :)
Maybe I'm missing the point, but this is exactly what TrackIR/Freetrack accomplish, orientation around 3 axes and translation in 3 axes.

TrackIR has good responsiveness too, and so does Freetrack with something like the PS3 Camera. The only limitations seem to be the angle you can rotate by/amount you can move before being lost to the camera.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by Nick3DvB »

Just because you are head-tracking, and have your 6 degree of freedom in game, this does NOT automatically mean that you are accurately mapping / modeling the the way a human head actually behaves, it's all in the subtle interactions between the direction the game camera is looking (eyes), the relative position of that camera (where the head is), and the path the camera takes through the 3D space as you move your head. Take a flight sim + TrackIR for example, if the model was truly accurate, when you stood up in the real world, your head would bust through the cock-pit in the game! Obviously you don't always want a 1:1 representation, but it should still be as accurate as possible. This is the "head & kneck" model vs "disembodied eyeball" thing John was talking about, and one of the reasons Doom 3 BFG is so impressive. This stuff is very hardcore (euler angles, arc modeling etc) and well beyond me I'm afraid, but it's more important than ever to get it right when using a HMD.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by rajveer »

If you have 6DOF, you shouldn't have to model the way the human head/neck behaves, as your real head/neck would adjust the view correctly for you. I thought the reason John implemented a head and neck model in Doom is because he hasn't gotten axes transformations working yet with that headtracker, othewise why should he have to model a head and neck model when your real head and neck manipulate the view properly. This is why he only got the up and down motion looking correct (I think), because he simulates the path your head would naturally take looking up and down when the data you get from the tracker is only orientation data, and it's impossible to simulate all the possible ways your head and neck move with just orientation data.

With Freetrack/TrackIR, you can set the offset of the headtracker relative to the the turning point of your head (where the neck meets the head), so when you move your head in real life, it translates correctly in virtual space (if you set it to 1:1). Why isn't this good enough for a demo to show what Johnny Lee was doing (parallax stuff)?
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by Nick3DvB »

I was asking about this the other day, I know there are certain limitations to the Doom 3 implementation but I’m not clear if this is purely a sensor limitation or other modelling issues specific to Doom3? I think one aspect to it is the interaction between between the players movement through the game world and the head movement, as you are physical stationary when playing, this is ok for a cock-pit but surely there are modeling implications for FPS etc? All I know is that I have yet to see a truly convincing DOF6 implementation, I'll keep looking, and if I can get a demo working hopefully you'll actually be able to see what I'm on about.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by PalmerTech »

Been awake for a long many hours, just submitted the project on Kickstarter. Hoping they approve it quickly and without problems.|

Gotta sleep now. :lol:
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by BillRoeske »

Fantastic news, Palmer! Credit card is at the ready. :)
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by Okta »

Congrats Palmer, strike one blow for the good guys :)
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by AntonieB »

Congratz!! hope to see it soon :)
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by nixarn »

Awesome!!! I'll reload the kickstarter page until it's up =)
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by Mel »

PalmerTech wrote:Been awake for a long many hours, just submitted the project on Kickstarter. Hoping they approve it quickly and without problems.|

Gotta sleep now. :lol:
Excellent news, Palmer. Rest well in preparation for the Kickstarter cash deluge. :)
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by andrewe1 »

Hi,

Can we get a 1-2 hour headstart here before it goes live? :D
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by Nick3DvB »

Good idea, the non-US guys on here who couldn't get on the pre-order would appreciate that. :)
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by Chriky »

I'm not sure Palmer will get any advanced warning. He has already submitted it to Kickstarter, he's just waiting for them to approve it.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by cybereality »

Awesome news! Hope I get a spot on the Kickstarter and it doesn't fill up too fast (well who am I kidding, this is still pretty niche stuff).
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by andrewe1 »

Chriky wrote:I'm not sure Palmer will get any advanced warning. He has already submitted it to Kickstarter, he's just waiting for them to approve it.

Afaik kickstarter does not work like that. They approve it and after that they give you the option to launch it whenever you want so you can time it to your liking. It's not a "submit and just wait for it to show up whenever" kind of thing.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by WiredEarp »

I don't get the whole neck simulation thing.
Surely all that is required is the disembodied head/eyeballs? The neck is simply there to connect to the body model, it shouldn't effect view or anything similar. I dont see why there would be a need to 'simulate the path your head would naturally take', when your head will be doing this ALREADY, since its already attached to a real neck.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by Chriky »

WiredEarp wrote:I don't get the whole neck simulation thing.
Surely all that is required is the disembodied head/eyeballs? The neck is simply there to connect to the body model, it shouldn't effect view or anything similar. I dont see why there would be a need to 'simulate the path your head would naturally take', when your head will be doing this ALREADY, since its already attached to a real neck.
Carmack's demo didn't use a 6DOF tracker it was purely orientation. When you move you head around your eyes do actually translate because they are quite far from the centre of rotation (which is somewhere in your neck). What he did was start at a neck position, orientate by the rotation matrix, then move 'up', 'forward' and 'left'/'right' to get eye positions to render from.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by Nick3DvB »

Good point Chriky, one other example just off the top of my head, the "walking effect" that is added in FPS games, the camera frame does not glide forward smoothly, the frame bounces around a bit to try and simulate the unsteady motion of a human skelaton walking, but if the player is stationary there will be a subtle discrepancy introduced there...
Last edited by Nick3DvB on Thu Jun 14, 2012 6:07 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by BillRoeske »

I don't get the whole neck simulation thing.
Surely all that is required is the disembodied head/eyeballs? The neck is simply there to connect to the body model, it shouldn't effect view or anything similar. I dont see why there would be a need to 'simulate the path your head would naturally take', when your head will be doing this ALREADY, since its already attached to a real neck.
Think of it this way: the pivot point of your head is rooted at your neck, not your eyeballs. So when you turn your head, your eyes (and thus, your view) aren't just rotating in place. They're moving through space as well.

If you tilt your head downward, your eyes actually move slightly forward and down through space. Likewise, they move backward and up (to a degree) if you tilt your head back. Following the skeleton down, your head is connected to your neck, which is part of your spine, which is connected to your hips, etc. A more exaggerated version of the same principal is that if you duck (without rotating your head), your eyes translate downward while still looking forward, and so your view follows.

Simulating the head/neck arc in software is just a small trick to make the 3DOF tracking feel a little bit better than it actually is. :)
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by rajveer »

Hey Palmer, will the optional Hillcrest tracker be the same one that John was using, with orientation but no translation data? I'm sure you mentioned it before but I can't seem to find where.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by TheRockApe »

Okay, I know a lot has been split into other threads.

Had some ideas for assisting with the cpu to eyeball lag issues.

The 6-9 dof head tracking is a question of engineering. Tech is here, just needs to be implemented.

How about putting a large frame buffer into the lcd driver board. The stock board has a standard frame buffer spec-ed for the lcd. How about making the frame buffer 2x-3x larger than lcd spec.

The head tracking can be fed into the lcd driver/frame buffer and the cpu/graphics engine. Small quick movements use the buffer, and large movements the cpu.

Some movements will not track well with this, so experimentation will be need for what is sent to the buffer. :)
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by WiredEarp »

Thanks BillRoeske for the explanation!
I think i'm missing the frame of reference for this conversation though - I suspect we talking about this for systems that do not implement absolute tracking? I say that because with an absolute tracker, your head is ALREADY doing these movements while wearing the HMD. IE, when you tilt your head down, your eyeballs (covered by the HMD) move forward. Therefore, all you need to do (IMHO) in the VR is to render the head position as given. So, for example, using a magnetic tracker, and just rendering the eye/head position into the world should take care of all this.

However, if we are talking about a system that does not track translation at all, then what you have said makes sense to me, and I guess could add to immersion.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by BillRoeske »

I think i'm missing the frame of reference for this conversation though - I suspect we talking about this for systems that do not implement absolute tracking?
Oh, I was talking specifically about the Hillcrest FSRK-USB-2 that JohnCarmack was using for his experiments and that Palmer is (as far as I know) using for one of the Kickstarter bundles. That's the type John was referring to with your quote about simulating a neck joint.

You are correct that a system that tracks absolute position wouldn't need something like that. Sorry if I missed a turn in the conversation somewhere. :)
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by cybereality »

I'm really glad John added that "neck trick" to the tracking. Its something I never thought of, or even heard about being used. I think it will add the extra element of realism.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by PalmerTech »

rajveer wrote:Hey Palmer, will the optional Hillcrest tracker be the same one that John was using, with orientation but no translation data? I'm sure you mentioned it before but I can't seem to find where.
Yes, same sensor. I really like the Sixense tracker, but considering how much modding it takes to use as a head tracker currently, it was just not a real option.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by NickK »

Palmer. Your hosting provider appears to have a flaky DNS service. Your website intermittently disappears. I have to use my corporate DNS servers to view oculusvr.com. I am on the west coast and it's kind of surprising.

Secondly, what is the price for the whole kit that includes RIFT + head tracker + Carmack's engine? So far, I've only seen the price of $500 for the stand-alone RIFT.

Third. It's already almost June 15 and there is nothing on Kickstarter. I understand that you are overloaded with work. How much time do you need to get it started without burning yourself out? Are we talking days or weeks?
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by WiredEarp »

Oh, I was talking specifically about the Hillcrest FSRK-USB-2 that JohnCarmack was using for his experiments and that Palmer is (as far as I know) using for one of the Kickstarter bundles. That's the type John was referring to with your quote about simulating a neck joint. You are correct that a system that tracks absolute position wouldn't need something like that. Sorry if I missed a turn in the conversation somewhere. :)
Ah, I thought that it was something like that, I think it was me that missed the turn in the conversation! :)

Indeed, when using a tracker like that, the neck angle bit would be handy.

@ PalmerTech: Indeed, I know what you mean. I redid my Hydra mod with the separate sensor, using shielded cable this time. It seemed to remove the interference caused by the cable I experienced before. I still notice my tracker 'flickers' at certain angles when using the test app (I notice the full Hydra does the same thing at some angles, not as bad however). I'm currently thinking this may be caused by magnetic interference with the new cable. Specifically, I soldered a thin wire bar across the 3 negative lines and wired to this. I suspect that this may be solid enough to generate interference when you turn the tracker to a certain point. I think the next step would be for me to remove the bar and replace it with 3 very fine wires to see if that helps. However, I am still left with a software problem then, which is that the tracker has a point of origin that isn't in the center of the new 'tracker' piece, so any driver I write to transfer Hydra to TrackIR will have to take this into account. PITA when I just want to use my cheap magnetic tracker with a HMD!

I can't see why Sixaxis just doesn't release a non Razer tracker and SDK, it would make everyones lives much easier.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by PalmerTech »

NickK wrote:Palmer. Your hosting provider appears to have a flaky DNS service. Your website intermittently disappears. I have to use my corporate DNS servers to view oculusvr.com. I am on the west coast and it's kind of surprising.

Secondly, what is the price for the whole kit that includes RIFT + head tracker + Carmack's engine? So far, I've only seen the price of $500 for the stand-alone RIFT.

Third. It's already almost June 15 and there is nothing on Kickstarter. I understand that you are overloaded with work. How much time do you need to get it started without burning yourself out? Are we talking days or weeks?
Yes, something is wrong with the site, trying to figure it out.

Price for the whole kit will be $599.

If you check a little earlier in the thread, I posted that I have it submitted to Kickstarter, just waiting for approval. Should be a matter of days, if not hours.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by rajveer »

PalmerTech wrote:Yes, same sensor. I really like the Sixense tracker, but considering how much modding it takes to use as a head tracker currently, it was just not a real option.
Understood, any tracker is better than no tracker at all :) I'm going to play around with combining orientation using the Hillcrest tracker and transformation with Freetrack, see how well that works (I really should look into FreePIE and see if this can be done with that?). I hope John implements a mode without the head-neck model in Doom, for those who have a method of tracking translation too.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by Vaughanabe13 »

So are you guys mostly going for the bundle with the tracker, or is anyone buying just the HMD?
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by AntonieB »

I think i would go for bundle, but I first want to see the kickstarter info :)

I'm interested if for example we get the 'special for Carmack' high frequention updated Hillcrest tracker or the normal 60 hz tracker.

Hope the kickstarer is up soon, can't wait :)
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by VRon »

Damn i'm living outside US, so I must wait for kickstarter bundle edition. :x
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by druidsbane »

Definitely going to buy the tracker as well since I don't have one. Hopefully the one with the updated firmware so it has the fastest possible response time. I read earlier that even if we didn't go through kickstarter we can buy these from it if we got in on the pre-kickstarter, I'll be patient and wait till then to buy the tracker :)
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by Torchedini »

Don't know yet,
I'll have a razer Hydra coming in quite soon, I heard some rumors that the Hydra is going or is EOL so they aren't produced anymore.
So I want to have that piece of hardware lying around because its usable with what this kickstarter is doing.

If it is possible then I will try to make it workable with the Rift but I think I'll go for the full package anyway. Nothing is as beautiful as wonderful hardware :P and I'm building quite the collection.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by LeeN »

I'm very likely to get the tracking bundle.

In my experience trying to do the 'Johnny Lee' thing with TrackIR, TrackClip Pro doesn't work for some reason, VectorClip works but is very noisy. I noticed that as one pixel changed it popped positions. I feel like it needs filtering to be smoother which will add latency. And unfortunately for my stereoscopic DLP HDTV it has 90 ms latency (at least that is what guitar hero / rock band are telling me). I also tried Kinect which was even worse. A custom optical head tracking solution I think in the end will be better.

The problem with Razor Hydra is that it's sensitive to metal amd other magnetic fields, which I can only imagine that the LCD and electronics of the HMD are outputting fields, which is probably one of the reasons for distortion. I used to use the Polhemus Hand Scanner like 8 years ago and that had the exact same problem, you had the best results away from metal.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by Alkapwn »

I posted this a few pages ago, but has anyone thought of using faceAPI for head tracking? it's incredibly fast and responsive. Here's an example of it being used in Counter Strike's Source engine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWkpdtFZ ... r_embedded
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by Nick3DvB »

It's certainly worth considering, not sure about "incredibly fast" though, you need a very good webcam for it to work well (60Hz, high resolution), I ended up using an old Hi8 camcorder connected to a capture card instead!
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by BillRoeske »

Alkapwn wrote:I posted this a few pages ago, but has anyone thought of using faceAPI for head tracking? it's incredibly fast and responsive. Here's an example of it being used in Counter Strike's Source engine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWkpdtFZ ... r_embedded
I tried that Source mod last night, based on your post. It's actually quite cool (I love the leaning command and would actually use it in games), but it's also rather fragile. It was always very quick to reestablish my face, but it lost it more times than I'd like.

Using it for head tracking is a clever idea, but has a fundamental problem: it requires you to be generally facing the camera. Unless you set up an array of cameras that are spatially and temporally calibrated, you'll be stuck not able to turn very far. That's on top of the rather high latency in generic Windows video drivers. Microsoft is trying to do something about that in Windows 8, but their stated goal is for good Skype performance (which they define as ~100ms).
Nick3DvB wrote:It's certainly worth considering, not sure about "incredibly fast" though, you need a very good webcam for it to work well (60Hz, high resolution) [...]
Don't forget that you can still have high latency while having a high capture rate. You can capture at 120fps, but it might take 200ms from initiating capture for those frames to start showing up. :)
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by cms »

I've played around with a number of different options for tracking motion, and I thought I'd quickly share some of my musings.

My intent is to set up a vr system where:

* you can rotate freely with yaw (you dont have to always be facing a camera or something)

* (relative to a fixed point) acquire body position/offset in 3d

* accurately track relative hand movements (rotation and 3d position)

* accurately track head rotation

I've succeeded with most of this now. Though I haven't put it all together, and I am not yet satisfied with the latency.

The Kinect is nice in that it gives you fairly accurate skeletal pose information across the body (and the libraries make it really easy too). But, it does not do this fast. Of course fast is relative, but with the intent of getting things down to around 20ms or less, the Kinect is nowhere near practical/helpful.

I have used a high speed camera (PS3 eye) and custom OpenCV stuff. I've played with tracking fiducials. I toyed with wiimotes (and with the motion plus) and playstation move controllers. The software to get the moves talking and calibrated was a pain to get going, and unfortunately in its current state adds a bunch of latency. I'm convinced that ultimately you want an AHRS (with 9dom - 3 axis accelerometer, 3 axis gyro, 3 axis magnetometer). There is some work going on to directly reprogram the moves. I imagine that the moves might provide the cheapest avenue for others to explore AHRS.

I worry that overall, bluetooth might end up costing too much in latency.

I think, without necessitating a fixed camera or magnetic tracking, you would probably be able to integrate from a set of AHRSs to find displacement and trigger for things like jumping and crouching without losing much.

---

Using a bunch of ps moves, I set up a fun system. I made a number of straps that would hold a move each. The moves were calibrated. I'd strap one to my forearm, one to my upper arm, one to my chest, and one to my head (next to an hmd). I also held a ps navigation controller.

I did some further "baselining" in code. The user would go into a few different poses and I would calibrate. I constructed a skeleton, very similar to how I imagine Carmack is. It took into consideration the offset of the position of the strap/device from the actual point of rotation. Because I had the "body" sensor I could get an accurate 3d position of the head, upper arm, lower arm, and hand relative to the body basis through the composition of the rotations.

I downloaded the source sdk and started tweaking half life. I didn't get too far with it overall, but I did incorporate the pose tracking for the body and head. At some point, I'd like to return and incorporate the arm/hand tracking to be able to aim and shoot realistically.

It was really fun and immersive to put on an hmd, view things in 3d (thanks to tridef), walk around in game moving my head and body convincingly. I even would physically lay on my side and look up under things. For example, at the beginning of HL2 you arrive on a train. One of the first things I did was lean my body outside of the train door and move my head around. I also went on my side and looked up under the seats of the train. I got out of the train and looked up under the steps getting off the train. I'm sure I looked really stupid in meatspace, but it was awesome. :)

(I showed it to a few others, and they quickly pointed out problems with it. Why were the bullets shooting out from my face? Why could you lean through walls?) :)

---

How to make it better:

I don't think I'm doing the calibration quite right or something as I end up with a bit of drift.

I think if I added a fast camera mounted above the user looking directly down, and had some ir leds on top of the head, I could have a satisfying, cheap, convincing, and fast 3d position/offset. This would still allow me to rotate about freely in the ways that I care about. I could use this to get an absolute positioning of the head and use that as the reference basis instead of the body. This is likely best because the head tracking is most important and noticeable. Going the other way led to jittery head movement. This would also let me handle jumping and crouching convincingly.

Instead of each ps move sending out their signals via bluetooth, getting them in software, and processing the rotation calcs, I should reprogram them to do the calculations onboard and only output the final rotation quaternion, wire them together and probably just send the full output through usb.

---

I'm really excited about getting ahold of the rift and putting this all together!
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