DIY 1024x768 VR HMD Project with wireless headtracking. $154

[airons1972]

Hi guys, i am currently building a high FOV VR HMD for gaming using the following components.

1. 7" TFT Innolux panel $47.99 (including a vga controller board listed below)
2. HCR-N1 V2 LCD controller board (includes VGA and composite inputs)
3. 2 sheets of 3x Magnification Fresnel Lens
4. 5 meter VGA lead
5. 5 meter DC power extension lead
6. 2.4g wireless air mouse
7. Thick black cardboard for screen surround enclosure.
8. Cheap plastic welding helmet.

So far so good. Got everything mounted temp in a plastic box, screen functions great,
and happily displays 1024x768. much better than the 640x480 my old i-glasses offered. Air mouse head tracker works fine as all the games i want to play use mouselook.

Only thing i need to sort now is head mount. Or another idea i have is to put it all into a nice welding helmet to make it a self contained VR helmet. Anyone tried this before? There are some really nice welding helmets out there nowdays and mounting a screen to them along with a tracker and cable should be relatively easy i think.

few pics to follow soon plus a video too hopefully.

What games do you guys play with your HMDs? I mostly like to play old FPS games like QuakeGL, Hexen II GL, Forsaken, Unreal, Thief 1,2, Serious Sam, Clive Barkers Undying, etc. Thief is a fantastic game to play using a HMD imo.

Love this forum and all the posts i have seen from others who have built home brew HMDs on here. It was very inspiring reading about other users projects and seeing photos of them.

airons1972

[cybereality]

Looks awesome!

Are you able to see the screen without splitting it up in half (ie SBS)?

[airons1972]

Yes Cyber, i can see the full screen fine with my lenses, had to have them right next to each other. i tried various spacing of the lenses and found right next to each other gave me the best results. virtually no blurring or distortion. you dont notice the lense join in the middle when viewing through them. I have no idea of the FOV, but lets just say that it is SO much more immersive than my old i-glasses which like Palmer says, is like staring at a little screen far off in the distance. When i look though my lenses holding the box to my face, i cannot see the sides of the 7" panel or the bottom. the top of the screen is slightly visible, but not really a problem. I will experiment more with different lenses once I get head mounting sorted. Thats my next problem to solve.

airons1972

[WiredEarp]

Hey airons1972, that looks like some great work! Its so cool to see all these different people coming up with their own homebrew Rift type HMD's! It really makes me want to build one, but since I already have 2 Rifts on order, I think I'll just try and have patience ;/

If the 1972 in your nick is your birth year, we must be similar ages

[airons1972]

Hey Wired, yes 1972 is indeed my birth year. I became interested in VR during the mid-late 90's. My first HMD was a pair of VIO iglasses with the original VIO tracker unit which i purchased in 1999/2000.

I later picked up a couple of other old consumer HMD's off ebay just to see if they were any better such as Cybermaxx and the VFX-1. The VFX-1 is a beautiful HMD, but just too old to be practial nowdays. I was sick of being restricted to 640x480 on my current iglasses setup so i decided to take the plunge and make something that would support 1024x768 with a higher FOV.

I really need advice on head mounting so if anyone knows where you can buy a suitable headmount for a DIY HMD, please tell.

Thanks, airons1972.

[airons1972]

A couple of short video clips showing the air mouse tracker in action. Sorry for the crap video quality due to my phone. But you get the idea.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZyTuAUqnoM[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7KCVbJaDIg[/youtube]

airons1972

[cybereality]

Looks awesome!

[airons1972]

Hi Guys,

I've been looking at two options for head mounting since i last posted.

The first option is to mount the screen, vga controller, air mouse and cable into a welding helmet, thus creating a self contained VR helmet. This would be good for two reasons. welding hemets are already head mounted and completely shut out the outside world to the user therefore offering a more immersive experience. A cheap black welding helmet costs approx £30 UK pounds.

Or the second option is to simply buy a cheap face shield visor and rip the head mount from it then attach my screen and plastic box onto it somehow. Probably with a metal 'L' bracket, nuts, bolts and washers. A face shield costs approx £13 UK pounds.

Just a couple of ideas. What do you guys think?

airons1972

[D4N13L]

Hi there airons1972, what you got so far is looking sweet
I´m thinking along the same lines for my soon-to-build headmount and I was thinking about mounting it on a hard hat suspension, without the hard hat.
I would have to close off the top, bottom and sides around the screen support frame.
So I guess a welding mask would do the job nicely as it is already mostly closed

btw is the mouse using infrared or bluetooth? and if it´s infrared, does it have to be pointing in the direction to the receiver?

[airons1972]

Hi D4N,

No the air mouse is wireless and works facing any direction without and problems. the receiver is just a little dongle stick that plugs in any usb port on your pc. works great in any mouselook pc fps game, etc. they are so cheap nowdays too. this one on my hmd project only cost about £8.00 from china. search on ebay for air mouse and you should see lots of them. the one i chose is quite small and light so was ideal for hmd mounting. like others have said, they do occasionally drift off slightly, but just correct the view with your regular mouse and play on.

i will post a ebay link late when i get home. great to hear from you.

airons1972

[airons1972]

Here is a direct ebay link to the wireless Air Mouse i use as a head tracker in my HMD project.

It's small, works well with any PC mouselook game and only costs 7.89 UK pounds. Item is sent from china.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/390502260808? ... 1439.l2649

airons1972

[D4N13L]

Nice, I think I might add one to my list

[airons1972]

ok guys, well i have now transfered my VR HMD project into a welding helmet. The main reason for doing this was that is solved the head mounting problem and seemed like a pretty good idea to me.

I will post some pics in a minute. I have also added stereo earphones. I originally had my lenses mounted on a piece of thick black card in front of the screen inside the helmet, but i have now put them onto a pair of safety goggles. This may seem crazy, but trust me it works unreal.

I simply put on the safety glasses which have the lenses stuck on them and then put on the VR helmet which has the 7" lcd screen mounted on it.

The FOV is great as is the immersion and I've got to say I am very happy with it so far.

I may experiment with lenses a bit more on the safety goggles, but apart from that it's all done. 1024x768 resolution, high FOV and 2.4g wireless air mouse head tracking. Total cost about £100 (UK Pounds)

airons1972

[yuriythebest]

looks awesome!! (and scary if someone sees you for the first time with it on and doesn't know what it is )

[TheLookingGlass]

Fantastic work airons!!

[airons1972]

Thanks guys. I'm still going to tidy it up a bit now i'm happy with the FOV etc. The vga circuit on the front of the helmet will be covered with black duct tape to make it look a bit better. The photos above are from when i was still trying out various screen distances with the lenses, etc.

And yes yuriythebest, I agree a vr helmet might come as a bit of a shock to anyone who doesn't know what it is, but it works
great and solves the head mounting problem as well.

airons1972

[airons1972]

Hi Guys,

Since my last post i have done a few improvments to my HMD. Such as 1. moving the vga/dc power cables so they run inside the VR helmet, 2. making a floating lense mount so that the lenses are now positioned perfectly in front of my eyes when i put the helmet and 3. I added some nice headphones because i was sick of the earphones i had previously installed falling out of my ears mid way through playing a game. photos to follow.

airons1972

[D4N13L]

NICE! this is looking pretty wicked

[airons1972]

Hi guys,

Here's a video of the finished thing in action and me playing Quake.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0QboDZqguU[/youtube]

airons1972

[cybereality]

Awesome, man! The tracking looks really responsive.

[airons1972]

Yes Cyber, for what that air mouse cost me, which was about 8.00 UK pounds I have no complaints. I did have it set up perfectly 1:1 but after a while i adjusted the mouse sensitivity in the game settings to a higher setting so i didnt have to do so much turning when playing. I find this to be better personally and I dont tend to wrap my legs up in cable so much. you do get the occasional drift with air mice, but i just configure one of my gamepad buttons to look down and give it a little tap every once in a while.

airons1972

[D4N13L]

Nice work airons1972, I just checked the vid and it looks very nice

You might like one thing I made which is a gun controller (I used my old Time Crisis gun from PlayStation1, but it really could be any plastic gun with a little modification) ripped out the controller board and put the insides of a wireless mouse inside and hooked up the buttons on the gun to the mouse. The I made a mount for a wireless numpad which I plan to get and map for WASD etc. for movement. I made that from aluminium I bent and taped some cushioning on the inside so that it would sit reasonably well on the barrel of the gun. I will post pics of it in my thread later today.

http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=16288

[TheLookingGlass]

Yes Cyber, for what that air mouse cost me, which was about 8.00 UK pounds I have no complaints. I did have it set up perfectly 1:1 but after a while i adjusted the mouse sensitivity in the game settings to a higher setting so i didnt have to do so much turning when playing. I find this to be better personally and I dont tend to wrap my legs up in cable so much. you do get the occasional drift with air mice, but i just configure one of my gamepad buttons to look down and give it a little tap every once in a while.

airons1972

Awesome work airons! I ordered the air mouse you recommended last week!

[airons1972]

Thats great LookingGlass, I think you will be very happy with it. It's just the right size really for using with a HMD and the price is amazing really. A few years ago an air mouse would cost you about £70 here in the UK. Now you can pick up these wonderful devices for £8.00. Mine has never let me down, ive never lost signal and still on my original set of 2 x AAA batteries.

airons1972

[airons1972]

Nice work airons1972, I just checked the vid and it looks very nice

You might like one thing I made which is a gun controller (I used my old Time Crisis gun from PlayStation1, but it really could be any plastic gun with a little modification) ripped out the controller board and put the insides of a wireless mouse inside and hooked up the buttons on the gun to the mouse. The I made a mount for a wireless numpad which I plan to get and map for WASD etc. for movement. I made that from aluminium I bent and taped some cushioning on the inside so that it would sit reasonably well on the barrel of the gun. I will post pics of it in my thread later today.

http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=16288

Thats cool D4N13L,

I'm still using a USB gampad at the minute but plan on using an alternative in the future. Either a wireless gamepad or gun controller would be awesome i think. I would really need about 6 buttons in most games i play. Wireless is good though... one less cable to worry about is always a good thing.

airons1972

[airons1972]

Hi guys,

I have now removed the two acrylic convex lenses and changed my HMD to two layers of Fresnel in front of the 7" panel. This looks much nicer actually and improves the FOV quite a bit compared to the lenses I was using previously. I'm estimating the FOV for my VR headset is currently around 90 to 100 degrees. I've been playing Clive Barkers Undying and Devastation and having a lot of fun in the past few weeks.

airons1972

[nateight]

Wow, what a cool project. The design looks very usable considering the origin of the parts! Makes me wish I'd done something with my life.

[zapantis88]

Hi guys,

I have now removed the two acrylic convex lenses and changed my HMD to two layers of Fresnel in front of the 7" panel. This looks much nicer actually and improves the FOV quite a bit compared to the lenses I was using previously. I'm estimating the FOV for my VR headset is currently somewhere between 80 and 90 degrees. I've been playing Clive Barkers Undying (2001) and a game called Devastation (2003) and having a lot of fun in the past few weeks.

airons1972

DUDE I AM WORKING ALSO ON A PROJECT AND PLANING ON USING ALSO 2FRESNEL LENSES (ALLREADY HAVE THEM AND ARE IDEAL FOR THESE KIND OF THINGS)BACK TO BACK AND AN AIRMOUSE(ALSO HAVE IT AND IS GREAT) BUT WITH A 9.7 INCH 264 PPI DISPLAY(ONDA V972 TABLET DONT HAVE IT YET ) IN ORDER NOT TO HAVE PIXALATION.DO YOU HAVE A LOT OF PIXALATION WITH THIS DIAPLAY BECAUSE 2FRESNEL LENSES MAGNIFY A LOT RIGHT??? keep going i like your project

[airons1972]

Hi guys,

DUDE I AM WORKING ALSO ON A PROJECT AND PLANING ON USING ALSO 2FRESNEL LENSES (ALLREADY HAVE THEM AND ARE IDEAL FOR THESE KIND OF THINGS)BACK TO BACK AND AN AIRMOUSE(ALSO HAVE IT AND IS GREAT) BUT WITH A 9.7 INCH 264 PPI DISPLAY(ONDA V972 TABLET DONT HAVE IT YET ) IN ORDER NOT TO HAVE PIXALATION.DO YOU HAVE A LOT OF PIXALATION WITH THIS DIAPLAY BECAUSE 2FRESNEL LENSES MAGNIFY A LOT RIGHT??? keep going i like your project

Hi Zapantis,

Well, my first Fresnel lens is about 2 inches away from my 7" Innolux panel and the second Fresnel lens is about an inch in front of that. The display is very clear to be honest with very little distortion and virtually no pixilation. My panel specs are as follows.

General Specification of the INNOLUX AT070TN92 TFT LCD Panel:

LCD Size
7 inch(Diagonal)

Driver Element
a-Si TFT active matrix

Dot Pitch
0.0642(W)x0.1790(H)mm

Active Area
154.08(W)x85.92(H)mm

Module Size
164.9(W)x100.0(H)x5.7(D)mm

Color Display
262K(6 bit)

Response Time(ms):
10/15(Typ.)(Tr/Td)

Viewing Angle(L/R/T/B)
70/70/50/70 (Typ.)(CR≥10)

The panel and controller board which has vga and composite inputs costs $52.00 which is great value. The ebay seller I used is
njytouch. The item I used in my vr headset is listed on ebay as ;

HDMI+VGA+2AV+Remote Controller+7"TFT INNOLUX AT070TN92 50 Pin LCD Screen

It actually says 800x600 but I can assure you it can display 1024x768 without any problems.

airons1972

[airons1972]

Hi guys, sorry its been so long since i last posted. I have today managed to improve the FOV in my VR headset even further.

What I have done to achieve this is simply to take out the two cheap sheets of Fresnel lens i had previously installed in my HMD and replace them with two sheets of better quality 3x magnification Fresnel lens. I found that having both sheets of 3x magnification Fresnel with the rough side facing the user gave the widest FOV in both directions. This better quality fresnel stretches the image quite nicely and looks much clearer.

I also found that tilting the fresnel slightly inward at the bottom stretched the Vertical FOV slightly more. There is obviously a limit before the image distorts and blurs, but it is possible to improve the FOV slightly by tilting or curving the fresnel lens.

I recommend this fresnel lens to anyone building a similar HMD. Cheap off ebay and great results.

airons1972

[Robborboy]

What fresnel lenses are you using? I have a pair of 3x I purchased from amazon, Kamset, and there seems to be some pretty bad rainbow effect going on with them.


Scratch this post. Didn't realize there wan an attachment until the post had went through.