Best setup to demo VR

[perrynow]

I'm lucky in my job to have to do the odd tech demo and I have to do one in Miami in a few weeks, I want to show people how VR and visual immersion is about to explode (you better not let us down palmer, I'm promising people this sort of thing now!). Anyway, I managed to get an HMZ (which was a mission in itself) and I strapped a Move onto the side of it last night and played a game on the PS3 called Datura (have you guys seen this? for such an accessible setup I was quite impressed). Will be taking the PS3 with that for sure but I also have a small form PC with a GTX 690 squeezed into it on its way (I said I needed it for "rendering" lol), and I have two questions for you:

Is there anything I can do to the hmz to make it easier for people to take off and try on? all the mods on here seem to be specifically for one person. At the moment it feels like a medieval torture device!

Whats the best headtracking option for the PC and what content, if you could pick one, would you show with it? My modelling team will be building a virtual bar that I'll drop into cryengine 3, its for a big drinks brand, but after that is a quick Skyrim demo the best? a flight sim?

hope you can help

[cybereality]

Hey, welcome to the forum!

To be honest, there really isn't much in the way of off-the-shelf VR. Most people here use commercial games with VR equipment, but its really far from a true VR experience. One of my personal favorite games to test is Left4Dead, since it works well in 3D and can be run on lower-spec machines (though with a 690 you probably will not have a problem). I guess Skyrim would work too, though I never played it. For head-tracking there are some solutions, but most of them require custom software. You might be able to to strap on a Wiimote and use GlovePIE, though it may make the setup a bit jury-rigged. There is also FreePIE, which some members here have made, but I'm not sure how ready it is for your purposes. A safe bet might be to try the TrackIR, as it has out-of-box support with a number of titles (mostly sims). People seemed to have success with this, though I've never tried it (they are real jerks when it comes to developer support so I'm boycotting).

Sorry I can't be of more help. It seems the VR experience we all want is still not available (at least on the consumer market). We may just be on our own to homebrew it.

[brantlew]

You can check out some head tracking options in this thread.

http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=120&t=14649

[WiredEarp]

@ perrynow: the best easy setup is a Razer Hydra with a HMD. Then, you can use one Hydra as a gun controller to control the view (FPSGun).
If you wish to have head tracking as well, you can probably use the other Hydra to do this. Advantage of the Hydra is it comes setup to use L4D etc already, just have to change it to the correct mode. I've played L4D using a setup like this (also using a Z800 head tracker to allow head movement as well) its pretty fun.

As CR says, its still not a true VR experience tho.

[love2scoot]

Ok, I'm still fuzzy on the Hydra. Between YouTube videos and some documentation on their site, it seems that it was designed for Portal 2 exclusively. Clearly that's not he case (as noted above) and other Source titles work as well. Can someone please give me a quick overview of the Hydra capabilities and the different configurations possible?

[WiredEarp]

It has special functionality with Portal 2, TF2, and I think some other Source games. It also has built in mouse emulation mode which is what I use for L4D. There are several modes, in the original drivers I believe there were only two. There is a mode where moving the hydra aroudn in an area in front of you controls the mouse, and there is another mode where you can move the hydra in a 360 degree circle to move the mouse. I use the 360 degree mode with L4D. You just calibrate the sensitivity so a 180 turn gives you 180 in the game etc. Actually, you can increase this, so a 90 degree turn gives you a 180 degree turn in the game, and as long as you don't have any other form of reference (dark room or light blocking HMD) then it actually feels almost as natural, and is easier for gaming. Otherwise, you get a bit sick of constantly turning 180 degrees to check your six.

Most other modern games also have 'profiles' already created for it in the drivers, so you can play heaps of other games straight away without having to configure buttons etc... however, its just emulating a mouse and buttons etc for these modes, unlike the functionality of Portal 2 etc where you can actually move objects around in the game with a high degree of accuracy, by waving the controller.

[love2scoot]

Great, thanks. I read both the Hydra and the teardown threads, and neither was as clear an concise as your description.

[perrynow]

Thanks guys, for a horrible moment I thought I was a guy working in advertising posting the most cringe thing ever and no-one was going to reply to that! I'm actually a developer and I make apps but sometimes we're paid to fly out and advise clients (banks, big car companies, publishers), I know we're not there yet with the FOV or even the HDMI by the sounds of it but I can promise you that when they turn their head and wave their virtual hand in front of their face in Datura or step out on the aircraft carrier in BF3 they are going to be blown away, a lot of people would be, and I;ve literally had to hide them at home because getting it out of work causes chaos. I'm fairly convinced Datura is a techdemo for Sony, the headtracking isn;t really publicised and it seems unplayable any other way, am testing child of eden in a bit for the same feature.

I've built a lot of gyroscopic & bluetooth apps (I made the iphone control a puppet like a marionette and a bluetooth android keyboard for the playstation) so I'm going to have a go at writing something to use it for headtracking, make a bonjour service over bluetoothor something, you guys might be able to help me with what I do with the sensor data at the PC end? I have no knowledge there at all.

[3dvison]

Is there anything I can do to the hmz to make it easier for people to take off and try on?

It would be nice if you could find a way to get an ST1080. It seems that's the way to go, when multiple users need access to a single HMD. The ST1080 slips on and off like glasses.

[brantlew]

I've built a lot of gyroscopic & bluetooth apps (I made the iphone control a puppet like a marionette and a bluetooth android keyboard for the playstation) so I'm going to have a go at writing something to use it for headtracking, make a bonjour service over bluetoothor something, you guys might be able to help me with what I do with the sensor data at the PC end? I have no knowledge there at all.

You can find an iPhone head tracking implementation in the FreePIE project. You will need the Sensor Data App for sensor streaming.

http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=120&t=14483

http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.p ... =30#p71711

[perrynow]

Is that the one people on this forum had issues with? I was going to build one myself with Bluetooth instead (i've got 3/4 of the code done already) I built an HID service for android once (with no freedom to mess around with the ps3 at the other end either) so I could do something similar for iPhone, probably a more stable connection over two paired devices than udp streaming to an ip like Sensor Data...

[brantlew]

That sounds great. A more stable backend would really be helpful and we could even pull that into the FreePIE project.