[DIY] InfinitEye, an ULTRA wide FOV HMD for approx 500$

[foisi]

Hey guys,

Here is the InfinitEye open source hardware HMD project release v1.0, so people (including Palmer Luckey himself ) can start to make their own build and modifications. Special thanks to MSat for the name InfinitEye.

I don't know much about licences (especially for hardware projects) but I think something suitable for a project like this, is Creative Commons CC BY-SA (and to be credited by the "BY" part, my real name is Lionel Anton (I'm the author of F-ZERO for TI68k if anyone tries to google my name))

Specifications:

- Horizontal FOV = 180° (calculated)
- Horizontal stereoscopic FOV = 63° (calculated)
- Vertical FOV = (to be determined)
- Weight without tracker and head mount = 412g (measured)
- Weight with head mount = 512g (measured)
- Resolution per eye = 1280x800 spread over 121° horizontally (calculated)
- Bounding box of the headset (without mount) = 310x220x140 mm

The components I used :

- 2 x N070ICG-LD1 + controller board from ebay : 260$
- 4 x Fresnel lenses FRL021 from optolife (size 165x105mm, focal length 120mm, thickness 2mm, groove 0.3mm) : 20$ + shipping cost
- 1 sheet of expanded PVC thickness 2mm from castorama (french hardware store, but I'm sure similar light weight 2mm thick and flexible material can be found elsewhere) 500x750x2 mm : 8.45 eur ~= 11$
- neoprene glue
- headmount from faceshield from castorama : 17 eur ~= 23$

cost ~= 320$

Additional components :

- Zotac mini DisplayPort to dual HDMI from amazon : 69$
- YEI 3 space sensor embedded for head tracking (website): 99$

total cost ~= 500$
Now the plans (Version 1.0) :



(I have no website to host the file so I'm just leaving it attached to this thread for now)

I made the following drawing to compare horizontal FOV between this HMD, the Rift and the other HMD I own: ST1080

HFOV-Comparison.png

Note that in the drawing, I used the 7" display to scale the Rift but with the 90° HFOV 100% overlap which is less likely (I think it will be something like 115-120° HFOV with 80% overlap but we'll see in march )

build pics of the prototype :

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oICGUy2xzNw[/youtube]

IMG_1159.jpg

IMG_1160.jpg

IMG_1161.jpg

IMG_1162.jpg

IMG_1163.jpg

IMG_1165.jpg

IMG_1168.jpg

IMG_1169.jpg

IMG_1171.jpg

IMG_1173.jpg

IMG_1174.jpg

IMG_1175.jpg

IMG_1176.jpg

(I can't attach other pictures, 15 files is the maximum)
Next steps :
- paint inside top and bottom parts in black
- glue the small parts to the box (green ones to prepare the LCD rails and then the yellow ones to maintain the box)
- glue the box nose part
- glue the lenses (top and bottom)
- insert the left LCD from the left
- insert the right LCD from the right
- insert the pink parts to maintain the LCDs in place
- glue the box left and right part to close it
- drill the holes to attach the head mount of your choice

Steps that I haven't done yet :
- extend LVDS cables (or tape the controller board to the headset, simpler but heavier)
- add head tracker
- modify VireIO perception drivers to make them compatible with this design
- say goodbye to reality and enjoy VR

Feel free to ask any question and post pictures of your builds in the thread

[cybereality]

Awesome work man! Can you take some pictures through the lenses so we can get an idea of the quality?

I really think Fresnels are the best way to get an immersive experience. Every time I have used them, at least with monitors, it has been really fun and a different experience than just 3D or HMDs. I have my own design of an HMD that is very similar to yours, except using pico-projectors instead of LCDs. But overall very similar.

So what is the experience like? Do the Vireio drivers work for you?

[Fredz]

Bravo !

Very interesting design indeed, it brings some questions :
- how do you intend to synchronize the two displays ?
- how is the viewing quality compared to your previous design which used spherical glass lenses ?
- isn't the binocular overlap a bit limited for a good stereoscopic perception (63° from the ~120° available) ?
- why didn't you go for higher angles toward the nose (31° instead of ~60°) and lower angles temporally ? Does the design makes it impossible ?
- won't the pixels be no more square with such a FOV (121x115° for 1280x800 pixels) ?
- won't the white color be problematic with the reflection of light ?

Thanks for the french ref. about PVC, may be better than foamcore.

EDIT : found this reference for black PVC : http://www.polydis.fr/epages/8d7c81fe-5 ... s/PVCE3N04
- 3mm - 50x40 cm : 2.56 € HT
- 3mm - 50x120 cm : 7.67 € HT

[geekmaster]

Wow! I am impressed by the specs.

I tried stretching the FoV using fresnel offset lens stacks, but the resolution at the edges is really stretched. Yours has twice the horizontal resolution and (probably) less lens distortion, but at the cost of increased weight. Is the weight load okay, or does it work better with rear counterbalancing weight?

[KBK]

Optolife looks like they offer AR coatings. Thus, those lenses ..could be coated. It is quite a bit more expensive, but..it would probably make quite the difference. Interference from the coatings? Hard to say. But definitely worth the experiment.

http://www.optolife.com/diy_projector_lens/FRL021.html

[Diorama]

It is an exciting time for VR.

[PalmerTech]

Very interested in how those angled displays go for you. Going to be tough to get the geometric correction right, and getting the focus correct across the entire field may be impossible.

[geekmaster]

Very interested in how those angled displays go for you. Going to be tough to get the geometric correction right, and getting the focus correct across the entire field may be impossible.

I have the same problem with my fresnel lens stacks too. But in my case, having the lenses actually touch the skin (nose, eyebrow ridge, and cheek) makes the image visible in all directions. The outer edges only have full coverage when the lenses are angled as shown in this thread.

Regarding not being in focus, my experience while playing with my lens stacks is that FoV is more important (for me) than being in focus. The stuff outside you foveal view does not need such a focus. I planned to correct for chromatic aberration using separate displacement maps for each color plane.

As mentioned in my "lens stack" thread, my eventual goal is to use HYBRID lenses that use fresnel technology at the outer peripheral zones (with full skin contact alla around), but keep solid aspheric lens tech at the inner foveal zones. If you wear eyeglasses, imagine the solid aspheric portion as the foveal view inside your eyeglass rims, and the fresnel portion as the peripheral view outside the eyeglass rims. Just like with real glasses, you can move your central gaze beyond your eyeglass rims. At least that is what I want. Getting around to it is the price.

In the dual-monitor version shown in this thread, similar methods may also improve the FoV (but it already sounds awesome as it stands now). My point was that for me, focus is less important than FoV, and in fact, a slight loss of focus can actually help reduce screen-door effect to some degree.

[PalmerTech]

The problem is not so much the lack of proper focus as it is the disparity between the focus of each eye. Suppose that when looking directly forward, the center of each image is focused at 10 meters. Because each lens/display is tilted in opposite directions, the focus is going to change as you move your view across the field. Hypothetically, for example, you may be looking 10 degrees to the right of center, with the right eye having to focus at 5 meters and the left eye having to focus at 15 meters.

In addition, when you move your eyes, their physical position relative to the lenses is changing, changing the distortion slightly as well. Your brain can accept that pretty well when both eyes see the same geometrical changes, especially since those changes are the same no matter which way you look. I have done tests of setups like this, and a big problem is that any eye movement will result in mismatched distortion and focus between eyes that can cause significant eyestrain.

If eyetracking technology were more advanced, you could solve as least some of these problems with realtime distortion adjustment.

[foisi]

Thank you guys !

while I'm trying to upload a video of the HMD to youtube, I'll try to answer some of your questions

@cyber:
TBH I don't know yet how is the experience, I need to finish it before I can tell but I bet it will be awesome. I'll try vireio driver at this time does it support YEI tracker ?

@Fredz:
- I use a Zotac mini DisplayPort to dual HDMI, it is recognized as a single 2560x720 monitor under windows and ubuntu, that's how I manage synchronization (but i don't know if it is really synchronized until I test the completed HMD)
- Image quality is somewhat degraded compared to real glass lenses of course, but it is still really acceptable (maybe you can get an idea with the upcoming video).
- The drawing with the HFOV comparison was made using my own MRI so I could have my exact IPD, nose bridge position etc.. and I calculated that my stereoscopic vision is about 90° (you can see that the 90° FOV of the Oculus Rift Dev kit is limited by my nose bridge).
- the design is limited by the FoV per eye which is calculated from focal length (3 stacked fresnel of 120mm focal -> 1/f = 1/f1+1/f2+1/f3 -> f = 40mm), lens witdh (I choose to place the optical center not too far away from the eye to minimize distortion and image degradation, my lens stack is 126mm wide) and display width (149mm) that gives 121° horizontal FoV per eye. I just wanted to reach 180° because I like to tell myself that I made a 180 HFOV HMD ^^
- Pixels are square, non square pixel would involve different magnification power on horizontal and vertical dimension of the fresnel lenses and it is not the case. This is one point I'm not completely satisfied with the current design and which I have to improve, it occludes some pixels..
- I thought about that but since I didn't find some "fond d'encadrement noir" at Castorama, I used white and it doesn't seem to be a problem (but I did not test the HMD for a long time for now)

I don't know the density of the white expanded PVC (I assume it is the same for any color) but be careful, the empty box folded is 100g with 2mm PVC, you may add 50g using 3mm thick PVC sheet.

@geekmaster:
I read your posts about fresnel lens stack Actually I read a lot of post here on MTBS3D even if I'm not participating a lot (mainly because my english is not so good and I don't know of to tell things sometimes), and I was quite happy to see that I was not alone to think about using stacked fresnel lenses, it gave me motivation to finish the construction of the HMD.
The weight is not too much thanks to the light weight LCDs, simple design and the use of fresnel (I can't imagine the weight of equivalent glass lenses)

@KBK:
I didn't know PMMA fresnel could be coated (worth the experiment indeed ). (FRL021 is the type I used)

@Palmer:
I think a drawing must be better at explaining why the focus is maintained at infinity across the entire FOV than me and my english ^^, here you are

always_focus.png

Also I don't think that the distortion changes when I rotate my eyes (it would be the case if I had the ability to translate them^^) so designing the warp shader will not be so hard (maybe something tunable depending on IPD, astigmatism, etc.. that I can set once at the beginning, saving a profile file for each user).

@everyone: Note that when I talk about FOV I only take into account rays that could theorically hit the center of retina (if I could turn my eyes enough to look 90° to the sides ^^). In reality the eyes get rays from a wider angle because the lens of the eye is not in the center of rotation (you can test it easily: look straight forward with left eye closed and place a finger of your left hand at arm length and at the limit where you can see before it get occluded by the nose. If you turn your right eye in the direction of the finger, it disappears (I don't know if I explained that correctly :s)

...
It looks like it took me a long time to write all these answers, the video is ready (sorry about the quality I only have my iPhone able to take the video close enough to the lenses, it doesn't give what it's like to see with your eyes)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QVUkyBHAww[/youtube]

[MSat]

foisi, your device looks great! Thanks for the explanations. The use of fresnels is very exciting. Any thoughts on how they could be improved - such as application-specific geometry and/or groove density?

By the way, your English is very good. Please don't let the language barrier prevent you posting more when there's something you want to share or comment on

[geekmaster]

The problem is not so much the lack of proper focus as it is the disparity between the focus of each eye. Suppose that when looking directly forward, the center of each image is focused at 10 meters. Because each lens/display is tilted in opposite directions, the focus is going to change as you move your view across the field. Hypothetically, for example, you may be looking 10 degrees to the right of center, with the right eye having to focus at 5 meters and the left eye having to focus at 15 meters.

In addition, when you move your eyes, their physical position relative to the lenses is changing, changing the distortion slightly as well. Your brain can accept that pretty well when both eyes see the same geometrical changes, especially since those changes are the same no matter which way you look. I have done tests of setups like this, and a big problem is that any eye movement will result in mismatched distortion and focus between eyes that can cause significant eyestrain.

If eyetracking technology were more advanced, you could solve as least some of these problems with realtime distortion adjustment.

I was worried about that. So far I only tested a single lens stack. I was hoping their symmetry from using stacked left and right offset edges would compensate. I still plan to try it though, hopefully soon. You have been doing these experiments much longer than I, but I hope I can still find something useful like the hybrid lens idea I posted elsewhere. If you can keep the blur restricted to the peripheral vision, I think it would still add to the FoV by surrounding the aspheric lens with a fresnel lens.

[WiredEarp]

This project looks great foisi, love the improved resolution and FOV over the Rift. If it avoids the focus issue mentioned by PalmerTech, this will rock. The more FOV the better, IMHO!

[cybereality]

Nice job man. Can't wait to hear how this turns out.

[android78]

Awesome job with this!
You'll have to let us know how it goes in practice once you find a driver that can handle it.

[budda]

Hi,

I have been wondering whether the principles of tilt/shift photography can be applied to the lens and screen arrangement of head mounted displays - to remove or minimise any distortion effects caused by the relative placement of the screens, lenses and eyes.

Tilt/shift photography seeks to correct perspective effects in a scene by applying a geometrical optical correction which effectively 'squares up' the image. It sounds a bit like the perspective correction process used for interactive whiteboards.

For a head mounted display, there may be an optimum tilting or shifting of the lens which balances the perspective of a tilted or offset screen and corrects the change in magnification across the field of view as it appears to the eye.

If anyone can reveal a similar viable principle for virtual display optics, I would like to know.

Thanks.

[knuf]

scheimpflug principle :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheimpflug_principle

[geekmaster]

scheimpflug principle :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheimpflug_principle

Cool! I was not aware of that. The "hinge rule" shown there looks interesting. Nice and simple, making it easy to remember and to apply. I like simple...

[PatimPatam]

Brilliant job foisi!

Funnily enough, i asked if this type of design could work in one of my very first posts on MTBS last July (with crappy MS Paint diagram included and all):
http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.p ... &start=648

Now i understand it's not so simple, but i hope you can prove that it's possible in fact! If it is, this could solve 3 of the big remaining issues for consumer VR at once: even wider FOV, higher resolution, and a nicer HMD profile.

Best of luck, and looking forward to your progress!

[foisi]

For now I can say that there is no such effect with this design. I didn't read all the stuff on the wikipedia article yet but I can say that it doesn't look like this



The lenses are parallel to the screens and focus is set to infinity so in theory every ray of light cast by each pixel of the screen come out of the lenses in parallel
I repost the drawing I made for palmer to illustrate that



I did some testing to see why some pixels of the screen are hidden because of the high magnification the 3 stacked lenses (resulting in a 40mm focal length system) and while in theory it should be a perfect match, it is not. I tried with 2 stacked fresnel placed at 60mm from my nexus 7 and it seems to be OK.
I will have to make another box with the screens 20mm away from where they are now and using 2 fresnel lenses per eye (the weight should be in the same range as now). It will improve the image quality because there will be more pixels for the same horizontal FOV per eye and also because light will have to go through 2 lenses instead of 3

I'll update as soon as I can, don't worry I'll prove that this design is possible

edit : Fredz, you were right about reflection of light on the white material btw, I'll have to do something about that.

[STRZ]

Very impressive work

I hope that it will be compatible with the game developments for the Rift, it would be cool to have a highend VR alternative for different situations where the weight of 2 screens isn't a problem.

[Fredz]

Too bad for the reflections. I've ordered some sheets of black PVC, I'll see if weight is a problem compared to foamcore.

Looking at your last drawing, I wondered if you knew what was the position of the center of the entrance pupil of the eye ? I can't find any definitive answer about this after reading a ton of papers on this subject.

[Zoide]

So what do you guys think about Foisi's explanation of the way the eye focuses on his HMD? If we could overcome the obstacles that Palmer mentioned this would seriously rock That said, Palmer's concern about each eye having to focus at a different distance does make a lot of intuitive sense...

[KBK]

Lockheed Martin. Look at the file dates. Probably filed due to others finally approaching their 'private' work.

http://www.google.com/patents/US2012012 ... &q&f=false

There is also a nice illustration of what Palmer was speaking of. The illustration shows that the distance from eye is kept even in all viewing directions.

It does give a nice illustration showing the issues that need be overcome, which appears to be a layer of separated Fresnel, separated according to the optical considerations in the given 'area'.

This is what I expected when it came to the Fresnel lens and wide FOV. Layered acts of collimating Scheimpflug into an exit pupil, not a focal plane -done in stages, individually, per Fresnel. You need the positioning of each, and minimal warping per component to stay away from distortions that cannot be easily corrected. In this way the corrective coatings and the Fresnel can be at their most effective. That one might be able to press a Fresnel into the correct shape. Flat will not do.

figure 16 is particularly interesting.

[KBK]

one side of the Fresnel is flat. the issue is damaging the ribbed surface.

Has anyone here ever done any acrylic shaping?

well, you can pressure or vacuum form, with a heat gun as the assist to get the flow required.

since the eye is looking for a spherical curvature, this works in your favor.

You can build a mold that is like a rectangle, but is a cut from a sphere's skin. this forms one side of your mold. which ever way you want to go, pressure, or vacuum. Not too many PSI will be needed.

You make it larger than the required lens, so you don't damage you lens area you need. Just a hair larger. place this in sealed cavity, with the open area inside the rectangle in open air. The lens needs to be placed so it sucks itself onto the surface of the rectangle, at the same time the pressure forms the spherical shape, at the same time the low heat allows the lens to reform. Via air pressure alone, so the Fresnel len's primary functionality is not disturbed.

something like that is doable.

[Fredz]

I received the black 3mm PVC and it's awfully heavy. Also it's glossy, so I'm not sure it would be a good candidate for DIY HMDs. I'll stick to foamcore for now...

[MSat]

I received the black 3mm PVC and it's awfully heavy. Also it's glossy, so I'm not sure it would be a good candidate for DIY HMDs. I'll stick to foamcore for now...

couldn't you tape black sheets of paper to the inside?

[foisi]

Fredz, I think it's not expanded PVC like the one from castorama because they are absolutely not heavy (check the weight on the website. I think they changed their provider though, because I use less than half the area of the sheet and the box weights ~100g)
Taping black paper or painting is a good and cheap solution (even with a black permanent marker it should be fine, you only need to blacken the inside up and down where the light might be reflected)

I made some changes to the plans and printed them, hopefully I will be able to build another box at lunch time today and test the 2 fresnel per eye design this evening.

About scratching the plastic lenses problem, I thought about using 7inch tablet screen protections (the flat side of the fresnel lenses is directed towards the eyes so there is no risk of scratching the ribbed surface)

[airons1972]

Nice job Foisi, your HMD looks awesome.

airons1972

[budda]

Hi,

I just did a quickie experiment with an A4 fresnel sheet magnifier and my 20 inch CRT monitor.

Just some observations:

1: The fresnel lens works much better in one direction than the other - in this case with the ridges on the screen side.

2: There was significant curvature of field of the image, but the image was fairly clear from edge to edge and I did not see any ridging.

3: There was noticeable chromatic fringing outward from the central position.

4: It seems maximum magnification appears when the lens is midway between the screen and the eye.

5. When bending the sheet about the vertical axis, the horizontal image curvature was lessened and the vertical image curvature was increased. This 'toroidal' effect might be quite useful. It looked good on the 4:3 aspect ratio monitor.

The various geometric and chromatic distortions could be corrected for in software, to give a convincing virtual reality display. I am not too sure if I would use just a single fresnel lens sheet for viewing with both eyes though.

Overall, this simple experiment shows me there is great promise for the fresnel lens in head mounted displays.

Thanks.

[3dpmaster]

The problem is not so much the lack of proper focus as it is the disparity between the focus of each eye. Suppose that when looking directly forward, the center of each image is focused at 10 meters. Because each lens/display is tilted in opposite directions, the focus is going to change as you move your view across the field. Hypothetically, for example, you may be looking 10 degrees to the right of center, with the right eye having to focus at 5 meters and the left eye having to focus at 15 meters.

In addition, when you move your eyes, their physical position relative to the lenses is changing, changing the distortion slightly as well. Your brain can accept that pretty well when both eyes see the same geometrical changes, especially since those changes are the same no matter which way you look. I have done tests of setups like this, and a big problem is that any eye movement will result in mismatched distortion and focus between eyes that can cause significant eyestrain.

If eyetracking technology were more advanced, you could solve as least some of these problems with realtime distortion adjustment.

Exactely, but it can be resolve with flexible fresnels with the focus center in front. The lenses could be curved until the edges are placed 180 deg from each eye. This way, the spherical distortions on the left and right eye are the same. If not, there coud be a severe stereographic error. There are some products on the market that uses also tilted optics similar to this HMD but the optics are rather aspherical onces.NVIS nVisor SX111 http://www.nvisinc.com/product.php?id=48 and SEOS http://cgsd.com/SEOSHMD/
Damn, I forgot to mention the screens.

[foisi]

I'm not sure to understand why people tend to believe that focusing would change depending on the position of the eye... for what I know the focus is set by the distance between the lens and the screen. This distance is the same for the whole FOV because the lens is parallel to the screen. There is chromatic aberration (that can be corrected in software) and spherical abberation (because the fresnels are not aspheric lenses) but it doesn't have a significant impact because the eye is near the optical center

[foisi]

New version :

IMG_1182.jpg

IMG_1183.jpg

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oICGUy2xzNw[/youtube]

note that there are black pixels at the bottom and at the top of the panoramic image I used to make something displayable with the HMD so vertical FoV is not as it should be in the video.

I didn't paint the inside in black (or tape black paper) for the moment, I just rebuilt the box in a few hours today at lunch time and this evening just to try to prove people that the design is possible.
I took about 20 pictures when I was building the new box so I will be able to make some sort of tutorial if anyone is interested in making a similar HMD (I think it deserves a name, any suggestion ?) and I will release the printables very soon.
My mom who happened to be visiting me today tried the HMD when I just finished the new build and she said something that could be translated by "It's f***ing awesome !" ^^

The new weight is 512g (~50g less than the previous version, the PMMA lenses are heavier than the expanded PVC)

[PatimPatam]

Congrats foisi!!

I think this is a BIG step forward for VR displays!

EDIT: It does look like it from the videos, but did you notice a big improvement in image quality in comparison to your first prototype?

[Zoide]

This is awesome, simply awesome! I would die to have Oculus hire you and give us a 180 degree FoV, 1920x1200 consumer Rift.

A good name would be the "180", or "Pano" (as in "panoramic"). Pair it up with a company name and it would sound good.

For example: "Virtua 180", "Visualize 180", "VisualWorks Pano", "VisualTech Pano"

[MSat]

This is great stuff! Have you been able to determine if the displays are in fact synced?

As for a name, the first thing that popped into my mind was "InfinitEye", or some derivation such as "Infinite-i"

[Fredz]

Looks pretty good and the weight is not that bad. I wonder if it can be lowered a bit more, do you think using foamcore instead of PVC would help ? Also are the controller boards mounted on the HMD or in a separate box ?

For the name I guess you could use your nickname to personalize it a bit, after all it's your own creation. Something like the Foisi 180 for example.

[foisi]

@PatimPatam: yes I forgot to say that, image quality is way better than before (mainly due to the fact that there are only two fresnel lenses per eye compared to 3 in the previous prototype)
Even without applying any counter-distortion effect and chromatic corrections, the result is perfectly clear across the entire 180° horizontal FOV.

@Zoide: Maybe Dycus could make a prototype when I release the build instructions to have Palmer admit that it works ^^
even without the prints, the important things of the design are :
- 2 stacked fresnel lens 165x105mm cut with a dremel to make room for the nose and resized to 126.5mm wide (optical center is 44mm away from the cut side) 120mm focal. The flat surface need to be set toward the eyes (both fresnels for each eye)
- the distance between the surface of the screen and the flat surface of the fresnel lens that is the nearest to the eye is 66mm.
- the angle between the screens is 134°.
- the two panels are set like in the second drawing to gain a few mm (because bezel are not the same at the left and right of the panel) :

optimized_lcd.png

For the name I kinda like Pano-something =) I do not intend to make a company and sell the HMD as a product. I think this design will be released as an opensource HMD so DIYers can make their own for free (except the cost of components) and improve the design etc..
If the Oculus SDK is flexible enough, the only things to change in Oculus ready games will be the angle of the virtual camera (23° divergence for each from the central axis), FOV of each camera (set to ~121°) and distortion correction shader.

@MSat: I still don't know if the displays are correctly synchronized, it only depends on the Zotac device.. If a company like Oculus were to produce a dual screen HMD like this one, I hope they design a dual LVDS, single input controller board to solve this problem.
InfinitEye sounds good, but doesn't it sound like AMD eyefinity ?

@Fredz: to answer your previous question, I don't know where is the eye exact iris position.. sorry
The weight of 512g take into account the headmount and you're right it's not bad at all
The controller boards are separate (but not in a box yet, I still have to extend LVDS cables and make the box). About foamcore (ca veut dire carton-plume c'est bien ça?) can you tell me the density g/cm^3 so I can compare to expanded PVC ? Don't you think foamcore is a little weak to resist from tearing at the mounting points ?
Oh and Foisi is a terrible nickname (I will not explain why I chose it), it sounds a lot like "moisi" (french for moldy) and I don't think people want to wear something moldy on their face (even if it has 180° HFOV)

[geekmaster]

InfinitEye sounds good, but doesn't it sound like AMD eyefinity ?

Not as much as Sony's new EyePad sounds a lot like Apple's iPad.

But then "EyePhone/iPhone" was used in the film "Johnny Mnemonic", so who knows where Apple got their inspiration for that product name:
http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.p ... 10#p101310
http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.p ... 10#p101452

The people who do the most copying are the most protective of the stuff they copied. Take for example the Mac GUI copied from the Xerox Star, then they sued others for copying the same stuff:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Star

I like "InfinitEye" (especially for a non-profit Open Hardware project). I think if Sony could be so close with commercial "EyePad", you should be safe (not legal advice, see a professional for that).

I LOVE your design and the results you claim for them. After my experiments with stacked fresnel lenses, I know that the immersion provided far outweighs any sacrifice in focus or image quality caused by fresnels. I am looking forward to trying one of these (probably requiring that I build one). I still plan to build my 7-inch "Fov2Go" clone inspired by the "HMD kit" included with my "Virtual Reality Creations" book. It would be very similar to yours, but would use a single display (my Nexus 7).

Virtual Reality Creations "HMD" (circa 1993):
http://www.mitchwaite.com/writing7.htm


Notice how the fresnel lenses wrap around the face, just like the HMD featured in this thread. It worked surprisingly when when attached over a stereoscopic image pair on a CRT. Extending this concept with newer better fresnel lenses it certainly bound to succeed. Your nose cutout allows for taller lenses, giving a much larger vertical FoV than the VR Creations model.

Thanks for keeping us posted on your progress!

[PatimPatam]

@PatimPatam: yes I forgot to say that, image quality is way better than before (mainly due to the fact that there are only two fresnel lenses per eye compared to 3 in the previous prototype)
Even without applying any counter-distortion effect and chromatic corrections, the result is perfectly clear across the entire 180° horizontal FOV.

Epic stuff! This is a 100 times more exciting than all the boring PS4 news from Sony!

Btw should this thread not be moved to the "VR/AR Research & Development" section?

[TheLostBrain]

New version :

IMG_1182.jpg

IMG_1183.jpg

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oICGUy2xzNw[/youtube]

note that there are black pixels at the bottom and at the top of the panoramic image I used to make something displayable with the HMD so vertical FoV is not as it should be in the video.

I didn't paint the inside in black (or tape black paper) for the moment, I just rebuilt the box in a few hours today at lunch time and this evening just to try to prove people that the design is possible.
I took about 20 pictures when I was building the new box so I will be able to make some sort of tutorial if anyone is interested in making a similar HMD (I think it deserves a name, any suggestion ?) and I will release the printables very soon.
My mom who happened to be visiting me today tried the HMD when I just finished the new build and she said something that could be translated by "It's f***ing awesome !" ^^

The new weight is 512g (~50g less than the previous version, the PMMA lenses are heavier than the expanded PVC)

Wow! Really impressive stuff!

I seriously NEVER would have thought Fresnels would have provided an acceptable level of quality...but from the video I feel I may stand corrected.

Can you share (maybe I missed it?) exactly which fresnels you're using now (where to get em, etc.)? I may actually come out of diy-retirement to build one of these to compliment the Rift when it arrives.

Thanks and awesome work!

[PalmerTech]

@Zoide: Maybe Dycus could make a prototype when I release the build instructions to have Palmer admit that it works ^^

I am going to build it myself, and I really do hope it works.

[budda]

Hi,

Just Google " aspheric fresnel lens ", and there is plenty of great design and supplier information.

Too easy.

Thanks.

[MSat]

I admit that I don't know much about optics, but shouldn't it be possible to use appropriately designed fresnel lenses in a Leep-like manner, or perhaps in a fresnel/standard lens hybrid setup? It would be amazing to make a compact and light weight high-FOV HMD!

[geekmaster]

@Zoide: Maybe Dycus could make a prototype when I release the build instructions to have Palmer admit that it works ^^

I am going to build it myself, and I really do hope it works.

I just played with my Nexus 7 and my 5x acrylic aspheric lenses, and also with my fresnel magnifiers. When you hold the lenses parallel to the display surface, it is all in focus. For angled displays as shown here, you just need to angle the lenses, which makes them cover even more of your FoV. Even though I only tested HALF of this display concept, it worked well. If I had another 7-inch tablet it would be a better proof of concept, but I am convinced that it will work with fine focus.

For comparison, I also played with my fresnel stacks again, with a single 7-inch display (my Nexus 7). It really needs to use one-third of the width (about two inches) of each side of the lens as I described. Because the two lens stacks are identical for both eyes (other than trimming to fit nose and eyebrow ridge), there should be no problem with assymetrical focus or stereo convergence as suggested elsewhere. So I believe that my experimental method can also produce a similar wider FoV as the one in this thread (but only estimated 150-degrees or so horizontally). My approach will not give the quality of the one in this thread, but it still give huge FoV and will costs half as much (or almost nothing if you already have a Nexus 7 or equivalent). Of course, there will be latency issues though, so it remains mostly for experimental use. And the lens stacks need the ridges toward the eye, unlike the version in this thread.

Based on past research (in the days when DIY HMDs were very low resolution) it was common to put a diffuser sheet (such as waxed paper) over the screen to minimize screendoor effect, so finding a compromise focus should be fine even IF not all pixels were in focus. Small blurring objects are easier for the brain to recognize than sharp blocky objects, which I verified while adjusting the focus and using the "wide-eye" quake image pair from the Rift Quake thread.

CONCLUSION: I am confident that the HMD in this thread will work well for superior image quality, and my method will work too for a quick 7-inch tablet FoV2Go clone using fresnel magnifiers.

[geekmaster]

I admit that I don't know much about optics, but shouldn't it be possible to use appropriately designed fresnel lenses in a Leep-like manner, or perhaps in a fresnel/standard lens hybrid setup? It would be amazing to make a compact and light weight high-FOV HMD!

It should be possible to simulate the effect of wearing eyeglasses in Real Life, where the solid acrylic aspheric lenses provide central view, and the fresnel outer area provides peripheral view. If you see the border between the lenses, it should look no worse than eyeglass frames in RL. And even a shift in focus or distortion should at that border should be simlar to wearing Real Life eyeglasses.

[Fredz]

About foamcore (ca veut dire carton-plume c'est bien ça?) can you tell me the density g/cm^3 so I can compare to expanded PVC ? Don't you think foamcore is a little weak to resist from tearing at the mounting points ?

Yes, foamcore is carton-plume, I don't know the density but it's very lightweight. I was also worrying about the mounting points with it, but I think it can be hardened with some other materials. After all there shouldn't be too much efforts at the attachment points once it's in place.

Oh and Foisi is a terrible nickname (I will not explain why I chose it), it sounds a lot like "moisi"

I didn't think about that, may not be the best term then...

But then "EyePhone/iPhone" was used in the film "Johnny Mnemonic", so who knows where Apple got their inspiration for that product name

EyePhone was foremost the name of the HMD released by VPL research (of Jaron Lanier fame) in 1989, so it may really not be a good idea to use this name.

[MSat]

I admit that I don't know much about optics, but shouldn't it be possible to use appropriately designed fresnel lenses in a Leep-like manner, or perhaps in a fresnel/standard lens hybrid setup? It would be amazing to make a compact and light weight high-FOV HMD!

It should be possible to simulate the effect of wearing eyeglasses in Real Life, where the solid acrylic aspheric lenses provide central view, and the fresnel outer area provides peripheral view. If you see the border between the lenses, it should look no worse than eyeglass frames in RL. And even a shift in focus or distortion should at that border should be simlar to wearing Real Life eyeglasses.

What I had in mind was something more along the lines of http://www.vrtifacts.com/hmds/leep-on-the-cheap/ where a series of lenses are used to create a large FOV from relatively small displays, but possibly replacing one or more of the lens layers with light-weight fresnels.

[hle38]

Hi Foisi,

Congratulation for your work! It looks very promising !!
2 months ago I tried something similar (as well as TheLostBrain design with beamsplitter miror) but stopped because of lack of spare time and software support at this time. And thanks for the 'castorama' tips for pvc sheet! I used pvc pipes flatten with a heat gun to build my case, not very practical nor pretty
Maybe I will resume the work soon now I see it looks like a real alternative.

Bravo!

[druidsbane]

In terms of chromatic aberration, is there a coating for the lenses one could get like we currently have for eyeglasses to get rid of reflections and glare that might help in addition to even better polishing and smoothing of the lenses from the manufacturer? Would that make it feel as if the lenses are barely there?

[foisi]

@TheLostBrain: I'm glad a guy with such talent at making DIY stuff is interested to come out of diy-retirement after seeing something I designed
the fresnels are the same as in the first post : http://optolife.com/diy_projector_lens/FRL021.html

@everyone:
I'm currently finalizing the plans for the release (and it takes a longer time than I thought), what do you think about the Creative Commons licence CC BY-SA for it ?

[MSat]

The CC BY-SA looks more than fair enough

[3dpmaster]

I'm not sure to understand why people tend to believe that focusing would change depending on the position of the eye... for what I know the focus is set by the distance between the lens and the screen. This distance is the same for the whole FOV because the lens is parallel to the screen. There is chromatic aberration (that can be corrected in software) and spherical abberation (because the fresnels are not aspheric lenses) but it doesn't have a significant impact because the eye is near the optical center

Yes. There is a possibility to predistort two images that are enclined too (in the two stereo pictures or 3d game images from enclined virtual camera's) as described in previous comments. This way, every optical distortion would be resolved completely.
I wish you a lot of success with your awsome project.

[Okta]

Software. This is the revolution we are seeing.

Before Palmer went public with the Rift many of us including Palmer discounted this and the Rifts designs because of the lack of non 100% overlap and warping support. When Palmer presented the Rift to Carmack I think a tipping point was reached when Carmack coded the warping in to Doom 3.
Then with the blitz of the Rift Kickstarter Cybereality and MaterialDefender and many other game devs began their "Rift" wrappers and games. The next hurdle was reached when Oculus announced the the 7 inch screen. This broke my heart because of the move away from 100% overlap but I slowly realised that none of the software guys had borked at it. It really wasn't a big deal to code in the overlap shift after all

Now the sky is the limit for new designs like this if in theory wrappers like Vorpx could add support without to much difficulty. The next problem is market fragmentation. All the new games coming designed with Rift support may never be revisited to include support for a new design like this if it takes off.

Very nice foisi. I feel I don't even need to get back to the shed with so much ground being covered now

[Zoide]

Okta: I see you have a home brew high FoV 2D HMD in your signature. Any plans to try building foisi's design? I'd love to hear other people's impressions of it

[Okta]

Okta: I see you have a home brew high FoV 2D HMD in your signature. Any plans to try building foisi's design? I'd love to hear other people's impressions of it

I would love to build it and think its a great design but time is against me. I originally set out to build a HMD with 2x7 inch displays side by side or 2x pico projectors relying on optics to keep 100% overlap but decided there were too many caveats. The Lost Brains Brains similar design is an amazing achievement but it took a lot a work and the end result is a little bulky IIRC. The big/little thing the Rift has going for it is low cost, low weight, high/ish FOV and a little Luck (pun intended). Those are the reasons it is/will be so successful.
It is possible to build another design like foisi's here but...being bigger and more expensive will be a road block in uptake. The the dreaded software support is required, and without a large take up that is a problem.

Having a Rift coming has made me a bit lazy too, been thinking more about VR controllers than displays as the Rift has become a kind of default for most of us and now we have seen a bigger focus on the other aspects of VR and some great results.

I have mentioned a few more ideas I would like to build in older threads...maybe one day.

[foisi]

Guys, I have edited the first post with the current release

[WiredEarp]

@ Okta: you are absolutely right. I've been thinking the same thing for quite a while, PC's have become fast enough to do the predistortion in software, instead of requiring lenses to undistort the image. This is a very large part of the revolution.

I know what you mean about not wanting to work on HMD's with the Rifts coming - there are so many areas of VR that require work that its probably best to focus attention on the parts that are truly lacking currently. In many ways, this is why we are very lucky to all be VR hobbyists/enthusiasts - its one of the few science areas where people without any formal training, but with great ideas, can actually make a real difference and achieve something new and special (like the Rift! - of course, to make this difference involves learning a LOT about the areas you are working on).

[PatimPatam]

Guys, I have edited the first post with the current release

Perfecto! Thanks for the detailed instructions and pictures foisi!

Unfortunately i don't have the time to test it myself (busy enough with my own DIY project), but i can't wait to hear the opinion of others who try it, especially TheLostBrain and Palmer!

Also i forgot to ask before.. what do you think is the lowest screen size that could work with this type of design, while still maintaining a wide FOV? Could it be adapted to use a couple of 5 inchers for instance? I guess by bringing the screens closer to the face somehow?

[foisi]

I have two 5.6" LCD at home that I previously bought for this project, but since I read here that they are not produced anymore, I updated the project with two 7" instead.
I also have 4 spare fresnel lenses of the same type (FRL021) so I can try to see how is the FoV with this configuration this evening when I get home if you want.

[PatimPatam]

I have two 5.6" LCD at home that I previously bought for this project, but since I read here that they are not produced anymore, I updated the project with two 7" instead.
I also have 4 spare fresnel lenses of the same type (FRL021) so I can try to see how is the FoV with this configuration this evening when I get home if you want.

Well i think that would be a very interesting experiment indeed!

I believe there are lots of screens that could be used potentially (especially with a custom board) and it would be awesome if we could get similar FOV results but with a lighter and more compact design.

http://vr.wikinet.org/wiki/Displays

[Zoide]

Especially now that the market is getting flooded with ~5" 1080p displays.

[MSat]

Great plans, foisi! What application did you use to draw them? I feel honored that you chose to go with the name InfinitEye


I'm really curious how small the display can get, but I don't want to drive this thread too off topic so I'll start a new one in the R&D forum - I hope you'll join in with your thoughts and insight.

[foisi]

@MSat :
I'm using Inkscape, a free and open source vector graphics editor : http://inkscape.org/index.php?lang=en
Thanks again for the name, it sounds really good

[Zoide]

How much stereoscopic overlap is there in real-life human vision? It looks like the InfinitEye's overlap is much smaller than that of the Rift. Could changing the angle of the InfinitEye's screens improve overlap at the expense of a bit of FoV?

[foisi]

@zoide:
IIRC it is between 90° and 120°, it depends on the IPD and the size of the nose (mine is ~90°)
You are right, it can be modified at the expense of monoscopic peripheral vision. To get an idea of what is ~60° overlap (if you have ~90° stereoscopic vision like me, you can place a finger along your nose bridge and look around, to me it's not that bad )

[3dpmaster]

@zoide:
IIRC it is between 90° and 120°, it depends on the IPD and the size of the nose (mine is ~90°)
You are right, it can be modified at the expense of monoscopic peripheral vision. To get an idea of what is ~60° overlap (if you have ~90° stereoscopic vision like me, you can place a finger along your nose bridge and look around, to me it's not that bad )

That is more than the 60° overlap from the catadioptrical hmd of H. Nagahara.

[TheLostBrain]

Curious, are the PMMA fresnels that much better (optically) than the standard PVC ones?
Ex: http://www.3dlens.com/shop/fresnellens.php

[BillRoeske]

You and geekmaster have both been doing some pretty cool work in this area. Nice job!

A quick question from the hardware under-informed: are OLED screens significantly lighter than fluorescent-lit (or even LED-lit) LCD panels? Anyone have round ballparks by how much? Obviously they're not yet common or cheap for hobby projects, but I was curious (especially with weight being one of the primary downsides for a dual-display system).

[KBK]

Curious, are the PMMA fresnels that much better (optically) than the standard PVC ones?
Ex: http://www.3dlens.com/shop/fresnellens.php

PMMA is a bit better. It becomes a notable issue when you stack three of them. Go for coated, obviously. 6 sides is 0.5% per side as a cumulative(? IIRC), so it's not pretty, in the end. It's resolution and contrast loss, then add in a cheaper plastic. Ugh. The kind of smear to be encountered with PVC, might make me want to clear the gunk out of my eyes all the time.

The problem is the loss of contrast in low contrast scenes. I'm sure many of you folks know this already, though. IIC, the eye is stated to run at about 350:1 CR, but in practice it is higher than that. digital devices have problems reproducing contrast, not so much of a problem in the CRT end of projection. digital is only now getting close to what CRT could do, so it's not such a good idea to loose any on the lensing or in any other aspect. Every bit counts.

If you plan to slap them into a shaping mold and curve them, then the PMMA is probably the way to go. It's good enough for eye use, so it should be good enough here.

I've done large RP and front projection experiments (dual sided as well) with both types of plastic and find the PMMA to be the better choice there.

Regarding patents (reading your sig), I filed one in 2008, it only made it through recently. Things are a bit backlogged in the system, to say the least.

[foisi]

I found this http://www.greatwalloptical.com.hk/opti ... llens.html :

Optical plastics are widely used to make Fresnel lens. PMMA is the best material for fresnel lens as magnifier.

[foisi]

I asked the ebay store "chinatobby" if they can make extended LVDS cables (length 1m~1.20m) because I'm really not good at soldering.. The guy answered that he will check first if it works for these lengths and he asked how many pieces I would need because the cost may be higher for samples.
If anyone else is interested in these extended cables please tell me, then I can tell him and maybe the price can be lowered a bit. (it's for the 7" LCD that other people use for their DIY Rift too, I'll make a link to this post in the DIY Rift thread if the results of his testing are OK)

[mobies]

I asked the ebay store "chinatobby" if they can make extended LVDS cables (length 1m~1.20m) because I'm really not good at soldering.. The guy answered that he will check first if it works for these lengths and he asked how many pieces I would need because the cost may be higher for samples.
If anyone else is interested in these extended cables please tell me, then I can tell him and maybe the price can be lowered a bit. (it's for the 7" LCD that other people use for their DIY Rift too, I'll make a link to this post in the DIY Rift thread if the results of his testing are OK)

Snap! inquired about this today from this store too.
I would be willing to buy at least one but possibly 3.
He mentioned that the default length was 25cm which Is longer than what the picture on ebay suggests.

[blazespinnaker]

Great work foisi, sounds like you're on the way to solving some of the difficult problems. Thanks to geekmaster as well for inspiring folks to look at fresnel stacking as a direction to look in.

[geekmaster]

Great work foisi, sounds like you're on the way to solving some of the difficult problems. Thanks to geekmaster as well for inspiring folks to look at fresnel stacking as a direction to look in.

foisi had his lenses just sitting there ready to stack, but my fresnel lens stacking thread was his motivation to get off his duff and actually MAKE his HMD. And ideas aren't worth much until you make something out of them. foisi did a great job here.

My experiments show that we can build an HMD with the same FoV as this dual display HMD, but with only a SINGLE 7-inch display, by using a 5-layer deep stack of curved (dollar store magnifier) lenses that actually wrap around your face from ear-to-ear, touching your skin all the way around. It requires 10 lenses total, with two lens stacks that meet in the middle between your eyebrows. The downside is that stretching the pixels to those extremes (with partial stereo overlap) really demonstrates our need for LOTS MORE pixels, and we need a much more complex pre-warp algorithm. This is just an experiment for now, but it shows some promise. And stacking lenses that deep is a poor tradeoff, sacrificing image quality for virtually total FoV. That makes this design mostly an inexpensive experiment with maximum immersion than a real product. Because the display is most of the cost, a single display can cut the cost in half. This crude prototype design demonstrates the real possibility to build just such a device with a single layer of a custom wraparound lens, but so far that is just a dream.

foisi's dual-screen HMD is simpler in some ways, and provides twice as many pixels to work with, and uses fewer lenses giving better image quality, and it is a REAL thing that you can build NOW (which is all that really matters)...

[PatimPatam]

Hey foisi, were you able to test this design with your 5.6'' screens in the end? Or are you still planning to do it?

No pressure, just curiosity!

[mrgrey]

I have been toying with the idea of building a HMD and was quite excited to see this version. It has quite a high resolution using the 2 screens and has an incredible FOV but I really cannot get my head around how it would work in practice: going on the image above - to focus on something in the middle of the left screen (roughly where the two pink colours join) then it appears obvious the left eye follows that path. To focus on the same point on the right screen (again roughly where the blue colours merge) then the right eye appears to need to diverge drastically from the left. I would imagine this would not only be quite difficult to do but also extremely uncomfortable. Or do I have it wrong?

I admit I am quite a noob, having tried to read everything on this site for just the past few weeks, so apologies in advance if this is a silly question

[mahler]

Note that in the drawing, I used the 7" display to scale the Rift but with the 90° HFOV 100% overlap which is less likely (I think it will be something like 115-120° HFOV with 80% overlap but we'll see in march)

Isn't the Oculus Rift still unfairly represented in that image?
The horizontal FOV (per eye) seems less than 90 degrees in that picture, but I didn't measure it exactly.

[foisi]

@mahler : I checked the svg file and you are right, the represented FoV is 85.5° instead of 90° here is a corrected version :

HFOV-Comparison2.png

@PatimPatam : I'm going to check the FoV with the 5.6" right now

@mrgrey : the light pink and light blue colored areas are only monoscopic, don't worry the eyes don't have to diverge
maybe you can get a better idea on how it works with a 180° panoramic picture (from google images) that I modified to be viewable on the HMD (and I added the blue and pink colors to match the drawing)

panoramic.png

[Zoide]

foisi: Looking good! Any news about Palmer? Some time ago he posted that he would experiment with your ideas.

[geekmaster]

foisi: Looking good! Any news about Palmer? Some time ago he posted that he would experiment with your ideas.

Palmer said he ordered lenses to test my fresnel lens stack ideas too, but I have not heard back from him about that. I suspect he and the others at Oculus have their hands full preparing for the big launch of the Rift Dev Kits as soon as they get off the boat. Time to (personally) play with new different ideas like these may have to wait until production and delivery are just routine, and they have more "play time".

I am sure Palmer will let us know his results when he has something useful to post. If I had a couple of spare LCD panels here, I would be building my own HMD from foisi's plans. But I will continue experimenting with my own designs too. That is what we do...

[mrgrey]

@mrgrey : the light pink and light blue colored areas are only monoscopic, don't worry the eyes don't have to diverge
maybe you can get a better idea on how it works with a 180° panoramic picture (from google images) that I modified to be viewable on the HMD (and I added the blue and pink colors to match the drawing)

panoramic.png

Thanks for taking the time to explain it. That makes a lot more sense now

[foisi]

Ok so here is the setup I used to measure the FoV with 2 stacked fresnel lenses (FRL021) and a hydis 5.6" LCD

IMG_1200.jpg

then I measured (not very accurately) with a ruler, the position of my eye when I was seeing the edge of the display

5.6inchesTest.png

IMG_1199.mp4

if I'm not wrong α = atan(110/220) ~= 26.5° and the FoV is (90-26.5)*2 = 127°
and if I'm not wrong this means that the FoV per eye of the InfinitEye is a lot more than 121° (that may also explain why when I place my eyes the closest I can to the lenses, I'm not able to see the edges (left edge for the right eye and vice versa) and the stereoscopic overlap is more than 63°

[TheLostBrain]

Well... convinced me to order a set (4 lenses total) - You sure this isn't just some elaborate plan to get rid of some old fresnel lens stock?

Actually waiting on an invoice from them now so I can pay... and lenses should arrive in about 4 weeks...wow. (I just couldn't convince myself to spend the extra ~$30 on the 1 week shipping).

Oh well that's plenty of time to put together a housing, etc. in the mean time I suppose.

Anyone know if we can get these a bit more local (U.S.)?


BTW: I've got a set of the hydis 5.6 so I'll be doing my build against them.


Definitely interested to see how this turns out Thx for the good info.

[TheLostBrain]

Well, it was going to be a month...until they sent me this:

Please understand shipping by Post is NOT a reliable way. At normally, the parcel will arrive in 4weeks. But it would be delay occasionally. according to our statistics, around 5% parcels might lost. And tracing a parcel by post will take around 2months.
If you need a more reliable way, we suggest a economical courier. The shipping cost is $22.00USD (excluding lens). Please let me if you have interesting, I can amend the invoice.

Considering the 'economical' courier option is still 3+ weeks I just said screw it and paid a bit more for the 1 week delivery.

Total cost out the door for 4 lenses shipped ~1 week delivery: $53.29 USD

[Zoide]

I just said screw it and paid a bit more for the 1 week delivery.

Awesome! I can't wait to hear more people's impressions of the InfinitEye's design. Hopefully some of these ideas will show up in the consumer Rift...

[foisi]

that's expensive !
last time I ordered from them I think I used regular postal shipping (but I can't remember how long it was to get the parcel as I wasn't really in a hurry , maybe ~1 month)

Code: Select all

Part#	   Description                         Price                ordered qty      Amount
FRL021     Fresnel lens 165x105mm f120mm       5.00                 8                40.00
                                                                 Freight (byPost)    12.11
                                                                 Total Amount        52.11

[TheLostBrain]

Hey foisi... so have you been able to generate any media (images, videos, etc.) in the native format of this thing (convergent partial overlap)?

Would be awesome to have something ready to bring up on the screens once it starts going together.

If not, I'm guessing we could get something usable via WorldViz or Unity or something.

Thanks

[foisi]

For now I only have a small app I coded under linux (ubuntu) to be able to view panoramic 180° images I'm getting from google images but they are displayed in 2D and the app doesn't correct spherical distortion or chromatic abberation. If you want it I can give you the source file. (Or export some pictures)

I will have to modify vireio drivers to make them compatible with this HMD, I downloaded the source code and now I just need some time (maybe this weekend).

(and I'm still waiting the answer from chinatobby for the extended LVDS cables, maybe I should try to make them myself)

[TheLostBrain]

Foisi, Here's a quick and dirty test you can try if you want:

1) Bring up two windowed instances of some game... (quake 3, etc.).

2) Move one instance so it fills up the left lcd and the other to fill up the right lcd.

3) Load up the same map on both instances..free of monsters or other distractions.

4) Now simply position each view port how you want in the environment until it converges comfortably.
Basically, if you don't move the character from the starting position you could probably get away with just rotating the left view left a little and rotating the right view right a little.

Should be an easy fun little experiment. Let us know if you try it and what you're results are.
Ooh and if you get anything usable take a screen shot so it's easily brought up for testing.

[druidsbane]

That's a great idea! Also, extending it, if you need a quick and dirty way to get even more interesting views, save your position in one game then bring up another instance and load up the save so you can position yourself wherever you like!

[TheLostBrain]

That's a great idea! Also, extending it, if you need a quick and dirty way to get even more interesting views, save your position in one game then bring up another instance and load up the save so you can position yourself wherever you like!

Wow that's fantastic! So simple and yet I honestly never thought of doing that.

[Fredz]

For now I only have a small app I coded under linux (ubuntu) to be able to view panoramic 180° images I'm getting from google images but they are displayed in 2D and the app doesn't correct spherical distortion or chromatic abberation.

You can try with this one also (stereo 360°) :
http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=138&t=16502

[ripcurl123]

I was just wondering foisi how you decided what frensel lenses to use was it alot of testing on other frensels and so on, also are the they just stacked on top of each other with the groves facing towards screen?

Maybe someone could do a dual breakout board for lvds to hdmi desperately needed for two screens for the weight issue,
this looks like a great project but the proof is in the pudding with other people building this would be great to see how that goes ,keep up the good work

dave....

[foisi]

@TheLostBrain: Here are some exported images from my app, I will try your solution this weekend if I find the time

p1.png

p2.png

p3.png

p4.png

p5.png

@Fredz: cool, I will make something viewable on the infinitEye from the 360° stereo images, thanks for the link

@ripcurl123:
I don't know if they are the best fresnel lenses but they are the best I could find (a 60mm focal length fresnel lens with approximately the same size could ideally replace the 2 stacked 120mm focal lenses (and with a smaller pitch it will be even better))
I have ordered something like a dozen different lenses (including these 120mm focal length fresnel lenses and 180 mm focal ones) because after I completed my previous project (a "rift-like" ancestor hmd) I wanted to create something with a FOV as big as I could and fresnels were the only lenses that provided it without being too heavy and also being easily cuttable compared to glass lenses.
to answer your other question : yes the grooves are facing the screen and the lenses are stacked with no spacing between them

Edit: thanks to mediavr for the pics, here is a normally viewable (not tested yet) version of your belmorepark pictures

belmorepark1InfinitEye.png

[TheLostBrain]

Woot! Lenses just arrived at the office and of course I had to take em out to experiment with.

First things first - I DO stand corrected... I now believe that Fresnels CAN produce a sharp, quality image in an HMD!

I honestly had my reservations when I ordered these because of the experience I've had in the past w/ Fresnel lenses. Generally the ones I've worked with offered not much more than a muddy, washed-out view. I'm happy to say these are the exact opposite!

I'd even go as far as to say that when looking through ONE of them at my monitor (positioned ~120mm FL, Fresnel grooves towards the screen)... I can absolutely not tell that I'm looking through a Fresnel vs any other decent quality large acrylic optic. There's no perception of the Fresnel grooves, etc. at all!

Now, upon adding the second lens things do degrade just a bit. A bit of contrast is lost, a tiny bit of lens smear is detectible on high-contrast scenes, and all of the applicable aberrations are more prevalent. However, much of this is to be expected w/ any type of uncorrected lens assembly.

Also I would like to point out (as Palmer, GeekMaster and others on this thread already have) that Fresnels are are by no means a magic bullet and you will still have to work within the same constraints that apply to standard plano convex lenses. Ex: You still have spherical, chromatic, field curvature, etc. taking shots at your view so you'll have to do your best to compensate as usual.

With all that said I'm still 100% confident that these lenses do offer some excellent advantages for HMD design where immersive FOV is the primary goal.
-Huge immediate-FOV combined with a very generous eye-relief.
-Full eyeglass compatibility do to that eye-relief.
-Huge reduction in weight vs a comparable system using standard lenses
-Huge reduction in cost vs a comparable system using standard lenses


So, all in all I'd say the lenses are a definite win.



Of course now I've just got to find the time to actually build one of foisi's InfinitEyes and see how it all performs together. My guess is it should be a pretty excellent experience.

[perrynow]

I grabbed the panels listed in the post, but now I wonder if I should have got the controller board with the additional dvi input, could I have sent a higher resolution over that than the hdmi? I know it would have added weight...

[brantlew]

@TheLostBrain: Very interesting.

[TheLostBrain]

I grabbed the panels listed in the post, but now I wonder if I should have got the controller board with the additional dvi input, could I have sent a higher resolution over that than the hdmi? I know it would have added weight...

Generally for our purposes and resolutions... nada.

DVI and HDMI are both digital and for the most part are completely interchangeable (minus the audio of course).
Ex: You can buy a DVI->HDMI cable if you wanted...etc.

[Fredz]

Thnaks for the info TheLostBrain, can't wait for mine to arrive.

[Zoide]

Thnaks for the info TheLostBrain, can't wait for mine to arrive.

When are you expecting your parts to arrive?

[foisi]

@TheLostBrain : glad to hear you being satisfied with the quality of the lenses, please post your progress in this thread if you want

@Fredz : cool ! are you making an InfinitEye too ?

I ordered stuff this week (rj45 cat7 cable, usb cable, third hand with magnifier, etc..) to extend the LVDS cables myself (no news from chinatobby..) , solder the YEI 3 space sensor embedded and finish the hardware part of the HMD
I tried the vireio drivers last weekend and I was able to run correctly the binaries that I compiled from the latest git sources with VS2012 express in debug (because in release, it auto inject itself or something like that) with L4D2 and Mirror's Edge. The drivers seem to work as intended for 100% stereoscopic overlap on these games but once you add divergence of the cameras it starts to behave strangely (missing geometry (clipping?))
I will try again when hardware is finished (hopefully soon)

[Fredz]

When are you expecting your parts to arrive?

No idea, I ordered on Feb 25th so I guess it won't be too long now. IIRC a 4 weeks delay was to be expected.

@Fredz : cool ! are you making an InfinitEye too ?

I'll try with my 5.6" screen first and if the results are good I'll probably buy 2x7" screens and try them with dual DVI output from the graphics card, with Genlock/SoftGenLock for synchronization (without the Zotac converter).

But I won't be strictly making an InfinitEye, I'd like to have more FOV in the center (full binocular if possible, around 90°-120° depending on my nose) at the expense of the sides. So it would be less than 180° HFOV total for both eyes, probably between 120° and 150°.

Thanks by the way, this thread got me motivated enough to start working again on my Rift-style DIY HMD. Less sleep, but more fun.

[budda]

Hi,

There are some interesting design possibilities using fresnel lenses in the optics of a head mounted display.

Has anyone considered using a camera filter ring as a support structure for a custom fresnel lens mounting.

A similar idea using a custom aspheric lens in a filter ring is shown here.

http://www.instructables.com/id/High-Qu ... e-Up-Lens/

Also, in a recent thread in this forum I discuss using stackable macro close up lens filters.

http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=120&t=16709

I have found a lens product which may be suitable for adaptation to virtual reality displays like the Oculus Rift.

They are generically described as a MACRO CLOSE UP LENS FILTER set.

They are a stackable series of meniscus lenses of progressive powers, in a low profile modular filter ring format, and are interchangeable so the overall magnification power can be varied at will.

Best of all, they are readily available, of photographic optical quality and are quite cheap at $20 or so a set.

If each layer in the stack were replaced by a fresnel lens according to the above method, then a stack of up to four (or even more) fresnel lenses per eye could be securely and precisely mounted to a custom faceplate.

Thanks.

[Fredz]

When are you expecting your parts to arrive?

Received a shipping notice, ordered on 24 Feb, shipped on 18 Mar, now waiting for delivery from China. They're really not fast...

[yomer]

Will this be a viable solution instead of the Oculus Rift? I mean, the OR is pretty much everything I wanted, save the resolution and the little kinks that need work. The main advantage for the OR Dev Kits is that they are backed by an SDK and some big names on board since its announcement.

Unless future games and engines that support the Oculus come with customizable parameters, how could the InfinitEye gain the same support?

BTW, I've been following the thread and I haven't read anything about You(foisi) testing actual syncing and compatibility in any tech demo. How far are you from that goal? Thanks for all the effort you people have put into the InfinitEye, especially foisi.

[Zoide]

Any news? Thanks

[TheLostBrain]

Any news? Thanks

I've been busy w/ the never ending Honey-Do list - trying to wrap up some flooring work (moldings and such)... and to top it off this past weekend was my oldest's 4th birthday so whole weekend was pretty much gone after that.

Maybe the wife will let me start coming out to play again soon lol

Did do up a couple rough sketches and ordered some hardware from McMaster so will try and find some time during this week after the kids are in bed to model it up in solidworks and push it over to the CNC.

The design is a pretty cool spin on the base InfinitEye concept with the primary difference being that each ocular is separately enclosed and is independently adjustable. This will allow for quick and easy changing between Convergent, coplaner, and divergent partial overlap configurations and also allowing for a certain degree of IPD adjustment.

Fun times.

[brantlew]

@TheLostBrain: Awesome. Looking forward to seeing your development on this.

[TheLostBrain]

Will this be a viable solution instead of the Oculus Rift? I mean, the OR is pretty much everything I wanted, save the resolution and the little kinks that need work. The main advantage for the OR Dev Kits is that they are backed by an SDK and some big names on board since its announcement.

Unless future games and engines that support the Oculus come with customizable parameters, how could the InfinitEye gain the same support?

BTW, I've been following the thread and I haven't read anything about You(foisi) testing actual syncing and compatibility in any tech demo. How far are you from that goal? Thanks for all the effort you people have put into the InfinitEye, especially foisi.

The following is only my humble opinion, but "Instead of the Rift" (as in a replacement for it)?

No. Definitely not.

Comparing these two HMD concepts is really like comparing apples and oranges. While there is obviously some application overlap, both designs have their own unique strengths and each will outperform the other in certain areas.

I will say that for 99.9% of the general enthusiast and gaming market the Rift is simply going to be the better fit. I (at least for now) see the InfinitEye as more of an academic / research device... but again all of this is just MHO and foisi may very well feel completely different about his design.

Of course all that said, I've yet to build a working model incorporating the InfinitEye concept (hopefully sometime this week) but in theory it looks relatively solid

[yomer]

The following is only my humble opinion, but "Instead of the Rift" (as in a replacement for it)?

No. Definitely not.

Comparing these two HMD concepts is really like comparing apples and oranges. While there is obviously some application overlap, both designs have their own unique strengths and each will outperform the other in certain areas.

I will say that for 99.9% of the general enthusiast and gaming market the Rift is simply going to be the better fit. I (at least for now) see the InfinitEye as more of an academic / research device... but again all of this is just MHO and foisi may very well feel completely different about his design.

Of course all that said, I've yet to build a working model incorporating the InfinitEye concept (hopefully sometime this week) but in theory it looks relatively solid

I appreciate your opinion. That's what I was looking for a comparison on both designs. I foresee a possible future in which we have a commercial version of the OR and another competing company headed by "Foisi" driving the mass acceptance of VR technology.

Luckey is leading the way but I expect more businesses to follow.

I'm currently almost $1 short of having $300 in my paypal account to purchase the rift. As soon as I get a donation or make a deposit I might just lose it and make the purchase without much thought.

[PatimPatam]

Hi there, norgoth posted this link in another thread.. thought these panels could be a good match for this type of design!

http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/09/au-o ... -FHD-OLED/

[foisi]

Hi,

@TheLostBrain : did you find the time to start working on your version of the InfinitEye ? I would be very pleased to see your design.
I've coded a small free-flight-in-a-quake-3-level demo based on Irrlicht 3D with a lot of parameters to tune (IPD, distortion, HFoV, stereoscopic FoV, lens center shift x and y, etc..) As it is undocumented I will not release it publicly for now but if you want it to do some tests with your design, I can send you a build for windows 7 64bits, just ask

irrlichtInfinitEye1.png

irrlichtInfinitEye2.png

I'm currently redesigning the HMD when I find spare time, the unused parts of the lenses (far up and bottom) are recut to lose weight and the screens shifted downwards because I want to shift the vertical FoV towards the ground (we usually don't gaze towards the up in real life, the vertical FoV must be representative of this fact)

edit: added screenshots

[TheLostBrain]

Hi,

@TheLostBrain : did you find the time to start working on your version of the InfinitEye ? I would be very pleased to see your design.
I've coded a small free-flight-in-a-quake-3-level demo based on Irrlicht 3D with a lot of parameters to tune (IPD, distortion, HFoV, stereoscopic FoV, lens center shift x and y, etc..) As it is undocumented I will not release it publicly for now but if you want it to do some tests with your design, I can send you a build for windows 7 64bits, just ask

irrlichtInfinitEye1.png

irrlichtInfinitEye2.png

I'm currently redesigning the HMD when I find spare time, the unused parts of the lenses (far up and bottom) are recut to lose weight and the screens shifted downwards because I want to shift the vertical FoV towards the ground (we usually don't gaze towards the up in real life, the vertical FoV must be representative of this fact)

edit: added screenshots

Hey foisi! There were a few snags with the approach I described (as I originally designed it anyway) - primarily that the screens moved away from each other as the angle of the convergent overlap increased.

In practice I found that in order keep that central blind-spot to a minimum the screens must be kept butted together.

After coming to that conclusion instead of going back to sw and the cnc I just decided to grab a blade and some foam core and slap something together really quickly. That was about a week ago and it's been sitting in the garage ever since.

The night I put together the foam core I used cyberreality's driver to do some rudimentary testing w/ hl2 and the results were pretty promising.
I made a ton of adjustments to the angle of convergent overlap and personally I found that all optical aberrations were most manageable when the lcds (and the lenses) were kept co-planer as apposed to angled (with the obvious caveat being a loss of horizontal fov coverage). Also IPD misalignment seems to be MUCH more forgiving in this configuration. Keep in mind however, even when kept co-planer the immediate FOV is still pretty absurd lol.

So at this point I do have something I can test with if you'd like to send it on over and I should be able to make some time this weekend. (and yep built for 7/8 64 bit should be fine).

Thanks!

[budda]

Hi,

I have been following this thread with much interest.

I was very skeptical about the dual-screen, canted, head mounted display you proposed, but now I can see its great potential.

The InfinitEye can be conceptualised this way.

1. Take the Oculus Rift design as the starting point.

2. Split the Oculus Rift down the centreline.

3. Splay out the two sides by rotating each side around the eyeball centres.

4. Slide the screens sideways and back inwards towards the centreline.

That essentially completes the metamorphosis of the Oculus Rift to an InfinitEye.

The ideal approach is to take the best design aspects of the Oculus Rift and combine them with the best design aspects of the InfinitEye.

I suggest these design improvements.

1. Reduce the total magnification of the optics because you have twice the screen width, and you need less distortion and aberations to merge the overlap region.

2. Use proper field lenses instead of fresnel lenses, as the optical properties can be better controlled and prescribed.

3. Use a lower cant angle so the overlap area is maximised and the optical quality of the overlap area is preserved. I expect the included angle only needs to be 150 to 160 degrees. This also helps the lens coverage of the overlap area near the nose position.

There seems to be plenty of opportunity to optimise the optics of this design, but please don't get carried away by trying to include all the bells and whistles at this early stage.

Thanks.

[budda]

Hi,

I just wanted to say something more about the InfinitEye, before someone tries to patent a related idea.

The dual screens used for the InfinitEye can be formed by using one screen that is hinged or bent down the middle to form a 'V' shape - like an open book.

Such flexible screens are already being demonstrated for mobile phones and tablets.

The potential advantage of such a screen for virtual reality is the lightness, simplified display co-ordination and the easily adjustable cant angle compared to a separate two screen system.

So there.

Thanks.

[MrGreen]

This forum is so humbling. So many smart people here. Inspiring stuff!

[graziano]

I'm new here, hello everybody.

Great design, this is really exciting. ATM i'm working on a single-screen 7" setup, but InfinitEye concept is something i'll definitely follow in the future.

One question though - isn't it possible to use iZ3D side-by-side driver for it? With proper setup it should work with two angled screens without any trouble, right? Or am i missing something?

[foisi]

hi, I don't think iz3d drivers are compatible because for my demo I had to use 3 cameras per eye and apply a pre warp shader on each render vertically and then another distortion shader horizontally to get the proper rendering... (look at the screenshots) but maybe vireio drivers can be modified to do so.
I didn't check the oculusvr SDK source yet but if I can code the proper rendering method (3 cameras etc) into it, it would be awesome ( especially because the demos and games using it are designed with VR in mind (as opposed to regular games with 3D drivers like iz3d or vireio) )

[graziano]

3 cameras? Is this for image warping or for proper perspective projection for wide FOV?

[foisi]

yes, it's the projection for wide FOV that results in too much stretching on the edges of the screens

[yomer]

yes, it's the projection for wide FOV that results in too much stretching on the edges of the screens

So, you would basically reduce your frame rate by 60-70% in order to render to the HMD?

[foisi]

mmh I don't think that the number of camera affects the framerate that much

[yomer]

mmh I don't think that the number of camera affects the framerate that much

But, don't you need to render the scene completely from a different angle? You're using the 3 camera views at the same time, aren't you?

[graziano]

i'd suspect each camera to cover 1/3 of the FOV, and everything is rendered in single rendering pass.

But then - would a single-display setup too require a multi-camera driver? Wouldn't iz3d work with it properly?

[foisi]

This is what is done in my demo :

drawing.png

graziano you're right, 1/3 of the view is covered by one camera (for each screen)

[foisi]

(10000 views \o/)

[Zoide]

(10000 views \o/)

Congrats!

Any news?

[foisi]

Thanks Zoide

Yes I'm still working on version 2 when I find some time, but nothing I can show here for now (maybe in a few weeks).

[Hannibalj2]

Hello Foisi,

I have ordered a Rift last month. Funny enough I though of the dual display for extra resolution not so much for the 180 FOV. Then walla!!!...here you are with the IfE.

I am on the designing stages of VR Game although I not a gamer, i come from the design/Animation professional sector. Currently checking different engines, UDK, Cryengine, Unigine. Honestly speaking a lot of the tech talk here is out somewhat over my head. I am technical incline but new to this type of technology.

I will be looking for the components to build a unit or two based on your designs.
This would be primary to help me develop my VR game.

My concern is been able to use it with any existing SDK? Can you chime in on this matter since i keep on reading that there is no software to use it with. maybe something can be worked out?

Please advice

Warmest Regards!

[foisi]

Hi Hannibalj2,
you're right there are no software to use with the InfinitEye for now as I am focusing on hardware until I finish the second prototype. What matters for resolution is the angular resolution which is approximately 7.1 pixels/degree on the Rift (640px/90°) and with the InfinitEye it should be the same (maybe a little more because the lenses have a longer focal length but certainly not double).

[Hannibalj2]

Thanks for the response. So anyone that builds a DIY HMD is out of luck when wanting to use it for development?
Is the incompatibility due to the hardware components? Could there be a possibility of using the UDK sdk if the right hardware components are used, ei. Tracker, displays, etc..?

Thanks for your time

[3dpmaster]

@TheLostBrain: Here are some exported images from my app, I will try your solution this weekend if I find the time

p1.png

p2.png

p3.png

p4.png

p5.png

@Fredz: cool, I will make something viewable on the infinitEye from the 360° stereo images, thanks for the link

@ripcurl123:
I don't know if they are the best fresnel lenses but they are the best I could find (a 60mm focal length fresnel lens with approximately the same size could ideally replace the 2 stacked 120mm focal lenses (and with a smaller pitch it will be even better))
I have ordered something like a dozen different lenses (including these 120mm focal length fresnel lenses and 180 mm focal ones) because after I completed my previous project (a "rift-like" ancestor hmd) I wanted to create something with a FOV as big as I could and fresnels were the only lenses that provided it without being too heavy and also being easily cuttable compared to glass lenses.
to answer your other question : yes the grooves are facing the screen and the lenses are stacked with no spacing between them

Edit: thanks to mediavr for the pics, here is a normally viewable (not tested yet) version of your belmorepark pictures

belmorepark1InfinitEye.png

I tried this configuration ten years ago! You have to set up with FISHEYE. Else the image will be spread larger on top and at the bottom! The configuration of these pictures are "Mercator" panorama's, which are exellent with curved screens or projection screens. Try also "STEREOGRAPHIC" but Fisheye is ok. It would be the same configuration as the Oculus rift but Full fisheye = 180 deg (Oculus is 100 deg or ~ 60 procent of the fisheye image) Notice that the middle of the two fisheyes would be cropped in the middle for the nose. thumbs up

[Skaven252]

Hey Foisi, really impressive prototype you have there!

I'd love to shoot some video footage for you with my fisheye action cam rig (head mounted or handheld), but their FOV is only 140 degrees.

So you need three cameras to cover 180? In theory I could get a third Braun Sixzero, or maybe slap one between my two VIO POV.HDs, on top of that "silicone ears" microphone, but ... I have no idea how the footage should be combined into a single file that would be optimally viewable with the InfinitEye. Also, the middle camera would be different from the side cameras, so I'm not sure how much incompatibility there may be between the video clips.

Or is it enough to just use two cameras that diverge outwards (with a bit of overlap in the middle), to cover the needed 180 degrees?

[Skaven252]

Well, I did the simplest, quickest thing, and pointed my Sixzeros outwards on top of the Free Space:



They haven't been placed with 100% engineering precision, but I'm trusting that small alignment errors can be fixed in post edit.

Would you like to me to try shoot and edit some test footage for you with this rig?

[Skaven252]

Here's a bunch of test snapshots I took with the above rig, and placed side by side:

http://imgur.com/a/uk0kI

I didn't do any specific alignment, because I don't exactly know how. But you know, just to get an idea... I know their aspect ratio does not match InfinitEye, but this is easily fixed by cropping.

[3dpmaster]

Here's a bunch of test snapshots I took with the above rig, and placed side by side:

http://imgur.com/a/uk0kI

I didn't do any specific alignment, because I don't exactly know how. But you know, just to get an idea... I know their aspect ratio does not match InfinitEye, but this is easily fixed by cropping.

You can look at the alignment of the freshnel lenses on the construction pics. Hopely it's work. Also the lens distortion is very important to get the perfect 3D pairs.
I don't know the angle of the camera's but it seems to be large enough to get 180 degrees together.

[mickman]

I was looking through one of my Maker Magazine articles the other day & ran into a page that explains how to make a lens from gelatine... cheap & very effective for lens prototyping.

[Skaven252]

I don't know the angle of the camera's but it seems to be large enough to get 180 degrees together.

Looks like not quite... a horizontal object like the balcony railing can be used to tell it's not quite 180.

I wonder how much can be compensated by editing, cropping and offsetting though, maybe there's only a bit of loss in the outer edges. Better than nothing. I haven't tried this with my VIO cameras yet. They have a bit wider FOV I think, and thanks to the way the mounts are shaped it's easier to point them outwards (the Sixzeros are jammed against each other and can't be pointed further apart than that).

Maybe some other camera make and model has an even wider FOV.

[foisi]

Hi, I will try your stereo pairs when I will finally be able to finish the second prototype (I'm waiting for parts to be shipped) hopefully before the end of june
Even if the total HFOV is not 180° on them, I'm sure I can do something to be able to view them properly
Thanks

[3dpmaster]

why does the InfiniteEye have only 63 deg overlap. if I see the optics, the overlap should be bigger?

[foisi]

Yes you're right. The horizontal FoV is actually > 180° (something like 210°) and the stereoscopic overlap is about 90°

[foisi]

Hey

I made a new thread for the V2 prototype so I will be posting progress there from now http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=138&t=18369

[LuckyDog]

Instead of using a mini display port to dual hdmi adapter, couldn't you just use 2 hdmi cables and set up a dual monitor eyefinity? Seems to me like that might be the easier route.

[mclightning]

Can i use 2 galaxy s2's as display for starters?

I have no experience in dealing with lenses, so i dont want to invest so much money into displays in case i fail to build one.

I can develop a demo game in Unity to render 3d view onto 2 smartphones.

[pilzbefall]

hi, i am very impressed by the specs! Is it correct that the real stereoscopic fov is smaller than the one of the rift?

[damian3k]

Hello!
I want to ask you how you added head tracking using YEI 3 space sensor embedded in Tuscany?

[schipleon]

- Horizontal FOV = 180° (calculated)
- Horizontal stereoscopic FOV = 63° (calculated)
- Vertical FOV = (to be determined)

Hello!

I've got a question about the FOV; for a school project I'm working on an HMD and I am wondering how do you calculate the horizontal/vertical FOV? Perhaps someone can help me in this?

Thanks!

[cadcoke5]

If you are trying to figure how to calculate the Horizontal and Vertical when given the diagional, you can do that using trigonometry. But, perhaps you are wanting to figure the possible field of vision knowing only the geometry of the HMD and the lens info.

I have made a rough estimate by assuming that there is no lens, and that the iris of the eye is the apex of a triangle.

[img]

Basic%20Display%20Angles.PNG

[/img]

Note that you have to divide the display into two parts by drawing line perpendicular to the screen, to the iris. Then, calculate the two areas separately.

But, I think the strong lenses that are typically used will have a significant influence on the angles. I don't know how to manage those lens calculations. In that case, if the lenses are available, actual measurements can be made. Put some graph paper where the display will be. Then, with the paper mounted at the correct distance, and with a pencil, mark the boundaries of your vision on the paper itself. Then you can draw the display screen on the graph paper and use the Pythagorean theory to calculate angles.

-Joe Dunfee

[Fredz]

I've got a question about the FOV; for a school project I'm working on an HMD and I am wondering how do you calculate the horizontal/vertical FOV? Perhaps someone can help me in this?

Cadcoke5 gave the basic principle but as he said you'd need to know the lenses characteristics if you want to calculate the FOV accurately. That's quite complicated for aspheric lenses and even more for stacked fresnel lenses because you'd need to know the refractive index of the material used and the equation of the surfaces of the lenses. These are generally not available for off-the-shelf lenses and should be quite hard to evaluate experimentaly.

Another option would be to use a simple laser pointer and some sort of millimeter paper to physically calculate the FOV as show in the photo below. But you'll not have a unique FOV since it depends on the distance between the eye and the lens. Also before proceeding you'd need to know at which distance the lens must be placed from the display in order to have the eyes focus at infinity.

Laser lens FOV.png

And to have a meaningful FOV calculation you should also use a sensible value for the center of projection in the eye, which is not on the surface of the cornea and neither at the pupil position or the center of rotation of the eye according to what I've read (and hopefully understood). In this paper (schema below) the center of projection is shown to be at the position of the nodal point in the Listing schematic eye model.

[schipleon]

Thank you all very very much for the help! this is very helpfull!

Regards!

[cadcoke5]

Thanks for the link about the eye. It was a very nicely done summary of a lot of technical info.
http://www.oculist.net/downaton502/prof ... .html#redu

I did note one typo about stereoscopic vision. The site said, "...beyond about 2000 feet stereoscopic judgments are of little value." I think the 2000 feet should have been 20 feet. Other sources generally say that at beyond 18 feet, stereo separation is of little value. I think many years ago, I read one source saying 15 feet as the practical limit.

-Joe Dunfee

[Fredz]

Not sure if it's a typo, found this quote in a paper I can't seem to find anymore :

In central vision, under favorable conditions and for observers with excellent stereoacuity (12 sec of visual arc), stereopsis (a binocular depth cue), can provide a meaningful cue to distances up to ~450 m. In the presence of both binocular and monocular cues, stereopsis is the most effective distance cue in central vision up to ~65m. In peripheral vision, stereopsis is less effective, and motion parallax, a monocular cue, may be more effective.

The ~450m distance gives a ~1500 feet distance, not that far from that 2000 feet quote. But that's when there are no other depth cues available. I've seen that ~65m figure (~213 feet) mentioned in several other papers in real life situations when other depth cues are more prevalent.

An illustration of this (not a linear scale) :

[damian3k]

Can you post modified VireIO driver, please?

[adventuresinz]

foisi,
as you know I'm working on my own hmd design, and I´ve been experimenting with the fresnels from optolife. I´ve noticed the image quality quickly deteriorates as i move my pupils away from the optical center of the fresnels. Is this a problem with infiniteye? What IPD range will be supported?

[geekmaster]

foisi,
as you know I'm working on my own hmd design, and I´ve been experimenting with the fresnels from optolife. I´ve noticed the image quality quickly deteriorates as i move my pupils away from the optical center of the fresnels. Is this a problem with infiniteye? What IPD range will be supported?

Did you try flipping the lenses over? The off-axis optical quality (and distortion) depend on which side of the lens you view through. Of course, the current SDK software does not correct for off-axis (tangential) distortion, so you would need software for that.

[adventuresinz]

Did you try flipping the lenses over? The off-axis optical quality (and distortion) depend on which side of the lens you view through. Of course, the current SDK software does not correct for off-axis (tangential) distortion, so you would need software for that.

I've tried all 4 combinations with 2 stacked fresnels (120mm focal length each). The stacking might be a problem. Having both fresnels with even/flat side towards eye seems to work best, at least for me, but image-quality and brightness gets worse as i move my eye away from the center when fresnels and display are fixed. At 1 cm off axis it´s bad - not so much at 0.5. So +/- 1 cm IPD (+/- 0.5 cm off axis for each eye) might be tolerable but far from ideal and significantly worse compared to regular lenses. On axis it works great, not much different from regular lenses.

How do you handle chromatic aberration? In my tests I´ve noticed significant chromatic abberation at the pheripheral and at the area right in front of my nose.

[geekmaster]

Did you try flipping the lenses over? The off-axis optical quality (and distortion) depend on which side of the lens you view through. Of course, the current SDK software does not correct for off-axis (tangential) distortion, so you would need software for that.

I've tried all 4 combinations with 2 stacked fresnels (120mm focal length each). The stacking might be a problem. Having both fresnels with even/flat side towards eye seems to work best, at least for me, but image-quality and brightness gets worse as i move my eye away from the center when fresnels and display are fixed. At 1 cm off axis it´s bad - not so much at 0.5. So +/- 1 cm IPD (+/- 0.5 cm off axis for each eye) might be tolerable but far from ideal and significantly worse compared to regular lenses. On axis it works great, not much different from regular lenses.

How do you handle chromatic aberration? In my tests I´ve noticed significant chromatic abberation at the pheripheral and at the area right in front of my nose.

Off-axis CA is significant, and would require a software adjustment. However, that can only be corrected to the nearest sub-pixel (horizontally). For good stereoscopic alignment (no vertical parallax), using offset lenses requires tangential distortion (as formulated at the wikipedia page on lens distortion correction, linked in many of my other posts in these forums).

[dkd]

Hi,

I wonder if we assembled the HMD according the first page specifications how would we try it on HL2 for instance?
Do we need just some game adjustments to start using it or we need a special driver? Can somebody clarify that?
Thanks in advance and sorry for poor English.

[geekmaster]

Hi,

I wonder if we assembled the HMD according the first page specifications how would we try it on HL2 for instance?
Do we need just some game adjustmens to start using it or we need a special driver? Can somebody clarify that?
Thanks in advance and sorry for poor English.

You need special custom image warping (different from what the Rift uses), and you need to display the stereoscopic pair on images on separate monitors. You would probably need some sort of driver or other game customization to support this (perhaps a modified version of the Vireio Perception drivers).

[schipleon]

Another option would be to use a simple laser pointer and some sort of millimeter paper to physically calculate the FOV as show in the photo below. But you'll not have a unique FOV since it depends on the distance between the eye and the lens. Also before proceeding you'd need to know at which distance the lens must be placed from the display in order to have the eyes focus at infinity.

I've got two more questions about this option actually. Also to check my calculations.

1) I assume that as soon as the laserpoint is showing some warping, this is the point you need for your calculations?

2) I've calculated for one lens a FoV (H) of 68 degree. But how do I know the entire FoV then with both lenses?

[Fredz]

1) I assume that as soon as the laserpoint is showing some warping, this is the point you need for your calculations?

I'm not sure I understand your question, here is an illustration on how I would measure the FOV :

Horizontal FOV calculation (3).png

You would first calculate these two distances :
- D = distance from the lens to the display for a focus at infinity
- d = distance from the nodal point of the eye to the lens so the eyelashes barely brush it

Then you would position the display and the lens according to these measures and you would position the laser so that the ray passes by the O point and hits each outer edge of the half-screen.

2) I've calculated for one lens a FoV (H) of 68 degree. But how do I know the entire FoV then with both lenses?

It depends if there is partial overlap or full binocular overlap I think. If there is full overlap then the total horizontal FOV would be the same than the FOV calculated for one eye. If there is partial overlap the total horizontal FOV would be the sum of the leftmost half FOV for the left eye and rightmost half FOV for the right eye.

[Allibow]

this is where i am right now! started yesterday

1k questions tho.

[Allibow]

problem no.1, nvidia cant do "eyefinity" on 2 screens. any workaround on this ?
problem no.2 screens not recognized as 2560x800, i dont have the "Zotac" displayport to 2hdmi split but i have another one,
it does reconize it as 1 screen. does there exist different types of splitters that extend screen ? ..

problem no.3 HL2 cant launch at larger res than native (1280x800)

i think i have to get another splitter and try again!!!

problem no.4 Just looking thru the lenses at these pics of Quake3 makes me want this more than ever! AWSOME!!!

[Fredz]

problem no.1, nvidia cant do "eyefinity" on 2 screens. any workaround on this ?

Get an AMD GPU ? But seriously, I'm not even sure 3D Vision Surround or Eyefinity are able to do framelocking or genlocking, it's generally only available in their pro GPUs. Without these features it would be useless for display synchronization.

problem no.2 screens not recognized as 2560x800, i dont have the "Zotac" displayport to 2hdmi split but i have another one, it does reconize it as 1 screen. does there exist different types of splitters that extend screen ? ..

As foisi said in the other thread he doesn't use the Zotac adapter anymore because he's not experiencing sync issues. He simply connects the displays to the two DVI outputs of the GPU.

problem no.3 HL2 cant launch at larger res than native (1280x800)

According to Joe Ludwig (Valve developer) it should work with higher resolutions than 1280x800, see this post. But anyway Valve would need to support the InfinitEye for this to be useful.

[Allibow]

yea HL2 can run in higher res than 1280x720 but it cant launch higher res than your native! but if it did recognize it as 2560x760 this would be no problem

found a program thou http://www.kegetys.fi/forum/index.php?P ... c=2123.495

it lets you set res to whatever you want on how many screens you want but it conflicts whit the vireo drivers because it uses the same DLL files



Does he use DVI to hdmi or DVI to DVI ?

[Fredz]

Does he use DVI to hdmi or DVI to DVI ?

He uses DVI only to connect the GPU to the controller boards, the signals are then transferred to each display via LVDS.

[Allibow]

Yea that was not The question since the controllerboards take either VGA or hdmi in i wonder wich one he uses!

The screens has to be recognized as 2560x720

I have gtx670

[Hannibalj2]

How are you going to overlap the images to match the lcd angles?picture looks good!

[Fredz]

Yea that was not The question since the controllerboards take either VGA or hdmi in i wonder wich one he uses!

You can buy two versions of the display + controller board (HDMI/VGA or DVI/VGA) so you can connect them with whatever cables you want :
- HDMI+VGA ($78) : http://www.ebay.com/itm/7-inch-1280x800 ... 1288264864
- VGA+DVI ($85.99) : http://www.ebay.com/itm/VGA-DVI-B-NTA92 ... 1342637398

[Allibow]

i allready have the controllerboards + lcds and they take VGA and HDMI IN !

went down to the local comp store today they didnt have any DVI I to Hdmi so im stuck here.

starting to think i have to wait for the zotac splitter !

[Hannibalj2]

i allready have the controllerboards + lcds and they take DVI and HDMI IN !

went down to the local comp store today they didnt have any DVI I to Hdmi so im stuck here.

starting to think i have to wait for the zotac splitter !

Ok, let me chime in. I believe you mentioned you have a 670ti? How many inputs the card have 2? I personally use a Quadro card, but you could just use Nvidia Mosaic utility (you can download from their site) as a way to merge the two screens. You will effectively get 2560x768 or whatever res ur lcds are. This will allow you play around with looking at images through your newly built headset.

Not sure any of this will help where you are.

good luck

[Allibow]

It is gtx670 it has 4outpouts displayport hdmi dvi i and dvi d

Oh mosaik! are u very sure that it does work for gtx models?

I think ive read somewhere it is only for quadro avs models

Thanks for The tip thou
:/

[Hannibalj2]

I believe mosaic use to be available for all Nvidias cards back on XP days. Then only the Quadros, but it seems that now Geforce may be able to. you must check.

what are you planning to run on the Hmd?

[Allibow]

I have allready run hl2 on it! It feels Amazing but i need to modify The vireo drivers to get The wraping right but i Dont know exactly where to start

I think i could modify settings file for oculus rift and get this work somehow!

[Hannibalj2]

I have allready run hl2 on it! It feels Amazing but i need to modify The vireo drivers to get The wraping right but i Dont know exactly where to start

I think i could modify settings file for oculus rift and get this work somehow!

So did the Mosaic worked? Great to hear about been able to run things with it!

[Allibow]

Shieeeeet!

found a souloution!!,

on my 24" screen, create custom resolution 2560x720 and set it,
start HL2 with vireo 2.0 in oculus rift mode, (it will start in 2560x720 now!)
unplug 24", plugin 2 x hmd lcds

now hl extends over both screens ^^

run Convergence setup so that poop starts aligning on the screens !
run world disctance setup so that bullits will fly where you crosshair is!

I know this is not optimal in anyway with the wraping and all but it does work pretty well acutually !

The FOV IS AWSOME all you see is screen EVERYWHERE!


nope Mosaic didnt work at all! who has a quadro anyways ?! i run gtx670 2way SLI

[budda]

Hi,



Here we go again.

http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/hacki ... nterparts/


Thanks.

[Edit. 21 Dec 2013]

This is a direct quote from gordan, 20 Dec 2013, from this same blog:

There is no such thing as "Quadro mode". Some of the functionality of the non-Quadro cards is disabled by some other means, most probably a combination of the implementation of some of the GL primitives being cut out of the silicon (or not programmed into an FPGA, or something along those lines), plus a deliberately crippled software implementation of those GL primitives.

Modifying the card's device ID gets you the features the driver deliberately disables on GeForce cards, such as virtualization and TCC support (both of which are 100% purely driver features, there is no "hardware" part of the implementation for those features it's just driver deciding based on the device ID whether it'll let you have them).

Mosaic support is almost certainly a driver feature but it probably also covers vsynced output from multiple combined cards, syncing over SLI, which might actually require some extra hardware to do. If that is missing on GeForce cards, then the driver might just wholesale disable all Mosaic options.

In terms of stitching together multiple monitors, I have certainly run 3+ monitors stitched together under Linux into a single desktop using Xinerama (you have to disable randr extensions) - e.g. to run a T221 at full refresh rate, so there is no hardware limitation preventing that from happening per se. Perhaps gnif might shed some more info on the subject of Mosaic support, as I never quite fully understood what he was talking about when he was saying that modifying his 690 enabled extra multi-monitor flexibility - I just figured it was about some other feature that I never needed. As for Windows, I'm afraid I can't help much - to me Windows is just a somewhat thick bootloader for games that haven't been ported to Linux yet.

[Hannibalj2]

Shieeeeet!

found a souloution!!,

on my 24" screen, create custom resolution 2560x720 and set it,
start HL2 with vireo 2.0 in oculus rift mode, (it will start in 2560x720 now!)
unplug 24", plugin 2 x hmd lcds

now hl extends over both screens ^^

run Convergence setup so that poop starts aligning on the screens !
run world disctance setup so that bullits will fly where you crosshair is!

I know this is not optimal in anyway with the wraping and all but it does work pretty well acutually !

The FOV IS AWSOME all you see is screen EVERYWHERE!


nope Mosaic didnt work at all! who has a quadro anyways ?! i run gtx670 2way SLI

Clever!!

Nice going!!

[Hannibalj2]

Hi,



Here we go again.

http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/hacki ... nterparts/


Thanks.

Hello Budda,

That is a great read! Thanks for sharing!

[Allibow]

Truly impressed by this device! Hl2 is acutually very playable but you have to take your time to configure it right!
it can be very hard to get everything right but when you do its awsome!

convergence setup is Way to fast when your trying to hit the sweetspot thou!

Hud settings and worldscale is working against eachother so you have to do it many times to get it just right !

sv_cheats 1
fov 120

launch options
-w 2560
-h 720
-console

vireio settings
Worldscale
1 meter 1667 game units

convergence
screen 14.2cm

hud
full
hud dist 0.02
3d depth 0.187

GUI
size 1.91
3d depth 0.088

[dkd]

...fov 120...

I wonder how much real FOV you've got in HL2 with these settings? I mean that InfinitEye is ultra wide FOV HMD, but in this case (maybe) it works like a Oculus HMD (FOV<100), doesn't it? No peripheral vision?

[Allibow]

Yes you are right about that! The fov ingame is prolly 120 But you do get full screen coverage its pretty impressive anyways

Could be more to The fact it is two renders?

Would be Great if someone Who acutually has any idea How to modify The vireio driver to fit this headset did it:)

I Dont know How much work that is?

[dkd]

Could you please post some video like that
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... 2CwdE#t=20
HL2 of course

[Allibow]

yea ill guess i can come up with something !

Seriously what cabels would be good for extending LVDS threads ? i need atleast 40 threads ?!

one hdmi has about 17 usable wires !

[Allibow]

When i have the time i will mill this chassis for the infiniteye

[Fredz]

yea ill guess i can come up with something !
Seriously what cabels would be good for extending LVDS threads ? i need atleast 40 threads ?!
one hdmi has about 17 usable wires !

You may have a look there for extending cables :
- http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.p ... 38#p105338
- http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=140&t=15554
- http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.p ... 258#p83258

[mr.uu]

After some busy month i could finally test some ideas i had in mind and would now like to hear your opinions.
First, take a look at the attached screenshot.
As you can see, the original Rift screen is bad in many aspects compared to the two iPad-retinas in the foreground...
Because i do wish to make my Frankenrift as compatible to the Rift as possible i came up with putting the two retinas in portrait to make a 3072x2048 screen (6:4). I did measure the dimensions of the displayed image with a ruler and found that it displays a roughly double sized image then on the RiftDK.
Then i checked my fresnels (f120, same as foisi) and found out, that the foculs lenght (the needed distance to the screen for a sharp image) is less than 120mm - in my case roughly half of that, 60mm...normal? If i use two of them stacked, then roughly 30mm.

I am now thinking about the angle i should arrange the display. Foisi said first rougly 120, then later 130+ degrees, so what do you think? I would do a cardboard version soon, where i first try to find a good way of putting the fresnels in the Frankenrift mask, which will not give me lots of possible angle variation, i think. Also do i have a quite big nose, so the fresnel-cut will be fun...

Any feedback higly welcome

[mr.uu]

Hi,

I wonder if we assembled the HMD according the first page specifications how would we try it on HL2 for instance?
Do we need just some game adjustmens to start using it or we need a special driver? Can somebody clarify that?
Thanks in advance and sorry for poor English.

You need special custom image warping (different from what the Rift uses), and you need to display the stereoscopic pair on images on separate monitors. You would probably need some sort of driver or other game customization to support this (perhaps a modified version of the Vireio Perception drivers).

What about cutting the inner borders of my retinas with the eyefinity bezel correction? Does that not do the trick to shift the centers of the images inwards and at the same time show more fov in the outer screen regions than on the inner.
At least that is the idea i came up with. Will try if it works...

EDIT: brainfart...thought about it again and found out that bezel correction does ADD pixels to the screen, which are then not displayed (because hidden behind the monitor bezel), so i have to try if it does let me cut some parts of the screen away - äh, virtually

[Fredz]

Nice, how are the panels connected to your PC, through DisplayPort 1.2 ? How is the performance in rendering compared to the Rift ?

[mr.uu]

I did explain it in the V2 thread:
http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.p ... 40#p143122
And
http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.p ... 80#p143129

Performance is top. Couldn't see any difference to one screen. Just plug them in, arrange them via Eyefinity, works!
Unfortunately HL2 does not want do go into native VR mode. Have to check why.

[mr.uu]

Finally i had some time to experiment - the last five hours .

First i did dremel the fresnels to fit instead of the cup holders in the tree-nozzle holders.
Then i put them in place and tried with the dual screen setup to find a good arrangement. Unfortunately i realized quickly that
1) to build up one (not two) picture in my head i had to slide the fresnels outwards to match the middle of their screen half.
2) because of that i could not use two screens, because the two images are way to far apart for my eyes to converge.

So i was left with one screen but i decided to use only one fresnel and increase the distance to the retina to roughly 10cm.
While fiddeling with the now only taped fresnels and wobbling cardbord housing i fired up vorpX and deadspace (which i was playing recently. What can i say. WOOOOOOOOOOOW!!!

Despite the wrong warping - i could adjust the vignette size to 1.30 which fits well and played with other settings of vorpX but couldn't adjust properly- i am so glad i tried! Because i can see finally far objects! I found myself just walking around and enjoying all the things i did not even realize when plaing on 1080p (riftless, as i did before). And the picture quality is so much better!

Tomorrow i will try to make some pictures, increase the sturdyness of the cardbord housing and put the sensor on the frankenrift .

I will also ask Ralf from vorpX to halp me with the shader-distortion and maybe also with a option to bring the center of the two pictures closer together. Not IPD but Picturedistance. Then i could use both retinas...

Ahh, yes, one downside: the weight on the head feels much bigger. But i did not try to balance it correctly yet...

Does anybody know how to start the riftcoaster with vorpX? I wanna try it with added far sight!

[mr.uu]

Okay, here the pics.

Because of the good resultion and less magnification, the FOV is smaler.
This is why i redid the housing and used a pocket loup lens in addition to my fresnel. So i could reduce the distance to the screen by roughly 2cm, increase the FOV and the whole unit feels lighter.

The loup/fresnel combo is reworked and i have now to find a good way to mount it properly.

[Hannibalj2]

Pretty Cool!! Are this the Ipad mini 2 Retina display? Looking sweet!

[budda]

Hi,

Some great work going on here.

Mr UU, which design direction are you going in.

You describe two head mounted display versions, a Rift style ipad and an InfinitEye with two ipads.

I would like to know if you are still developing the twin screen version, as this thread is mainly about such things.

Thanks.

[MSat]

Very cool. How do you like the image quality with your lens setup?

[mr.uu]

Pretty Cool!! Are this the Ipad mini 2 Retina display? Looking sweet!

No, i use the iPad3 retina display(s).

...Mr UU, which design direction are you going in...

I would like to go with a dual screen setup. Unfortunately i did not find yet a working arrangement, i think the distance from pic center to pic center is to big - i have to try more. With one screen (distance from pic to pic 10cm) i have to place the lenses already on the outmost of the original Rift holes. - see the attached pic

Very cool. How do you like the image quality with your lens setup?

Well, somehow after bringing the fresnel and the pocket lens nicely closer together i do have now a greater magnification as when i did test them. So i am not happy with it, but the resolution is still by far superior than the Rift. I will first try to find the proper lens arrangement and then later i will disassamble and go for a dual screen setup. My neck muscles are getting used to it .

[budda]

Hi,

It may be possible to wirelessly stream a side-by-side 3D video to two separate displays so that the right screen receives the right side image, and the left screen receives the left side image.

If it works, then it should solve a number of practical issues concerning the need for hardware modifications and tethering with the proposed two-screen head mounted displays like InfinitEye.

I wrote to the developer of wireless streaming application kainy, who said the kainy software had already implemented such a feature. Kainy is now at version 1.72 .

Yes, You can change the viewport on Kainy and since the version 1.65, it supports double view (go to settings and viewport option)

Yes, there is multi-connection, you can connect up to 5 devices, so 2 devices (left/right panel). Look this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I-mbJhQb-Y

Let me know if you need more info

I have not checked these features out, but it looks like it supports two screen out, for PC to 2x mobile phone or 2x tablet, which is the important thing.

Thanks.


EDIT: 24 Jan 2014

To get an idea of wireless multiview technology on smart phones, look at this demonstration of Group Play on Samsung Android phones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhvu9ugtVY4

[darkange69]

Hi foisy, I have printed your prototype and bought everything (thanks for the link to castorama) but You tell that you are using 4x fresnel lens, and I think that your prototype drawinf is maybe wrong because the distance between the 4 lens (I guess they are glued 2 by 2) is more likely 4cm instead of 6.6cm.
My english is not so good as I wished, but it would be nice if you can give me some answer or if you can contact me by email.

[Bluedeath]

Guys can this arrangement be used with 3def or vireio or the center of the image will be too uncentered?

[darkange69]

It can be used with vireo but you will havr yo modify the side by side cfx. I make it work with hl2 and mirror edge. The only problem it that vireo only work with dx9 game so i am working with another tool which work with dx9, dx10 and dx11 games.

[Bluedeath]

I was thinking about using tridef (if it works with an eyefinity arrangement) and moving the center of each screen to match the IPD using the bezel compensation.
DO you guys think is a good idea?

[Bluedeath]

While i am waiting for the lcds i made some tests when i fire up eyefinity with tridef i've got 4 images instead of 2 so i think is not reallyworking as it should. Lso i still have to find a way to move the center of the images to match the infiniteye IPD.
Any suggestion?

[Turkeyboy111]

Hey guys,

Here is the InfinitEye open source hardware HMD project release v1.0, so people (including Palmer Luckey himself ) can start to make their own build and modifications. Special thanks to MSat for the name InfinitEye.

I don't know much about licences (especially for hardware projects) but I think something suitable for a project like this, is Creative Commons CC BY-SA (and to be credited by the "BY" part, my real name is Lionel Anton (I'm the author of F-ZERO for TI68k if anyone tries to google my name))

Specifications:

- Horizontal FOV = 180° (calculated)
- Horizontal stereoscopic FOV = 63° (calculated)
- Vertical FOV = (to be determined)
- Weight without tracker and head mount = 412g (measured)
- Weight with head mount = 512g (measured)
- Resolution per eye = 1280x800 spread over 121° horizontally (calculated)
- Bounding box of the headset (without mount) = 310x220x140 mm

The components I used :

- 2 x N070ICG-LD1 + controller board from ebay : 260$
- 4 x Fresnel lenses FRL021 from optolife (size 165x105mm, focal length 120mm, thickness 2mm, groove 0.3mm) : 20$ + shipping cost
- 1 sheet of expanded PVC thickness 2mm from castorama (french hardware store, but I'm sure similar light weight 2mm thick and flexible material can be found elsewhere) 500x750x2 mm : 8.45 eur ~= 11$
- neoprene glue
- headmount from faceshield from castorama : 17 eur ~= 23$

cost ~= 320$

Additional components :

- Zotac mini DisplayPort to dual HDMI from amazon : 69$
- YEI 3 space sensor embedded for head tracking (website): 99$

total cost ~= 500$
Now the plans (Version 1.0) :



(I have no website to host the file so I'm just leaving it attached to this thread for now)

I made the following drawing to compare horizontal FOV between this HMD, the Rift and the other HMD I own: ST1080

HFOV-Comparison.png

Note that in the drawing, I used the 7" display to scale the Rift but with the 90° HFOV 100% overlap which is less likely (I think it will be something like 115-120° HFOV with 80% overlap but we'll see in march )

build pics of the prototype :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oICGUy2xzNw

IMG_1159.jpg

IMG_1160.jpg

IMG_1161.jpg

IMG_1162.jpg

IMG_1163.jpg

IMG_1165.jpg

IMG_1168.jpg

IMG_1169.jpg

IMG_1171.jpg

IMG_1173.jpg

IMG_1174.jpg

IMG_1175.jpg

IMG_1176.jpg

(I can't attach other pictures, 15 files is the maximum)
Next steps :
- paint inside top and bottom parts in black
- glue the small parts to the box (green ones to prepare the LCD rails and then the yellow ones to maintain the box)
- glue the box nose part
- glue the lenses (top and bottom)
- insert the left LCD from the left
- insert the right LCD from the right
- insert the pink parts to maintain the LCDs in place
- glue the box left and right part to close it
- drill the holes to attach the head mount of your choice

Steps that I haven't done yet :
- extend LVDS cables (or tape the controller board to the headset, simpler but heavier)
- add head tracker
- modify VireIO perception drivers to make them compatible with this design
- say goodbye to reality and enjoy VR

Feel free to ask any question and post pictures of your builds in the thread

Can you repost the plans? they seem to be gone.

[Bass]

I dunno if anyone is still watching this thread, but here's my recreation of foisi's design, Made with LEGOs

The lenses are the same as Foisi's.
Resolution is 3840x1080 downsampled to 2560x800
Total cost was $221.42

The quality is pretty terrible right now. But I'm still getting a feel for how the lenses should be aligned. However, I'm not noticing any spherical aberration of my test images, only chromatic :$
And any actual gaming will have to wait until I can get a proper driver going. Something that "pinches" the inside images in by ~460 pixels.

[Turkeyboy111]

I'm interested, do you still have the original plans? That seem to have been deleted from this thread now that it's a legitimate product. Also, what is the link to the site you bought the lenses and LCD displays.

[cybereality]

LEGOs!! Wow, that's boss.

[bugway]

Making my own hmd with 2 panels, but i got stuck with centering image with eyeballs.
How to shift screen to place it right forward to each eyeball?

Thanks

[Bass]

Making my own hmd with 2 panels, but i got stuck with centering image with eyeballs.
How to shift screen to place it right forward to each eyeball?

Thanks

I'm stuck there as well
I used Paint.net to manually trim 460 pixels from the insides of my test images. Which worked out alright.

I've dinked around with the Vireio Perception driver, but I haven't spent enough time with it to see if it can support a general "pinching" of the buffer.
http://www.mtbs3d.com/new-vireio-site

EDIT
I should mention that each of my 1280x800 display modules show as a 1920x1080 display to the computer (3840x1080 total). So I cut 460 pixels off of two 1920 images and stitched them together.

[Bass]

I'm interested, do you still have the original plans? That seem to have been deleted from this thread now that it's a legitimate product. Also, what is the link to the site you bought the lenses and LCD displays.

Sorry, wasn't sure if you were asking me or foisi.

I didn't use anything but the info that foisi left in this thread. So no plans, sorry : (

The angle of the entire thing is about 130°
The lenses were cut 44mm in from the edge.
The nose cutout of the lenses is 120° and start 24mm from the centerline, towards the cut edge.
The screen to front of lens stack distance is kept at 60mm, to match the focal length of the lense stack.
(I went way overboard on most of my cuts, so you should experiment with these measures)

I could also upload a scan of the exact template that I used when cutting the lenses, if it would help.

Here's a list of the products that I bought for this project:
(4x) Optolife FRL021 DIY Projector Lenses - http://optolife.com/diy_projector_lens/FRL021.html
(2x) AIHome 7" 1280x800 display module with driver board - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017GA ... ge_o00_s02
DisplayPort to HDMI splitter - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BYH ... ge_o00_s01
(2x) Amazon Basics HDMI cable - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00870 ... ge_o00_s00
Amazon Basics DisplayPort cable - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005H3 ... ge_o00_s00

Not included in the list is the 12V 8A PSU from my 3d printer that I had to rig for the displays (defiantly go for two 12V wall warts or similar if using these displays), and my assortment of LEGO pieces

Let me know if you need anything else.

[Bass]

LEGOs!! Wow, that's boss.

Thanks

[FMPrime]

You should be able to shift the images by using lenses that are cut off center.

[Leonardo]

Hello is possible found zip fosi foam ?

[Bass]

You should be able to shift the images by using lenses that are cut off center.

I only cut the lenses on one side, which aligns the optical centers of the fresnels with my eyes.
Is that what you meant by off center?

[FMPrime]

I only cut the lenses on one side, which aligns the optical centers of the fresnels with my eyes.
Is that what you meant by off center?

Yes, moving the optical center of the fresnel lenses will shift the image of the screen in the opposite direction.

[brantlew]

I only cut the lenses on one side, which aligns the optical centers of the fresnels with my eyes.
Is that what you meant by off center?

Yes, moving the optical center of the fresnel lenses will shift the image of the screen in the opposite direction.

This doesn't sound right. Moving the optical lens center doesn't move the optical center of the screen. You have to offset render the image so that it aligns with the optical lens center.

[FMPrime]

If the screens are fixed in relation to the eyes, moving the Fresnel's optic center is analogous to introducing a thin prism into the optical path.


Software adjustment of the images is good for IPD compensation, which might be easier to use for shifting the images than cutting new fresnels. You'll probably find some IPD compensation code in the drivers you're modifying.

[simul8r]

I didn't use anything but the info that foisi left in this thread. So no plans, sorry : (

The angle of the entire thing is about 130°
The lenses were cut 44mm in from the edge.
The nose cutout of the lenses is 120° and start 24mm from the centerline, towards the cut edge.
The screen to front of lens stack distance is kept at 60mm, to match the focal length of the lense stack.
(I went way overboard on most of my cuts, so you should experiment with these measures)

I could also upload a scan of the exact template that I used when cutting the lenses, if it would help.

Here's a list of the products that I bought for this project:
(4x) Optolife FRL021 DIY Projector Lenses - http://optolife.com/diy_projector_lens/FRL021.html
(2x) AIHome 7" 1280x800 display module with driver board - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017GA ... ge_o00_s02
DisplayPort to HDMI splitter - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BYH ... ge_o00_s01
(2x) Amazon Basics HDMI cable - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00870 ... ge_o00_s00
Amazon Basics DisplayPort cable - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005H3 ... ge_o00_s00

Not included in the list is the 12V 8A PSU from my 3d printer that I had to rig for the displays (defiantly go for two 12V wall warts or similar if using these displays), and my assortment of LEGO pieces

Let me know if you need anything else.

Bass, I would be grateful if you could upload a scan of the exact template that you used when cutting the lenses!