Posted October 16, 2016
So, while I've been curious about VR for a while, I haven't been SOOO curious to feel compelled enough to throw €700 out the window for an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive (or €450 including camera for PS Move). So when I heard about Google's VR solution "Cardboard" and the way it let you use your smartphone as a VR device, I was understandably intrigued.
That being said, I didn't feel desperate enough to buy one of those headsets that are literally made of cardboard for €5, nor did I feel any particular need to find the pieces I needed to make my own, so I did decide to spend €25 on a decent pair of goggles (HooToo in my case, but there are doubtless some other very nice pieces of kit out there of good quality).
For those that aren't aware, Google Cardboard works by having the app split the screen in half, and the Google Cardboard headset specifications have each eye only be able to view that half. With most current 6-7" smartphones having a resolution of 1920x1080, that gives you a resolution of 960x1080 per eye and a theoretical maximum of 60fps per eye. Of course, with the limited processing power of most smartphones, 60fps is hard to achieve on anything but the most simplistic of apps.
I'm running on an Xperia X by the way.
I was astonished to find how usable it actually was. The latency of the headset is noticeable and doubtless no competition with Rift or Vive, and 960x1080 per eye gives rise to some heavy blurring and aliasing, but I played some of YouTube's 360 VR videos and a couple of freebie games such as VR Fantasy and InMind and I was astonished how bearable the latency and resolution was, especially given the way that the gaming press had been exaggerating how anything less than 90fps was unusable.
(My wife tried it as well and got severe motion sickness, but (a) she's pregnant and suffering from morning sickness anyway and (b) has never had the strongest of stomachs, barely able to handle a boat, let alone VR)
There are of course limitations with movement tracking. While Cardboard can use the phone's accelerometer to handle rudimentary pan/tilt/rotate head tracking, it can't detect your relative position outside of GPS.
Now, one of the biggest problems with VR on Android is not the hardware. The hardware's just fine. It's the software. The Play Store is basically full of useless shite that nobody needs, so my next thought is how it could handle streaming a PC desktop to an Android phone with VR support. I was surprised to find that it wasn't only possible to stream a desktop, but actually fool SteamVR into believing that it was a Vive headset.
Thinking it was too good to be true, I gave VRidge a crack, finding that it was relatively easy to set up the Android app and Windows server, and I was rather surprised to find that, all things considered, it worked quite well. It's still in beta, and doesn't always work perfectly, but when the network conditions are right, you can get 60fps with lag south of 50-60ms. On a bad day, you'll get frequent freezes, severe video compression artefacting and lag of half a second.
I still need to figure out why it works well at some times and not at others. When my smartphone is receiving the stream wirelessly, it stands to reason that some of the loss is wireless interference. USB tethering is supposedly a good way to reduce lag and packet loss, but I have actually found it to be worse. That being said, I'm tethered using an old 1m MicroUSB cable to a front USB 2.0 port, so I'll have to try it again when I'm connected via USB 3.0 at the back with a better and longer cable.
But on the whole, I'm pleasantly surprised how well Cardboard + VRidge work as a shoestring solution (€25 for the headset plus €15 for the full version of VRidge) for trying out VR.
Anyone else tried this? Thoughts?
That being said, I didn't feel desperate enough to buy one of those headsets that are literally made of cardboard for €5, nor did I feel any particular need to find the pieces I needed to make my own, so I did decide to spend €25 on a decent pair of goggles (HooToo in my case, but there are doubtless some other very nice pieces of kit out there of good quality).
For those that aren't aware, Google Cardboard works by having the app split the screen in half, and the Google Cardboard headset specifications have each eye only be able to view that half. With most current 6-7" smartphones having a resolution of 1920x1080, that gives you a resolution of 960x1080 per eye and a theoretical maximum of 60fps per eye. Of course, with the limited processing power of most smartphones, 60fps is hard to achieve on anything but the most simplistic of apps.
I'm running on an Xperia X by the way.
I was astonished to find how usable it actually was. The latency of the headset is noticeable and doubtless no competition with Rift or Vive, and 960x1080 per eye gives rise to some heavy blurring and aliasing, but I played some of YouTube's 360 VR videos and a couple of freebie games such as VR Fantasy and InMind and I was astonished how bearable the latency and resolution was, especially given the way that the gaming press had been exaggerating how anything less than 90fps was unusable.
(My wife tried it as well and got severe motion sickness, but (a) she's pregnant and suffering from morning sickness anyway and (b) has never had the strongest of stomachs, barely able to handle a boat, let alone VR)
There are of course limitations with movement tracking. While Cardboard can use the phone's accelerometer to handle rudimentary pan/tilt/rotate head tracking, it can't detect your relative position outside of GPS.
Now, one of the biggest problems with VR on Android is not the hardware. The hardware's just fine. It's the software. The Play Store is basically full of useless shite that nobody needs, so my next thought is how it could handle streaming a PC desktop to an Android phone with VR support. I was surprised to find that it wasn't only possible to stream a desktop, but actually fool SteamVR into believing that it was a Vive headset.
Thinking it was too good to be true, I gave VRidge a crack, finding that it was relatively easy to set up the Android app and Windows server, and I was rather surprised to find that, all things considered, it worked quite well. It's still in beta, and doesn't always work perfectly, but when the network conditions are right, you can get 60fps with lag south of 50-60ms. On a bad day, you'll get frequent freezes, severe video compression artefacting and lag of half a second.
I still need to figure out why it works well at some times and not at others. When my smartphone is receiving the stream wirelessly, it stands to reason that some of the loss is wireless interference. USB tethering is supposedly a good way to reduce lag and packet loss, but I have actually found it to be worse. That being said, I'm tethered using an old 1m MicroUSB cable to a front USB 2.0 port, so I'll have to try it again when I'm connected via USB 3.0 at the back with a better and longer cable.
But on the whole, I'm pleasantly surprised how well Cardboard + VRidge work as a shoestring solution (€25 for the headset plus €15 for the full version of VRidge) for trying out VR.
Anyone else tried this? Thoughts?