From the GitHub this is only capable of 3DoF tracking, which puts it in the same category as the defunct Oculus Go headset, or Google Cardboard. 6DoF is really the bare minimum to qualify as proper VR nowadays.
For the uninitiated 3DoF means the headset only tracks the rotation of your head, not your heads absolute position as you move around, while 6DoF tracking does both. 6DoF is also much harder to implement.
3dof is sufficient, imho, for a large number of VR use cases, because most people don't have a full room dedicated to it, but is at a desk. Sitdown VR setups would be more common, if the equipment was cheaper.
Having experienced both 6DOF and 3DOF on my Quest 3, I can confidently say that 6DOF is leagues ahead even if you are sitting in a chair. Unless you are watching a 180° stereoscopic video, you'll want to look around to get the full experience, and even the small translation movements that result when you turn around can make the experience nauseating.
Besides, VR is already cheap. A new Quest 3S is just $300 and can do pretty much all of what the $3500 Vision Pro can do (just worse); if you just want VR games you can get used 6DOF-capable PCVR or PSVR headsets on eBay for closer to $100.
Also have to hard disagree. I remember going from the Oculus DevKit2 to the Vive, seeing the change in people we'd invite over for "I'm done trying to convince you with words just Come over and try out VR" evenings.
6DOF, even when sitting, is a significant difference. Your brain immediately feels far more at home with good 6DOF.
Fun fact : one week I spent about 5-6 hours every evening playing Elite Dangerous in VR. Mining asteroids while listening to lofi cyberpunk and pretending that mining was my whole life, it was great. Until my partner would bop me on the back of the head ^_^
I very much disagree, your view in vr tracking your head as it does small movements in xyz significantly increases immersion, and more importantly, significantly decreases motion sickness and fatigue.
6DOf not only necessary for room scale. Lack of parallax of 3DOF a common cause of discomfort for many. I’ve been in the space for a decade and given hundreds of demos to people.
Never understood why my GCardboard couldn’t do that, my phone sure has a bunch of accelerometers and giros. Sure higher and other techs can track better but isn’t it enough for a basic sense of mouvement? For most of the applications I won’t more than a few meter anyway.
Probably some have tried and I’ll be curious to know what prevent it.
The problem with accelerometers and gyros is they drift badly if you try to derive absolute positioning from them alone. They need to be fused with some other form of tracking to anchor them in absolute space, which in the case of the Quest and Vision Pro is done with multiple outward-facing cameras fed into a SLAM algorithm.
Maybe Cardboard could have attempted to use the phones camera for SLAM, but a single lens would only have got them so far. Dedicated VR headsets have at least four cameras pointing in different directions, which are sometimes augmented by IR projectors and/or LiDAR.
Most phones have a couple cameras nowadays… I think the Pro iPhones (some, at least) even have some sort of lidar system that seems like it ought to be helpful? Anyway, it is a shame, I guess the market must not have been there.
especially given the camera, it seems like you could do some kind of motion tracking. I guess a Quest has 4 cameras for motion tracking so 1 isn't enough. Though maybe putting a 180degree wide angle lens over it would let it do the work for 4?
Here's an overview of current VR hardware.[1] This is by Phia, who is a VR native. She's been trying everything in VR since she was a teenager.
The most recent advance is Bigscreen.[2] Wired headset display, weighs 127 grams, good screens and optics, about US$1000. We're starting to see the end of the brick you wear on your head era.
It isn't a $200 headset. It's a headset you have to build yourself (including 3D printing and soldering) with $200 worth of parts. Huge difference between the two.
Everyone who is capable of building this thing has the option to take on paid extra work doing /something/, even if it's tutoring rich college brats in calculus at $50/hr.
Clicking through the parts list, somewhat wildly <10cm inch 2k displays appear to be available for <$50 now. After a quick look I can't find much north of that in terms of resolution, but surely there has to be _something_ between this and the SOTA 4k+ displays going in high end headsets. If those exist then the last major barrier I can think of to DIY is the magic lenses required to make those screens viable when <50mm from an eyeball.
"RelativityVR" or similar would arguably be equally good for search, clearer purpose/context from the get-go, and much easier to communicate, vs " 'Relativity', but without second 'I' " ...
No, it will just get auto-corrected. Removing a letter from a word as a brand name is dumb; it is no different than parents naming their kid a normal name with stupid spelling and thinking they are original/creative.
Quest headsets aren't monitors and don't get their input from a computer. They are standalone devices with a consumer OS and app store, much like your PC or smartphone.
For the uninitiated 3DoF means the headset only tracks the rotation of your head, not your heads absolute position as you move around, while 6DoF tracking does both. 6DoF is also much harder to implement.
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