Hacker News Reader

Comment by nvus | Hacker News Reader

Would this work for emulating multiple screens for my PC? Has anyone tried it with existing hardware, can you for example program with it?

View on HN

You "can". I have not tried programming, but I have tried reading.

Resolution is poor, so text display doesn't look great. Not horrible, just not great. However, if you secretly wanted to program using a movie theater display, I guess that would work. I think that's how it would feel like.

The thing is, other than having a gigantic (perceived) display, what's the advantage? We'll still be manipulating text – and you'll have to touch type, because you won't be able to see the keyboard.

We need a lightable-like VR experience before that makes sense.

For watching movies it works. Depending on the person it may be uncomfortable after a while. If you are ok with it, then it is actually nice. The software is not yet there though, the ones I've tried just emulate a movie theater. If/when you can project 3D movies, then it will be great.

I regularly use Reedy through PhoneCast (Samsung GearVR) to read epubs, and the RSVP works good as well. Reading goes almost as well as on my e-ink e-reader with the advantage that I don't have to hold the reader. The resolution on the GearVR is slightly higher then on the Rift, and that pays of while reading. The GearVR is quite heavy though, so I don't want to wear it for more then 30 minutes.

Can I use it to e.g. play games on another device, like a PS4?

I thought the PS VR headset would be perfect for this. Unfortunately it requires to be connected by wires which is frustrating. Something like this, but tailored to PS4 would be awesome.

The latencies involved would make you barf in matter of minutes. Streaming over wired ethernet is already barely adequate for action games and VR requires significantly lower latency to feel good.

You can keyboarding without watching.

> If/when you can project 3D movies, then it will be great.

Most of the movie playing software for the Gear VR supports 3D movies in a variety of formats. It's the only way I can watch 3D movies at home right now.

Using a remote desktop or VNC client through PhoneCast VR (on GearVR) works, I don't know if this Samsung app will be available on Oculus Go, and I see no Remote desktop VR apps. You might be able to stream your desktop as a video stream and use a wireless mouse and keyboard. I have not seen a way to surround yourself with different desktops in mobile VR. That would be my goal as well. It can be done with a highres Mixed Reality headset which I also have, but they need a Windows PC. That experience is adequate. I realized that I could just as well create my ultimate setup in real life, surround myself with 6 27 inch bezel to bezel Dell screens and stand in the middle.

Bigscreen does this and is a launch title for the Oculus Go. It's available today.

https://blog.bigscreenvr.com/bigscreen-is-launching-today-on...

Stream your Windows PC --> mobile VR headset using the "Bigscreen Remote Desktop" feature

I can't speak to this specifically, but generally HMD screens are too low resolution to show text well enough for programming. Also (from what I understand), every virtual screen requires a corresponding HDMI port on your machine

Why?

You only require the HDMI port used by the Rift. Everything else is rendered as a texture inside the virtual environment. That works today, you can have multiple screens floating around, your Windows desktop, etc.

The one HDMI per screen thing is because Virtual Desktop simply output your actual computer screens in VR.

There is nothing stopping you from using one huge screen with transparent background and a bunch of windows.

Check this out: https://vspatial.com/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com