Relativty: An open-source VR headset for $200
relativty.com
relativty.com
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.
https://github.com/HadesVR/HadesVR
It is derived from Relativty and the communities overlap.
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.
It can’t do that “protecting your privacy” thing. And that’s a dealbreaker for many, many people.
Besides 'it's Meta' ; what is it doing with my privacy? I mean actually proven things, not 'probably it is'.
(I am not saying it isn't, but I haven't heard anything in this regard, so it would be interesting to know)
I'd like to place a picture with a QR code in it, have somebody scan the code, then have the option of jumping into a world.
Apps can't access the cameras so you can't write a QR scanner. The Quest has a decent web browser but you can't access the cameras and make a web based QR scanner.
Without access to the cameras apps cannot at all understand the environment and enable you to interact with it. AR apps now have a special module that identifies a physical volume inside your space on a session by session but that's a pale shadow of the SLAM tracking of the Microsoft Hololens and Apple Vision that let you stick a "hologram" into the corner of your office and have it stay there.
Quest 3 devs need more access to make more interesting apps.
I think of this kinda like the data collection with many phone apps. I understand that it needs access to the networks to make connection to wifi or bluetooth, but why is this bundled together with an app's ability to record and send that data back to the developer? There has to be a better way to handle all this.
Yup. The sole reason I haven't bought any of these meta headsets.
They come with strings attached. Or more like, they're fetters and chains.
But you need an account to use a meta VR set.
I'd like to go for something like the 3S but anything Meta is a hard no from me.
I deleted my Oculus account when they took over, and yet somehow I still get Oculus emails from Meta.
this line of argument don't help the discussion.
both companies report millions from selling your information, so assume they are always amassing loads of it, to sell when the price is convenient for them.
Where can I buy it?
the "accessible" way is to enter a real time "header" biding agreement. but chances are you don't know about it either and is just making noise.
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 want super high res so the quality is comparable to a TV or projector setup, and I want OLED because of contrast performance for dark scenes.
I've had pretty good experience with https://goovis.net/products/g3max specifically for movie watching. It has 2560x1440 (per eye) OLED, so not quite 4K; I do hope to see a proper 4K headset like that some day for a reasonable price.
https://www.amazon.com/Glasses-Massive-Micro-OLED-Augmented-...
For $200 they are good. They are native 1080p Sony micro-OLED panels. Brightness and contrast are excellent. I got them mainly to use when traveling, but I also use them laying in bed sometimes.
The resolution is higher than it seems because the 1080p is only displayed across about a 40 degree horizontal FOV, so the PPD is actually very high at about 49, which is markedly higher than even something like the Apple Vision Pro. It's also RGB stripe OLED. I cannot see the pixels like I can with VR headsets.
But alas, there are issues that bother me like ghosting and other internal reflections inside the lenses. Though all VR headsets I have tried have these issues which bother me, so I am not sure if that will ever actually be solved to a level that is unnoticeable by me.
The other thing about the glasses is that they don't recreate a theater, and a virtual room, so the apparent size of the virtual screen isn't consistent as it mainly depends on your imagination for how big you imagine it being. If you view a virtual screen in a fully virtual environment like Bigscreen Beta, then you can fully trick your brain into making the virtual screen seem as big as you want, even IMAX sized, and it really does feel like it.
The problem with full VR environment headsets and large FOV over 100 degrees means that the virtual screen only takes up at most about half of the panel, because a 55 FOV for a virtual screen on a headset with a 110 FOV is about as big as most people would be comfortable. So then a true 4K per eye headset would still only give you a 1080p victual screen. Though I think this is still a level which is good enough.
Once the technology started emerging, I was so exited about the potential. A few games gained support for shutter glasses etc, but 6dof was hyped up so much that everyone jumped on that train instead.
Probably some have tried and I’ll be curious to know what prevent it.
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.
A few years back, we did design a set of <160USD parts to get repeatable absolute head and controller spacial location/pose to sub +-3mm in a room. The key was being able to resolve stable _absolute_ pose at >24Hz with <10kiB/s of low-latency data to handle. i.e. a small generic mcu _quickly_ handles the dual kalman filters and IMU sensors fusion, and battery life is reasonable.
Now build your own versions, it is not that hard... ask Alphabet/Meta/Apple... lol...
Those new 3D lenticular screens look pretty cool, but the prices are still not for consumer hardware yet.
Best of luck =3
Best regards =3
Not that I've tried for VR, but I did already create AR demos 5-6 years ago.
The sensor fusion of IMUs is usually not stable very long, but it does mitigate a few of the very noticeable problems with camera trackers.
Still, it always boils down to the power budget... having a 2.6 kg head mounted unit is ludicrous. lol =)
The translational drift is harder for VR/AR headsets indoors. Drones can do sensor fusion with GPS and the accelerometers to solve translational drift from the accelerometers (or, for FPV drones, they just let the meatware compensate).
So even a good "9DoF" IMU is not usable for 6DoF VR, as it still drifts way too much. Sadly the magnetometer in the IMUs suffers from all the magnetic fields generated by the rest of the electronics around it.
This might also be one of the reasons why 9DoF IMUs are increasingly rare on the market.
A further complication is that the IMUs you find in phones, especially back when all this was new, weren't very good. So even a plain 3DoF experience would suffer from slow response and yaw-drift from lack of magnetometer, which is why GearVR had an extra IMU in the headset and why Daydream required new certified phones with better IMUs.
3DoF can still be good enough for VR180/360 movies, which don't allow movement to begin with. But as far as gaming is concerned, you really do need 6DoF, as even a bit of leaning forward in a chair will make it instantly obvious that the headset motion and the headset visuals are out of sync.
Most shockingly, someone might feel that such a device was better than free, more satisfactory and empowering than anything $200 and a ton of time wasted on side hustling could buy!
For 3D printing stuff, you obviously need a 3D printer, these aren't free, the maintenance isn't free, the space where you are going to put it isn't free. There are also the basic tools: screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers, drill, soldering iron, etc... Also missing are consumables like glue, solder, grease, cleaning agents, etc... and also electricity and gas for shopping. You are also generally expected to have a proper computer.
Sometimes jellybean parts like screws, wires, resistors, etc... are priced, but it is often not the case, as it is difficult to price 2 screws when you can't buy less than 100.
Not the case here but the worst is when a part list include significant parts you are supposed to be salvaged from something you already have. No, I don't have the right broken appliance in my garage and no one has conveniently dropped one in the closest dumpster. So please price it as if I had to buy it.
Of course, someone who is into building stuff most likely have a lot of that already, or maybe is part of a makerspace, but it is unfair to compare what represents a significant investment in time and money to just buying a complete product on Amazon with free shipping and a warranty.
Warranty is another thing to consider, because when something goes wrong with an off the shelf product, if you bought it through a reputable seller (Amazon qualifies), you can normally return it free of charge. If you screw up on your DIY build, which is very common (failed print, bad cut, magic smoke, lose small parts, ...), you get to fix it on your own, savvy people buy spares for that reason, again, not priced in.
For everyone else, I would be very surprised if they didn't have most of those things on hand or would gladly use this type of project as an excuse to buy more tools. That's how DIYers build up their tool chests, a series of excuses. But guess what, these are not one time things. I bought by 3d printer with an excuse and print tons of stuff. It's just how the hobby goes. Hell, I've torn apart a bunch of old electronics from Goodwill when I was teaching myself how to solder (highly recommend this btw), including how to microsolder. Why? For fun? I definitely don't get paid for it (though at one point I sometimes did).
And yes, people like to build and tinker as a hobby.
The thing with building stuff is that it feels like you are always missing something. Like, you have all sizes of screws, including some that look like they come from an alien spaceship, but not the one you need, so here goes another box of 100 for the 10 of them you will use in your lifetime.
> an excuse to buy more tools
It used to be the case for me. Not anymore for the simple reason that I live in an appartement and don't have a dedicated workshop and I feel like I am drowning in parts and tools. The worst part is that I actually may need all of them, but I don't know which one. It turns out that I finally used the turbo-encabulator that has been sitting on shelf for 15 years, and of course, I had to buy new marzlevane grease, as I didn't want to risk side fumbling.
And yes, I have that hobby, and I too like to pretend that I built that thing for dirt cheap, but the reality is that it cost me a lot more than I would have paid otherwise, that's the cost of having a hobby.
3D printing could be an exception though. I have printed plenty of small parts for essentially nothing (except time) that are almost impossible to find at a reasonable price. Also great for gifts, as you can make objects that are personalized and useful, enough to be appreciated, but cheaply and with limited (but non-zero) effort. I hesitated a long time before getting a 3D printer, because it is an investment and I couldn't think of many use cases at the time that didn't involve adding more clutter to my clutter, but it turned out I probably use it more than anything else.
The part about a lack of space is serious though, it has always been a frustration, more than time and expenses. Not enough to warrant major changes in my life though, it is just a hobby among others.
All hobbies cost money. Videogames, reading, sports, music, or even eating at fancy places ("foodie"). Hell, it's a big reason to get work for more money, because you can have more expensive hobbies.
So I don't get these arguments. Let people have their hobbies, even if it is different from yours. This is *hacker* news after all, and the "hacker" part isn't about breaking into computers and installing randsomeware...
Relativty – An open-source VR headset - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24431052 - Sept 2020 (222 comments)
Relativ – A VR headset that you can build yourself for $100 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16195055 - Jan 2018 (84 comments)
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.
Sure thing grandpa!
I mean yeah, I totally agree with "addicted to computers/the internet/phones" as a problem facing a lot of people and should probably be the proper term instead of "internet native".
They were born in meatspace not in VR.
Somoene who spends the majority of their waking hours in Call of Duty or World of Warcraft to the detriment of their real lives aren't CoD or WoW natives; they have a videogame addiction.
Biggest advice to this team is to get there quickly. Half the people in this comments section would bite your hand off for your product as is.
“We are building virtual reality”
Wow cool, tell me more
“Here’s a webpage that reads like a prospectus”
But what about the glasses?
“Want to see our cap table?”
The relativity.com domain could not have been cheap, even if leased.
I’m surprised they are making a new brand, “Unai”/unison.co, instead of continuing with Relativity.
This will be nice for Maker projects, but I don't see it getting traction without 6DOF
A belt-mounted split keyboard on my thighs, and limitless screen space in a serene setting provided by VR. Won’t need a standing desk at all!
This makes the advertisers happy.
love to see more quest 3s hacking tho ($270)
> They are standalone devices with a consumer OS and app store, much like your PC or smartphone.
My PC does not require online account yet - I don't see why my VR glasses should either.
Unless you count Meta Horizon Worlds which is kind of a joke.
Why is that? I don’t see any problems with this particular name. Valve index and oculus rift aren’t that amazing either.