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Android Phone Turned Into Virtual Reality Goggles
andylim writes "After years of hype surrounding virtual reality, including the classic '90s movie The Lawnmower Man, few of us can claim to have experienced virtual reality at home. But what if you could build your own virtual reality goggles without having to spend a fortune? Using an HTC Magic and Google Street View, Recombu.com made a simple pair of virtual reality goggles that let you immerse yourself in distant locations. As the article points out, you can also use these goggles with augmented reality apps — although you probably don't want to walk around with them all day long."
aka an iphone strapped to a cardboard box.
A cardboard box with a phone taped on one end, "Virtual Reality Goggles" written with marker on the side, and an elastic cord to hold it to your head. Man, I totally want one of these. Where do I buy them?
I think all of us could claim to have experienced virtual reality at home. Just not with clunky glasses from the 80s, but congratulations in making an expensive new phone into your very own pair of 80s fail.
I personally own a pair of these: http://www.vuzix.com/iwear/products_vr920.html they're exactly what they claim to be, and work just as well. Shame that the technology hasn't made the concept much better over the years. The problem is simply that trying to trick the human vision system is really hard. Doing it in an affordable way is even harder.
How we know is more important than what we know.
We already have enough problems with people running into walls, other people, walking into intersections and getting run over by buses -- and that's with just iPods and bluetooth ear leeches. People go driving off bridges, across corn fields, etc., with navsat equipment... And before we solve the human interface problems here, we're talking about immersing people further?
At the rate things are going, we'll all be walking into each other and talking to walls, and occasionally driving off cliffs... And this'll be considered normal.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
This rig isn't stereoscopic and therefore isn't a pair of "virtual reality goggles" in the classic sense.
Using just a laptop with a built in motion detector and a series of steel poles to rig it to your body you can do exactly the same thing but in higher resolution. From a simple netbook to a 21" monster its all possible and creates a higher resolution virtual reality experience. Going higher resolution why not drive it from a 30" cinema display, sure dragging the cables around is a bore but its virtual reality with exercise built in.
Oh hang on you wanted actual tactile touch, object interaction and other genuine immersive elements that signify the difference from a pair of goggles and a true virtual reality experience.
Nope we don't do that.
This is the virtual reality equivalent of carving little pictures into asprin and claiming they are Ectasy tablets.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
They do close to nothing.
I...I am so... sorry. I'll leave now.
"If I have been able to see so far, It is because I went out and bought a damn binoculars" - Ze da Esquina
It wasn't posted by kdawson..
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
It's like Slashdot is parodying itself by posting this. That, or it didn't meet it's daily quota of articles on Android.
email me at tonyzmadmodz@gmail.com and I can get you a free nintendo DS.
So what did Tony do to piss you off?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Virtual reality? More like real dorkness. ^^
- This is neither 3D or stereo,
- nor has it an acceptable viewing area or
- resolution. Also it has
- no fitting 3D sound,
- does not allow any movement outside the street view paths, and very importantly,
- has no time dimension (nothing moves, or happens, in that frozen world).
Sorry, but gluing a phone to your face does not make it VR goggles,
just like building a spaceship bodywork around your mountain bike will not get you into orbit. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Another story about goggles today, huh? Why is everyone so obsessed with goggles?
At the age of 12 years and a month or so we are sad to announce the demise of Slashdot. It will be missed.
Is this some use of "classic" of which I have been heretofore ignorant?
Hahahahahahaha!!
:D
OMG! that's just fuckin' priceless
Best laugh I've had all day! Thanks for that.
Very much needed after hearing today that a friend committed suicide a few days ago.
Seriously though I thought he'd add in some sort of fresnel lens so you wouldn't have to focus your eyes real close , and why didn't he cut out the front panel of the saftey goggles?
It reminds me of this Radica stealth fighter toy which I have, unlike the Tomytronic 3D games (which I have all 7 variants of) it uses a single backlit screen and a fresnel lens, it also has a rudimentary motion sensor to steer the plane in the game.
synopsis: when the phone battery wears off, Neo realizes that he no longer is saving the human race from enslavement in a VR world constructed by Aliens, but really was wearing a cereal box duck-tapped to his head all along.
1. Go to Babes(or Dudes)OnCam.
2. Open a webcam window
3. Open a second instance of the same webcam
4. Size the the same and place them side by side.
5. Look at them cross eyed until you get a far more interesting pseudo-3D VR than some street view of someplace, without goggles, Googles, immersion, or Androids.
6. Or go blind.
7. Just kidding, that can't happen.
8. No, they won't get stuck either.
9. Mine? They've always been like this.
10. They have so. Really.
11. Wait, androids? That would be SOOOOO.....
12. What? oh. those. Nevermind.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
he's been spamming craigslist. ;) you are very astute.
Obviously this isn't really "virtual reality", still it's a neat concept.
I think it could be quite a bit more useful for augmented reality, though a custom made device would be better (especially if it provided peripheral vision). I wouldn't mind a nice Terminator HUD, though maybe a bit less red.
You think America is free? They must have got to you already :)
To everyone dogging on this article, consider a few things.
The whole setup (cardphone, goggles, phone) looks cheap, true, but it IS cheap. It'd be magnitudes cheaper if you made a similar device without the phone, just able to load locations. Spend the savings on a much more comfortable headset and attachment. Hundred bucks, maybe $200, and you know who would love this? Kids. Maybe 2nd to 6th grade. Young enough NOT to complain about the look as I'm seeing here.
I know my elementary school history education consisted of reading about a culture, and then looking at pictures in a book, usually drawings, sometimes photos. Replace those pictures with these things, and kids would be 10x more interested. And you could definitely put learning into there. Have a scene of a Native American village, a Roman forum, a Civil War battle, or real modern scenes, all in 360 degrees, controlled by the student. It would be simple to tie this into learning and assignments. Have them list pieces of technology they see in the panorama, and explain their functions or how we have a different tool today, or put in an unnamed scene and have them guess the culture along with their reasoning.
I think cheap solutions using everyday technology like this has LOADS of practical applications, and should be commended and developed upon.
I bet one of these are cheaper and probaly do a better job for kids. OK, so its static images, but the concept isn't new.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
When he showed a picture of one of those toy 3d viewfinders, I was hoping that it would have two phones, showing a stereoscopic image of sorts. Maybe move the screens a little closer to your eyes for the full 3D effect. You could probably mod (or compile an existing) version of Doom 2 to support displaying the 3D sprites of enemies inside the levels. I don't know if Android phones are capable of running quake 1 or quake 3 but that would be interesting at the very least. A G1 runs as low as $100 on ebay if you shop around. Maybe someone could finally build a proper virtual boy emulator!
moox. for a new generation.
I think Snowtred said something sensible. Not just stopping at a headset, head mounted displays range from 200 GBP to 30,000 GBP. Stepping up just a notch, with an OS like Android, I am sure it is possible to program real-time stereoscopic processing required for a complete 3-D experience. That too, when the view is a static image, buffering and cache-ing would not be so much a challenge.
Step this up another notch, or right up the ladder of programming challenges, how about a 3G video call with a real time stereoscopic processing? Initially (meaning next 5-6 years) such high speed processing would be beyond the capability of a phone-software. Initially, it would be more a domain of DSPs and special purpose chips, as are used in the military. But as phone processors get more powerful, 3-D could definitely be within reach.
We could keep the cardboard mount.
Get outside - there's the part about the sun and no it won't hurt you...not much and not for long anyway.
Hes really cool.
It would give a much more 'realistic' experience if he didn't have the phone blocking the view out the front.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Since most of these phones wouldn't last all day on a charge, how about adding
some solar cells on the top of the cardboard box?
I am one of the lucky few that has actually used a true VR rig at Autodesk in the early 90's. And as others have pointed out, the OP is not VR. Much like the flying car, VR simply asks too much of you to gain widespread acceptance.
But augmented reality is a completely different game and stands a good chance of being the next big thing.
Since this is /. let's make the effort to get our terminology correct.
The OP shows us that AR is starting to arrive. If Apple showed up with iAR glasses, what apps would you want to use / create?
Place nail here >+
When he started talking about Viewmaster I thought he was going to build a stereoscopic viewer. That's what made the Viewmaster compelling... not that it was "immersive", but that it was 3d.
Also, he left out the high-speed-measuring-and-cutting-the-cardboard montage that would make it look like a real wacky science show episode.
It would have been much cooler if he demoed one of those apps that combines the camera view with geopositioning info to show you the way to the nearest Starbucks.
I'm waiting for someone to tape a 22" LCD to his car's windshield.
Musicians don't die. They just decompose.
Why don't you just turn the camera on on the back of the phone, that way you can experience the real world around you through the goggles... then you could have Real Virtuality.
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They do nassing!
Since we're talking augmentation, I want the goggles from Fred Saberhagen's "The Mask of the Sun"
There's an app for that!
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Wow! And now for something completly different! It's the ANDROID GOOGLE-EYE-ZR!
Seriously, this could actually be 'viewed' as a prototype for a cheap Google pseudo-vr accessory.
LOL - I worked with VR in 1995, and then you couldn't do with a $100,000 system what you can do with a $150 phone and wireless contract with Sprint. Sure I the Division computer system I worked with was fully immersive, but the display was only 640x480, rendering you legally blind. And the environments had to be constructed from the ground up, unless you used the canned demos that came installed with the system, which we did.
Back then I'd have given up the stereoscopic capacity of the goggles for the sense of place that comes with the input of information from Google.
And I shall furiously refute any attempts to rectify my cognitive dissonance to the contrary!
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Take a look at http://cellagames.com/artd.html It is by far the most impressive thing I have ever seen a phone do.
If you have a Nokia e-series Symbian phone with a camera you can fire up an awesome AR game right now. You print out a series of cards that have a block bar code system on them and place them on a flat surface. The camera reads the codes and the game converts them into 3D and projects bad guys, bases, and lasers on the screen. Its not fully mature and your arm gets tired but you can pan around your coffee table playing desktop defense but it is really interesting.
OK, I watched this one and was almost waiting for a punchline at the end. My initial instinct was that it was lame because the guy was using a cardboard box, tape, and safety goggles, and yet the more I watched it, the more it began to seem cool. Strange?!?!
My software never has bugs.
It just develops random features.