Virtual reality is amazing world, immersing yourself in which you get a lot of unusual impressions. But in order to move into the three-dimensional dimension, you need to have special glasses. They are quite expensive in the store, but it is not difficult to make them at home. You just need to know how to make glasses for virtual reality with your own hands. The easiest way is to make an analogue.

What will be needed for production?

In fact, you don't need to buy any to make glasses. large number tools and materials. You just need to have:

1. A gadget with which you will immerse yourself in the virtual world. This can be a smartphone or tablet (smartphone is preferable)

The more modern the device is, the more spectacular the game will be. The size of your phone or tablet is also not important. The only thing is that the smallest side must be equal to at least two distances between the pupils of the eyes. But you shouldn’t take too large a gadget either, since the middle of each half of the frame should fall into the center of the pupil. This parameter must be adjusted using lenses, moving them closer and further away from each other.

1. Can't do it homemade helmet for virtual reality without lenses. There should be two pairs of them. It is better to choose glass of large diameter. This is due to the fact that their minimum distortion is closer to the center. The greater the distance, the more the image is distorted. The small diameter of the glasses will not be able to cope with the difference between the pupils and the center of each half of the picture.
2. You will need construction polyethylene 20 mm thick. It should be of medium density.
3. In addition, you will need double-sided tape, as well as regular or vinyl film.
4. The frame of the helmet will consist of cardboard. It should be micro-corrugated and 2 mm thick.
5. To secure the glasses you will need a wide belt or elastic band. It is convenient to use the Velcro fastening.
6. To make a helmet, you need drawings. To create them you will need tools for drawing and cutting materials.

All materials are inexpensive, and therefore the helmet will cost much less than a store-bought one.

Making a helmet

Before you make a virtual reality helmet with your own hands, you need to download the Cardboard smartphone application in advance, which will allow you to evaluate the quality of your future helmet.

Next, you need to start making the frame for the first pair of glasses. It is made from a sheet of foam plastic. It is recommended to adjust the lenses so that the distance between your eyes and the phone screen is minimal. To do this, the smartphone is placed on the table and the focus is adjusted using lenses. Once the required distance has been found, the holes can be cut using a centrifugal drill or a compass with a utility knife.

Next, a frame is made for the second pair of lenses. Each glass should be placed in polyethylene. With its help, a 3D effect is obtained. To achieve it, you need to choose the right focus. This can only be done by experimenting with glasses.

After this, you need to make a frame for the helmet. Here it is important to adjust the box to your anatomical features: the shape of the nose, skull, vision. The main thing is that the helmet is comfortable.

It is also necessary to consider the sound output. This is where you should choose good headphones.

The next step is the correct positioning of the phone or tablet screen.

Important! The axis of symmetry, located horizontally, must coincide with the height of the represented line between the pupils.

The screen should be approximately 4 cm from the near edge of the eyepiece. Therefore, it is necessary to decorate the top, bottom, and sides with foam plastic. It should look like a kind of box. The gadget screen is placed in it.

After everything is ready, you need to once again adjust the focus of the lenses and, if necessary, correct the location of the device.

The final stage is the production of the outer frame of the helmet, which is made of cardboard. It turns out to be a box with a lid, inside which is located mobile device. It protects the fragile foam device from damage. In addition, it is the cardboard frame that holds the bulk of the smartphone or tablet and presses it against the foam.

Now all that remains is to attach the rubber band fastening. You can attach it to the frame using double-sided tape.
You also need to make a hole for the USB cable.

The virtual reality helmet is ready! You can safely download games with a 3D effect to your device and enjoy the exciting story.

There are practically no people left who have not heard about virtual reality, and probably everyone has already heard about the Oculus Rift VR helmet, which can be said to have become the standard for this kind devices. There are also solutions on the market that allow you to use a 4-5" smartphone screen as a screen for VR glasses, such as Durovis Dive or the sensational Google Cardboard, which have lowered the bar for democracy in entering virtual reality, one might say for everyone, but still However, this technology has not yet become ubiquitous: not everyone has a smartphone with the required diagonal to use the same cardboard Google project, buy a device like Durovis Dive, albeit not expensive, but worth the money, without any understanding of what exactly to do with it next , and even more so order and wait for the Oculus Rift helmet itself to the common man quite problematic for many reasons - starting from the price for the device, what to do with which is not yet entirely clear, and ending with a rather long wait for the order to be delivered. Naturally, the most important obstacle, besides price, is ordinary laziness and extinguished curiosity.

In this article I will tell you about my path to virtual reality, I will describe a detailed and almost exhaustive guide to making a VR helmet using any relatively modern Android smartphone or tablet of any diagonal, this project will cost about 5-8 hours of work and 500 -2000 rubles costs, depending on your wishes and capabilities, and at the end you will get a very interesting device that will allow you to watch fullHD 3D movies and photos, play Android games and also use a helmet to play your favorite PC games of any kind degree of modernity. Yes, with head tracking and VR immersion.

Therefore, if you are not overwhelmed by laziness and are inquisitive, I ask for a cut, but I warn you, the article is filled with three dozen “potato quality” images, with a total weight of 4 megabytes.

Attention, use everything described below at your own peril and risk; errors in manufacturing may result in a spasm of accommodation and fatigue during prolonged use.

In a recent article about Google Cardboard, readers admired such a simple and interesting concept - a helmet made of cardboard with a pair of lenses, insert your smartphone and fly, but many had questions “how to make it for a different diagonal”, “how to install a tablet there”, and, most importantly, the main thing is “why am I having trouble seeing this 3D of yours.” Me, as the owner of 6.4" Sony smartphone Xperia Z Ultra also became interested in these questions, especially after my friend received a package with the newly released Durovis Dive, where, as in cardboard helmet Google, you can only mount the devices around five inches diagonally, and he gave me a pair of lenses that he bought to make his own helmet.

An attempt to lean my smartphone against the Durovis dive was unsuccessful - something, of course, was visible, but it was far from 3D or even an acceptable picture, and there was no smell of virtual reality. At the same time, the fourth nexus installed in this device showed good results, but the resolution of 1280x720 pixels also did not allow to the fullest feel immersed.

So, having a smartphone, a couple of lenses and some optimism in my hands, I decided to spend a little time making a VR helmet. If you already have a similar helmet, of your own design, Google Cardboard or Durovis Dive, and you are not interested in reading my manufacturing experience, you can go straight to the description of the application possibilities, I’m sure it will be interesting to you.

Tools and materials, necessary equipment for making a helmet

So, the first thing we need is a fullHD smartphone or tablet with the Android operating system, the more modern the better, and the diagonal is, for the most part, not important. The most great value has the long side of the screen - it should not be much smaller than twice the distance between your pupils, but it should not be much larger either - the center of each half of the frame should fall in the center of the pupil, this parameter is adjusted by moving the lenses closer and further away from each other, and here there are pitfalls. For reference, the diagonal of the smartphone used in the described helmet is 162 mm, and the long side is 142 mm.

The second thing we need is lenses. Here you need to remember that the working area of ​​the lens with minimal distortion is in the center, and with distance from it, the image quality rapidly decreases, so the diameter of the lens must be large enough to cover without distortion the difference in distances between the eyes and the centers of the halves of the frame, but at this should not exceed a certain limit so that the lenses can be moved closer to each other or moved further apart, but so that the gaze passes close to the central area of ​​the lens. This is shown schematically in the figure below.

On the topic of choosing and searching for lenses, and in general optical system I will not go into detail, because it is problematic to fully describe this vast topic in this article, there are many options, and I don’t know which one you will have. In my case, a pair of magnifying glasses were bought at a hardware store for 160 rubles, like this:

During tests and initial adjustments, it was decided to disassemble their bodies, and what a surprise - in each such magnifying glass there turned out to be a pair of identical (in any case, indistinguishable to the naked eye) lenses with a diameter of 50 mm and a thickness of about 8-9 mm, and we will work with them.

Actually, to make a helmet you will need the following materials and tools from the nearest hardware store, in my case it was Leroy Merlin:

1. Construction foam, medium density, 20 mm thick - 0.5 m2, 60 rubles per sheet

2. Foamed polyethylene, 20 mm thick - 0.8 m2, 80 rubles per sheet

3. A roll of double-sided tape and a sheet of 2mm micro-corrugated cardboard - 60 rubles for everything

4. Wide elastic band or belt, possibly with Velcro - 50 rubles for everything

5. A set of tools for drawing and cutting materials - 100 rubles for everything

6. Scotch tape, or in my case vinyl film in assortment - 100 rubles for everything

I’ll say right away that when buying materials I didn’t know the required consumption, but according to eyeball estimates, one sheet of foam and polyethylene purchased should have been enough for 3-4 such helmets, and all this was not sold in smaller volumes. This is not a problem, before starting work, just remember the following useful skill - cut and cut exactly half of the material, don’t be afraid to throw it away and try again - the materials cost pennies, and your comfort inside the helmet is priceless, so it’s better to remake the part more conveniently than to endure it later rubbing surface or squeezing, or vice versa, too loose size of the resulting product.

Further, optimizing your activities, I will tell you in advance that even before starting work, you will need to download applications and files to your smartphone on which you will try and adjust your optical system.

Programs and files for testing functionality

So, you have downloaded and tried the methods described above, and have chosen the one most suitable for you personally. fast work. Let's agree that you have a smartphone or tablet with a 6-7" diagonal, two pairs of lenses (you can try with one pair, but my scheme is still two, discrepancies are possible, use at your discretion), installed programs and purchased materials from tools. The first step will be to make the first frame for the first pair of lenses. I made it from polystyrene foam, and in theory, it would be nice to have a centrifuge on hand, even for concrete, which is used to cut sockets, but in general, any type of sliding cutter for wood will do. or even a compass. I didn’t have any of this on hand, so I had to cut out the round holes with a Walter White stationery knife, which, with the diameter of the lenses being smaller than mine, would be completely untidy. So, the first blank is a frame for two lenses, as shown. picture below.

In order to make it, you will need to place the smartphone on the table with the screen up, lean over it, and taking the lenses in your hands, bring them to your eyes, trying to find the focal length. You need to strive for the minimum distance between your face and the screen, so that it fits into the “lens” and the 3D effect is observed. If this effect is not observed, is shifted or distorted, do not despair; first, it will be enough to understand the focal length, or more precisely, the amount by which you need to remove the lenses from the smartphone. What about the distance between the lenses in this pair? It's simple - find the value that is halfway between the distance between the pupils and the distance between the centers of the halves of the frame (half the long side of the screen). Let's say we have 65 mm between our eyes, and the screen is 135 mm, half of it is 67.5 mm, which means you need to place the centers of the lenses at approximately 66 mm, for a first approximation this is enough.

Now, after we have marked the required distances, we cut out the holes for the lenses. Having approximately estimated the density of the foam, I considered that it was enough to firmly install the lens; if I made a hole for it with a diameter slightly smaller than the lens itself, I reduced the cut circle by 2 mm in diameter, which coincided perfectly with the assumption. Your parameters may be different, but the essence is the same - make the holes a little smaller. You need to recess the lens shallowly, I recessed it by 2 mm, below it will be clear why, and there is probably no need to mention that it would be nice to place the lenses in the same plane, that is, they should both be recessed evenly.

The first stage is completed, now we have a mock-up of the screen-to-lens distance, and we can move on. Remember what I said about two pairs of lenses? They may not be that important in an optical sense (they actually are), but they are invaluable for further tuning. Let's say you installed the first pair of lenses as described above, turned on a 3D image (game, movie, your choice) on your smartphone, and are trying to find three-dimensionality. One pair of lenses did not allow me to do this at once. But when I brought the second pair to my eyes and, after playing with the distances, found the desired position, a three-dimensional image immediately appeared on the screen. To achieve this, you need to simultaneously move the lenses relative to the screen, in a plane parallel to this screen and the first pair of lenses, up and down and to the sides. Find a detail in the image that you can use to track the parallax effect, focus on it and try to connect the images in each eye so that they match. With some skill, this can be done very quickly, but, unfortunately, I cannot tell you a way to speed up this process. This test stand helped me, here the lower pair of lenses is already in foam plastic and adjusted to the screen, and the upper pair, framed in polyethylene, and each lens separately, I moved in front of my eyes, in search of “stereo”, and under the entire structure - screen at the desired height:

Sooner or later you will get fresh, juicy, fashionable youth 3D, but due to the introduction of a second optical pair into the circuit, the first focus setting will be a little off. There is no need to be scared, all that is required is to reconfigure the focus again. To do this, you first need to make a frame for the second pair of lenses you just adjusted. My advice is to first copy your first frame adjusted for the changed distance between the lenses, and then visually estimate the distance between the first and second pair of lenses after you have adjusted the three-dimensionality. It will be enough by eye, and this distance should be compared with the thickness of the material - well, literally, whether the distance between the pairs is greater or less than the thickness of the foam. If it’s less, everything is simple, you will need to install the lenses in the second frame a little deeper, by the required amount, but if this distance is greater than the thickness of the foam, you can simply turn the first frame over with the more recessed side facing you, so you don’t have to fence a garden made of spacers between two frames. In my case, this is what happened, I turned the first frame the other way around, folded these frames with their more recessed sides facing each other, and recessed the lenses slightly inward on each side.

So, we have an optical device that allows us to view 3D on a smartphone screen. But, of course, we remember about the focus, which was changed first by introducing a second pair of lenses, and then by turning the first pair over to the other side, so the focus needs to be adjusted again. When, through simple movements, you catch the focus, you will need to notice this distance, and make foam supports of such a height that by installing your first frame above the screen, the image in the lenses will be focused.

Here it is necessary to say the following, in my opinion, an important property; I am not exactly sure of its nature, but I have observed it several times in experimental subjects. Many activities in life require repeated approaches, approximation, and iteration. This, apparently, is not clear to everyone, but this method almost always works, and gives better results if you follow a simple algorithm - try and improve. In the case of this helmet, it’s the same story, perhaps you won’t be able to make two correct pairs of frames the first time, for example, I remade one pair three times, and the second twice, and I already know that I will redo it again, because there are ideas for improvements. But with each rework, the quality increased and the picture became better, so if you made a couple of approaches, but “nothing worked out” for you, don’t despair, take a break and start again, continue. The result is worth it.

A small hint - if the resulting eyepiece (as I will call a block of two pairs of lenses and their frames, assembled together) has a good stereo image, but the focal length has increased significantly relative to the first approximations, disassemble the eyepiece in half into two frames and play with the distances, perhaps there will be a more optimal one - maybe you will need to turn one of the eyepieces the other way around, or maybe space them further away from each other. We remember what needs to be achieved maximum quantity useful pixels (otherwise it will be uninformative) and a minimum distance from the screen (otherwise it will be cumbersome). If you have a wonderful, wonderful focal length, but for some reason the stereo base is not successful, carefully cut the foam plastic in the middle between the lenses with a knife and look - you need to move them apart, or bring them closer together, and then act according to the situation. Roughly speaking, you will have two eyepieces, one for each eye, adjust them, and when it works, glue them together with double-sided tape.

At this stage, the story with the lenses ends, and now it doesn’t matter whether you made the optical design according to my version, or based on your own considerations, then it won’t be so important, the rest of the story is suitable for any option.

Helmet prototype assembly

Having found the total focal length from the eyepiece to the screen, we have to make a box on its base, and here there are even more options than at the lens stage. But, now you have in your hands the “heart”, or rather the “eyes” of the device, and its most complex part, which means that it will be easier in the future. Let's say you managed to do everything described above correctly, and you can confidently observe the 3D image by placing the eyepieces to your eyes and leaning over your smartphone. After playing around with this demo layout a lot, you will probably notice some features of the placement of lenses and the convenience of eyepieces, which you personally find most in need of optimization. Don’t limit yourself too much, optimize and improve something for yourself, for your vision, the shape of your nose and skull, and so on.

For example, after making the eyepiece, I applied it to my face and realized that I had touched it to a foam brick. There is absolutely zero convenience, and you still have to wear this helmet on your head for some time! Therefore, when making the box, I tried to increase the wearing comfort while simultaneously placing the smartphone securely and conveniently inside. I had to get rid of inside polystyrene foam, and replace it with foamed polyethylene, it is in the picture yellow. It is more flexible and allows the shape to be twisted within a wide range, which is why the inner surface of the helmet is made of it. It should fit snugly to the face in the area of ​​the eyes and around the nose, otherwise you will constantly observe fogging of the lenses from breathing, immediately take this point into account. There was an idea to make this part from a construction or swimming mask, but I didn’t have any at hand, so I did it myself, however, the option with a ready-made mask may seem preferable to you, and I happily recommend it. I myself decided to also make the sides for the helmet adjacent to the head.

Another point worth remembering is the weight of the smartphone and the lever on which it will work, exerting pressure on the support. My Xperia Ultra weighs 212 grams, and the required distance at which it is removed from the face is 85 mm, plus the own weight of the box - all this together, I would say, makes the helmet comfortable with reservations. It has one strap at the back, this will be visible in the picture at the end of the section, this strap is made of a rubber band, 40mm wide, which pulls it quite tightly to the back of the head, but if the screen was heavier, or the lever was larger (read focal length longer) - it would have been possible to wear a helmet would be much more difficult. So for owners of devices with a larger diagonal or weight, I advise you to immediately think through a mounting scheme on the head with a second, transverse strap from the bridge of the nose to the back of the head, it will be more convenient and safer.

Also, at this stage you will need to think about another nuance - sound output. I have several pairs of headphones, both closed and open, there are earbuds and so on, but after thinking about it, I did not build a helmet around the large and comfortable Sony MDRs with large ear pads, but chose simple earphones. Perhaps it will be critical for you to make a helmet with a cool sound, in which case you need to immediately imagine how exactly you will articulate the headphones, their arch and the helmet with its mount. I had such a temptation, which quickly evaporated at the prototyping stage, but I will definitely return to it in the next, improved version of the helmet, if I decide to make it. In any case, you will need a hole in the helmet body that matches the position of the audio output of your smartphone.

So, I have this device on my desk - an eyepiece with a slightly adjusted head shape inner surface. It already sits comfortably on the face, fits the width, and to make it I only needed this template, cut from a piece of foam curved to the shape of the head; it will fit, with some adjustments, to both the top and bottom of the helmet:

Previously, we found out the focal length of the eyepiece in several approaches. Now you need to position the smartphone screen at the required distance. Remember that the screen must be positioned so that its horizontal axis of symmetry coincides in height with the imaginary line between the pupils, but the fact that it must be positioned symmetrically relative to the face is already clear to you. In my case, the distance between the screen and the side of the eyepiece closest to it was 43 mm, so I made the top and bottom surfaces from foam, as well as two side inserts. The result was a foam box, which, once placed on the screen, could be used for its intended purpose, which is where the template shown above was needed.

At this stage, there were several small adjustments to the focusing and positioning of the smartphone, after that - accurate measurement of the results obtained and cutting of the outer, cardboard case. It serves two purposes - it protects the rather delicate foam from mechanical damage, I quite easily pressed it with my fingers at the stage of initial experiments, I had to keep an eye on this, and the second and main goal is that the cardboard will hold the screen in the desired position, pressing it against the foam.

The result is a box with a lid on the top front, under which the smartphone is hidden.

Having tried the helmet on my head, and having seen enough of all kinds of 3D, I corrected minor inconveniences inside the helmet, and made a fastening - an elastic band to the head. It is simply sewn together with a ring and glued with double-sided tape to the cardboard, plus it is secured on top with a silver oracle, which was used to replace the tape. The result was something like this:

By the way, this image shows another technical hole, which is used to connect a USB cable, which we will need a little later. And this is what the helmet looks like on the head of the test subject who donated the lenses for this helmet:

So what happened in the end?
Dimensions: 184x190x124 mm
Curb weight: 380 grams
USB input/output
3.5mm headphone jack
Useful screen area 142x75 mm
Resolution 1920x1020 pixels

It's time to move on to the program part of our journey.

Available features of the VR helmet

Watching 3D video

The very first thing that comes to mind is watching movies in 3D. This is a very simple and understandable entry point into virtual reality, although, more strictly speaking, it is rather a threshold not far from it, the previous step. But, in order not to detract from the merits of this type of entertainment, I inform you that watching 3D movies in the resulting helmet is a very interesting and fun activity. I've only watched two films, so I'm not fed up yet, but the feeling is very good: imagine that you are one and a half meters from the wall that you are looking directly at. Without turning your head, try to look around the area around you - this will be the screen available to you. Yes, the resolution is small - each eye gets only 960x540 pixels from a fullHD film, but nevertheless it leaves a quite noticeable impression.

To watch movies in this form, you will need a free MX Player player with a codec installed for your processor, I have it ARMv7 Neon, and, in fact, a video file. You can easily find them on all kinds of torrent trackers, the technology is called Side-By-Side or SBS for short, for these reasons keywords feel free to search. The player has the ability to adjust the aspect ratio of the video being played, which is extremely useful for SBS files, which otherwise stretch vertically to fill the entire screen. In my case, I needed to go to settings - “screen” - “aspect” and selecting “manually” to set the aspect ratio to 18 to 4, otherwise you will get vertically elongated images. I tried to look for other players with similar functionality, but I couldn’t find them, if you know, add them to your knowledge base.

In general, I have nothing more to add to this point - an ordinary 3D cinema is in front of your eyes, everything is very similar to going to the cinema, or watching on a 3D TV with polarized glasses, for example, but at the same time there are differences, in general, if you love 3D, you should try a VR helmet.

Android applications for Durovis Dive and similar systems

This whole story actually began from this point. In principle, the following three links show almost all possible programs for Android at the moment:
www.divegames.com/games.html
www.refugio3d.net/downloads
play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.samples.apps.cardboarddemo

What do we need to experience virtual reality comfortably? Obviously - a joystick, or any other controller, for example - wireless keyboard. In my case, with a Sony smartphone, the natural and logical choice is the native and natively supported controller from the PS3, but since I didn’t have one on hand, but the good old Genius MaxFire G-12U, I added an adapter from microUSB to USB to it , hooked it up to the smartphone, and was not even surprised that it immediately began working both in the device interface and in individual programs without any questions.

You will also need headphones, because immersion in virtual reality without sound will be incomplete. I have these ordinary plugs, and you can figure out for yourself which is more convenient.

What should you expect and what should you not expect from the applications presented in this section? The fact is that all applications in general that are written for Android on the topic of virtual reality are very meager, to put it mildly. If you run them without a helmet and try, well, to see what kind of virtuality this is, then there is a chance that you will not want to buy or make a helmet. They are frankly very crude and miserable, and do not represent anything super-interesting.

But. When you put your head in the helmet, everything becomes completely different, and personally, I, skeptical of everything, would never believe it, but nevertheless it is so.

The main thing to consider is head movement tracking. Even with poor implementation, or slowdowns, this is a completely new and unexplored field of sensations, believe me, before the advent of the helmet, you had not felt anything like this for a very long time, since the times of adventures with rock climbers in the mountains, walks along the bottom of the oceans, overnight stays in the forest and other massive murders that we all love so much. The helmet provides a completely unrealistic sense of reality, I apologize for the pun, and any, even the poorest graphics will seem like candy inside it, in general, I must say - if you like to play games, or experience new things, the helmet is the device for you.

From own experience: imagine you are in 1998 and, say, a Polish production studio computer games I made a demo in which you landed on the moon, exited the module, saw the canonical American flag, looking like a piece of cardboard nailed to a stick, stuck in the ground, and above the flag in the sky there was an inscription in the sky in an extremely poor font “gather your tools, 3 pieces left.” At the same time, the graphics are made up of very, very simple elements, where the monotonously copied starry sky and the square-repeating soil under your feet occupy 98% of the usable screen area, and somewhere a couple of pixels of those “tools” that you have to find are visible. Not really. You can already see them, you just need to walk to them for 10 minutes. Just go. By the moon. No sound. By repeating sprites. No action at all.

Tell me, after how many seconds would you delete this game from your computer or even your smartphone? That's it. And wearing a helmet, this miracle allows you to experience (!) devastation and loneliness the only person on the planet. No joke. After 15 minutes of the game, I found myself desperately afraid that I was alone on the Moon, under a canopy of stars, and it was completely unknown what to do.

More or less the same story with all other games and applications. They are miserable, they are creepy as hell, but at the same time inside the helmet - they send you back 15-20 years ago, and who even earlier, to the very games that they played, and not with which they spent time. So far, my only question for the developers is - why isn’t there a single game with a full-fledged plot for this scenario? A single game would save the situation incredibly, because now, showing people virtual reality on Android, there’s nothing special to show, everything with the reservations “this is a demo, you can’t shoot here,” and “that’s it, the whole game is completed, yes, in 4 minutes." By the way, almost all of these applications are written in Unity, which makes them all the more surprising low level, or I don't know how to search.

But don’t listen to me anyway, try it yourself and tell me your version, I’m interested. And season it with links, I will do it immensely. For example, I even installed a demo with the outrageous name Toilet Simulator. Because.

A small easter egg

In fact, on the Durovis Dive website there is a link to Quake 2, a demo version of the game that can be installed on Android and has the ability to display SBS mode, at the bottom of this page - detailed instructions how to do it. The only thing that did not work in automatic mode was that a separate archive was not unpacked, so it will be there in the settings running game links to mirrors, you need to retype one of them into the browser on your desktop, download the self-extracting archive, pull out the pak0.pak file from there and put it in the directory of the game installed on your phone, I have it called baseq2.

After that, the same Q2 started up for me without problems - it works very quickly, and everything is clearly visible. It became scary after literally 30 seconds, a chill down the spine, but I won’t describe it further, try it yourself. It was not possible to take a screenshot, unfortunately, and the joystick currently only works in the “wander” mode, it can’t shoot, you’ll have to tinker with the settings.

Thus, all this sluggishness of Android developers (attention Android developers!) led me to the thought - well, there are no games for Android - let's try a desktop computer, keeping in mind the main advantages virtual helmet- a huge screen with immersion in the image and head position tracking, and we will try not to lose them.

Connecting to a computer as a VR device

To be honest, the idea of ​​such a connection appeared immediately, but there was not a single idea of ​​how, what and in what order to do it. Therefore, while I was drawing, cutting and gluing parts, I was simultaneously thinking about where to get information on how to display an image from a computer’s video card, while simultaneously transferring head tracking, that is, gyroscope and accelerometer data to the computer. And all this, preferably with minimal delay.

And you know, a solution was found. It consists of three stages, each of which we will consider separately, and first I will describe the working options, and then I will go through those that turned out to be ineffective in my case, but may be useful to you.

We create 3D output on a computer.

It turned out to be relatively simple, but without knowing right away, you can get lost. So, the ideal computer that allows you to play full-fledged 3D games in stereo output format has a video card based on conventional NVidia or ATI chips, the more modern the better, and, what is very important, the drivers have the ability to configure an arbitrary resolution. If you have a laptop (my case) or a video card whose drivers do not support arbitrary resolutions, the image in the helmet will be elongated vertically, and a possible solution, unsafe and rather tedious, is to delve into the registry and register permissions there. Your suggestions, again, are warmly welcome!

In general, you will need to install a version of the video card drivers that supports arbitrary resolutions. If your smartphone and your monitor each have 1920x1080 pixels on the screen, then everything is very simple - in the video card settings you need to create an arbitrary resolution of 1920x540, and then apply it to the monitor. You will see how the working area of ​​the screen has become smaller in height and is located in the middle of the screen. If the picture on your screen is something like this, then you did everything right:

So, everything was tested on a regular but powerful desktop computer with an NVidia video card and latest version drivers. It is important that the conditions are met - when running the game in stereo mode, the image on each half of the frame is not elongated.

The second thing you need is to download the 3D driver - which has a full trial version for a period of two weeks, and allows you to output 3D images to peripheral devices in arbitrary configurations, side-by-side, top-bottom, and anaglyph, in basically, whatever you want.

Install in the usual way, launch the TriDef 3D Display Setup utility and select the Side-by-side option, now when you launch games from this driver, they will be in stereo mode “each eye has half a frame.” If you have games installed, then you can open the TriDef 3D Ignition utility and search for installed games, a shortcut to your game will appear in the window - voila, you can use it.

I didn’t have any games installed, so I installed Steam and bought Portal 2 for 99 rubles on sale, but this is an advertisement. And here comes a point that you need to be aware of - the driver that serves stereo output can output stereo for any game that can be launched in full screen, but cannot create output for a window whose area is smaller than the size of the desktop. Remember this point, below it will become critical, like a red rag to a bull.

In general, if the drivers are installed and configured, the game is purchased and launched, and it all looks something like this on the screen:

You can move on to the next stage.

Transferring an image from a computer to a smartphone screen

There are several ways here, and judging by the numerous icons in the market, there are not so few programs that allow you to convey what is required. I was “lucky” before I found a convenient and workable application, I tried several other, depressing and frustrating hacks from Google Play, and I’m sorry that they put any slag there. I spent more time searching and setting up applications than making the device. Moreover, I had to buy one of the applications, and everything would have been fine with it, if everything had not been bad. But first things first: you will definitely need a local Wi-Fi connection between your computer and smartphone.

You will also need a good and fast “remote desktop” that does not log you out of your desktop account when logging in remotely. Such a program turned out to be the free Splashtop, and the half-paid iDisplay was also found.

The one that is paid - everything is fine with it, only it did not allow placing the screen cropped at the top and bottom exactly in the middle of the display, so I had to abandon it, but overall it works well, there was even a review on Habré, where I got it from. But Splashtop worked as it should, so install it.

All programs of this type work in approximately the same way - you need to download and install the host version for your desktop, and the receiver version for your smartphone. I think there won’t be any problems with this, so I won’t describe these processes, it only takes about five minutes of work - downloaded, installed, registered, configured, connected. The only thing I will mention is that you will need to go into the settings and indicate that your wireless connection needs to be used locally, for which you will need to explicitly specify the IP of your computer in the Android version, you can find out this address using the ipconfig utility in command line. Actually, these are all the settings, everything should already work, here, for example, is a screenshot from a smartphone at the moment:

If you launch the game from the 3D Ignition utility, it will appear on the screen of your smartphone at the same time as it will appear on the monitor. Or not. Because here lies the hottest pitfall of our history, and yes, you will laugh as much as I did. Watch out for sleight of hand: the driver that displays a stereo image from the game requires full screen (if you select the “windowed” mode, stereo will not work, the game will launch normally), and the program for accessing the desktop from your smartphone shouts “I can’t” launch fullscreen, sorry, yes, absolutely,” and can only show the desktop and the windows on it.

Therefore, the most subtle point. Most likely, you will be able to play any games that run in the “borderless window” mode. I don’t know for sure why and where such a mode exists in games, for this reason, or for some other - but it turned out to be a salvation: on the one hand, it deceives the desktop and tells it that it launched the game in full screen, and on the other hand, it formally displays only a window on the smartphone, albeit without frames and expanded to fill the entire screen. This is the same case when the wolves are fed and the sheep are safe.

So I was lucky, Portal-2, which I downloaded from Steam, turned out to be exactly the game that supports all three launch modes. So you just have to check at your own discretion which games will launch this way and which won’t.

Now you can launch the game and play it wearing a helmet. But, as they say, the picture would be incomplete if there were no head movement tracking.

Connecting head tracking

You have read this far, for which I congratulate you. I don’t want to deceive you, this point is the most complex and least studied, however, do not despair. So.

The first thought was to “disassemble” the Oculus Rift SDK or Durovis Dive SDK, fortunately the sources are in open access. Perhaps this should have been done, but I am not a programmer, and I don’t understand anything about this. Therefore my gaze was turned to ready-made solutions, which transmit the position of the smartphone in space to the desktop. As it turns out, there is simply a gigantic number of programs that supposedly can do this. Judging by the descriptions, almost everything is like that. And again, I went through dozens of programs with sweet promises, but in reality it was even more scary, disgusting and wretched than going through programs for displaying images on the screen of a smartphone, and what’s more, even more wretched than those demo games for Durovis Dive, which I described above. If at this stage you catch a wave of frustration, then that’s it, “goodbye helmet.” Nevertheless, the necessary (with reservations) program was found. But first the fly in the ointment - Monect, UControl, Ultimate Mouse, Ultimate Gamepad, Sensor Mouse - all this did not work. Especially the first one on this list - the description says that Monect Portable provides a mode

FPS mode - Using gyroscope to aim the target just like a real gun in your hand, perfect support COD serial!

As a result, I bought it for a fabulous 60 rubles, but this turned out to be untrue. This mode simply does not exist in the application! I was angry.

But let's move on to successful options. You will again need to download the host and client version of the program called DroidPad. It was she who, when setting up one of the modes, made it possible to do the necessary and transmit the parameters of the sensors in real time via wireless access. The algorithm is as follows: install the program on your desktop and smartphone, launch it on the smartphone, select the “Mouse - Mouse using device tilting” mode, and then launch its desktop version.

If everything is done in this order, the connection should work, and voila - you control the mouse cursor on the computer screen! So far it’s chaotic and chaotic, but wait, we’ll set it up now. In my case, in the Android version of the application, the screenshot of the settings window looks like this:

You can set the name of the device, but it’s better not to touch the port - it works by default, but it’s better not to touch what works for now. In the desktop version, everything is a little more complicated, my settings are like this, but they still need to be optimized, so use them only as a guide, nothing more:

Here are the X and Y axis settings on the computer screen, and the sensor strength from the phone. How exactly this all works is still a black box for me, because the application developers do not provide any documentation, so I provide the information “as is”. I completely forgot to add that I have a program installed on my smartphone that controls the launch of applications in landscape or portrait orientation, and all the applications that were tested for this venture were tested in landscape mode. The application is called Rotation Manager, and auto-screen orientation is globally disabled on the smartphone.

Having configured your applications accordingly, you will need to connect your smartphone to the computer according to the algorithm described earlier (for me, any discrepancy with the specified order leads to the termination of the application), and, holding the smartphone in your hand as it will be located inside the helmet, try to configure the settings - alternately adjusting the desktop sliders and clicking on the “Calibrate” button in the Android version window. I’ll say right away - after quite a few attempts, I managed to adjust the angles and turns relatively decently, but then, while adjusting more precisely, I lost those settings without thinking about taking a photo of them, and those that are now in the screenshot are only an approximation to the previous ones that were It still feels better. One more thing - all these sliders are very sensitive, and holding the smartphone in one position in your hand so that it does not move the cursor arbitrarily is inconvenient, so you constantly have to disconnect the connection and configure, then connect and check. After some time, the information in the article on this matter will be updated, but even with the current settings - inside game world it looks quite impressive.

So, how does it feel? At the moment, due to lack of time, I have installed the games Portal 2 and the free robot shooter HAWKEN, offered by Steam. As for the portal, you are quickly enslaved by the surrounding atmosphere and sound, and the immersion is so strong that there is nothing to compare it with, except maybe sitting in front of the computer 10 years ago at four in the morning, everything is perceived about as acutely. But if there it was fatigue and darkness around, then in the helmet it was a slightly different, brighter effect of the same presence. But the second game, where you sit in the canonical “huge humanoid robot”, surprised me. If you have a helmet on your head, reality, projected as if onto the surface of the helmet in the game, becomes closer, warmer and brighter, and very quickly. Amazingly fast.

You shouldn’t assume that the sensations caused by a VR helmet will be the same for everyone, but based on all the “guinea pigs” I can confidently say that absolutely everyone appreciated this device, the reviews are extremely positive and interested. Therefore, I confidently recommend that you spend one day making this helmet and judge for yourself. My personal goal was exactly this - to quickly satisfy my curiosity, without specially wasting money and time on waiting. I spent about three days of searching and setting everything up, and now I’m passing the baton to you, in a condensed form.

Personally, I decided that I would most likely make a second version of this helmet, with minor modifications and improvements, and subsequently purchase the latest consumer version of the Oculus Rift. It turned out to be very interesting and informative.

I’m really looking forward to new applications for Android, and partly this article was written with the hope that one of the developers will become interested and reveal some interesting stuff for everyone to see. And, a small wish - if you know any programs and solutions that I did not mention, but which would expand the quality of the article and improve the performance of the device - write about them in the comments, and I will definitely add valuable information to the article for future generations.

TL;DR: the article describes a fast and high-quality method for making a virtual reality helmet based on an HD smartphone or tablet with Android on board, complete step by step instructions And general principles this process, and also describes the main available methods Applications of the resulting helmet: watching movies in 3D format, games and applications for Android, and connecting the helmet to a computer to immerse yourself in the reality of desktop 3D games.

At the latest I/O conference, Google showed off its version of cardboard virtual reality glasses. In principle, schemes for such glasses have been circulating on the Internet for a long time (for example, FOV2GO). However, the scheme of the guys from Google turned out to be simpler than their analogues, and they also added a chip with a magnet that works as an external analog button. In this post, I will share my experience in assembling virtual reality glasses based on a smartphone: Google Cardboard from cardboard, OpenDive from plastic and glasses cut on a laser cutter from acrylic.

Materials

1. Cardboard. I used an unwanted laptop box. Another option is to order your favorite pizza or buy cardboard in a special store (search for micro-corrugated cardboard E).
2. Velcro. Can be purchased at any sewing store. I took a strip of adhesive Velcro for 100 rubles. This tape will be enough for pairs of 10 points.
3. Magnets. In principle, this thing is optional if you do not plan to use the Google API. Google itself recommends taking 1 nickel magnet and the second a ferromagnet. On our Internet there are plenty of such magnets in specialized stores, but I was too lazy to wait for the order. As a result, in the same store I bought a set of magnets for fasteners, however, they did not work quite perfectly for me. Cost - 50 rubles for 3 magnets.
4. Lenses. In general, it is recommended to take lenses 5-7x, 25mm diameter, aspherical. The easiest way is to buy a magnifier with two lenses, like the Veber 1012A, which is cheaper than buying 2 identical ones. I only had a 30x magnifying glass with two 15x lenses on hand (I bought such a magnifying glass on the market for 600 rubles). Despite the excessive magnification, it turned out well.
5. Elastic band and carabiner. You will need them if you plan to use the Cardboard as glasses and not hold them with your hand all the time. I bought 2 meters of elastic and a pair of carabiners at the same sewing store for another 100 rubles.
6. Foam rubber. To prevent glasses from cutting into your face, you should cover the contact points with foam rubber. I used window insulation tape. Another 100 rubles on the construction market.

Final price of materials: 400-1000 rubles depending on the lenses.

Tools

1. Stationery knife.
2. Hot-melt glue (with a gun). Small is better.
3. Stapler or thread with a needle.

Assembly

Here, in general, everything is trivial.

1. Go to the Google Cardboard website and download the cutting diagram. If you happen to have a laser cutter on hand, you can cut on it. If not, then print it on a printer and cut it out along the contour.
2. We attach Velcro. In addition to the two Velcro in the original, I added one to left side so that the structure does not move apart. I also glued two Velcro strips on the sides, onto which we will later glue an elastic band for attaching to the head.
3. We insert the lenses, a magnet and fold the structure.
4. We attach 2 pieces of elastic to Velcro. At one end we insert a carabiner at a fixed distance (I fixed it with an elastic band with a stapler :)). On the other side we take an elastic band with a reserve and attach the second part of the carabiner with the ability to adjust the length.
5. Success!

However, after installing the application, I discovered that my button did not work in this form. To activate the click, I had to take the magnet in my hand and move it directly along the left side of the phone, however, even this way it only works once in a while. A sign that you are doing everything right - when you touch there should be a feeling magnetic field, which slightly pushes the magnet away from the phone.

Perhaps the reason is that I took too weak a magnet. Perhaps it's because my model (Galaxy Nexus) is not declared supported by Google. Nevertheless, the demos work, the button is pressed, hurray!

Plastic model

If you want to worry about assembling as little as possible and you have a 3D printer (or enough money to order printing), then this option is for you. :) I printed a model from the Thingverse website. There, for the query “virtual reality” there are several more similar options.

I ordered a print from the 3D Printing Laboratory, it cost about 3000 rubles.

All materials from Cardboard are relevant for these glasses, so the final price tag reaches almost 3500 rubles.

Assembling a plastic model

We insert the lenses, glue the foam, and use regular office rubber bands to secure the phone. You can also cover the entire surface outside the lenses with foam rubber, then the light from your smartphone will not disturb you. Larger lenses can also be inserted into these glasses.

Another option: insert lenses from a Soviet stereoscope. To do this, you will have to slightly modify the mount, replacing the round holes with rectangular ones. The option with a stereoscope is quite convenient, but it has a disadvantage - the working area is smaller, the image is cropped at the top and bottom.

Model made of acrylic (or plywood)

Even before collecting virtual reality glasses became a trend, a wonderful design of glasses cut on a laser cutter appeared online. Without thinking twice, I decided to order their cutting in the same laboratory. They didn’t have plywood at that moment and they offered me to cut it out of black acrylic. The cost of cutting together with the material was about 800 rubles.

In addition to lenses, rubber bands and foam rubber, for assembly you will need about 20 screws with 3-4mm nuts (the author of the model suggests using 4mm, but they were difficult for me to fit in and I took 3mm).

Oddly enough, the final version turned out to be even better than the 3D printer. Firstly, the glasses are lighter and more compact. Secondly, the material is smooth and more pleasant to the touch. The downside is that acrylic is a fairly fragile material, and such glasses may not survive a fall.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, there is still very little content for such glasses. You can try playing with streaming, as described in a recent

I'll tell you right away. I don’t understand anything about this yet, and my grandchildren haven’t taught me yet. But the fact that virtual reality glasses can be made from old glasses and a shoe box was immediately captivating. He dragged me to his place for further investigation.

This project will show you how to make VR views such as Google cardboard, but optimized for tablets. Apart from the tablet, the cost is very low. He uses two pairs of reading glasses from the dollar store (Dollar Tree), a plastic shoebox, and a pair of inexpensive prism lenses costing about $7. The result is a very efficient device thanks to high resolution display and a larger field of view of the smartphone.

Step 1: Some Background Information

I created this device in order to engage students in the classroom using VR technology for their education. Since I am a teacher in Salinas, California, I am naming this Salinas VR viewer.

Google's Cardboard was inspired by this viewer, but it was made to address several major shortcomings of trying to force the viewer to a larger screen than a smartphone. It would seem that all that is needed is to scale to the view size, but there are several problems with this approach.

One of the main problems is that, like cardboard, such a viewer will only use a simple pair of convex lenses to view the display. However, this may not be effective because large size display means that images cannot be placed (optically) directly in front of each eye. If these have not been corrected, then the person should be able to move each eye towards the direction of the ears. My viewer solves this problem by using an inexpensive prism lens, shifting the image so that it is optically directly in front of the viewer's eyes.

Another problem with using simple round convex lenses is that they are simply too primitive to allow for a VR experience. Such lenses have very limited area to widen the viewing area is that the eyes must be placed very close to the lens and thereby limit any eye movements. This kind of restriction on how we move our eyes is not natural. It's hard to see how much fidelity a VR system can have if it forces a person to hold themselves rigidly, looking straight ahead in an effort to keep the image in focus. People should be allowed to move their eye and still see VR images. Fortunately, some lenses have evolved to be as optimal as possible for people to use, i.e. reading glasses. These glasses allow for a wide field of view (fov), and a very large viewing area. These glasses are also extremely inexpensive.

Step 2: Equipment:

1 scribe [I thought for a long time what this means, probably in Russian - scribe:) ]: made by you.

Made with #90 wire nails, and some plastic folded and stitched. This allows the scribe to mark and cut very beautifully with either a utility knife or sharp scissors.

2 Pairs 3.25 Magnification Wide Frame Reading Glasses: Dollar Tree

Price: 2.00 Dollars. This is quite profitable. Other stores like pharmacies have them hard to find and sell a lot more (+10.00 per pair).

1 pair 1.5 Prism Wedge lens pair: Berezin stereo photography products http://www.berezin.com/3d

Price $7.95 per pair.

1 Plastic Box: Amazon: Whitmor 6362-2691-4 clear vu collection of women's shoe box by Whitmor

Price: $11.99 You need 1 window, but you get a set of 4. You can make at least 6 viewers through 3 boxes, and use another box for other plastic parts other than the body (plastic body)

1 roll of glue dots (high strength):

Price: about 5 dollars. Without this amazing glue, it would be impossible for the viewer. Please note that you are not using it from the video. You use the scribe (see above) to pick up the point and place it where needed.

3 templates: PDF files to print.

Cut it out and stick it on the plastic, then you can scribe the spare part you need. They are in color, but you can use the color code on the screen and still have them printed in black and white.

Step 3: Cut and connect the reading glasses.

Using a Dremel with a cutting blade (diamond works great), cut off the handles and nose of both pairs of glasses. Then apply glue in dots along the edge of the glass and on the bridge of the nose and stick together. Ready!

Step 4: Scribe, cut, then staple the side supports.

Tape plastic through the template supports, and scribe using a ruler. Then we cut out the supports and fasten them along the marked line, then fold them as shown in the picture. Repeat for the second support.

Step 5: Cut out the prism supports, place in the sliding metal, attach the side supports.

Cut out the prism supports, staple them along the marked line, then slide two of them onto the metal strip, and fold the sides down on both ends so that it fits into the glasses support. Metal strips from sliding onto a file folder.

Step 6: Pour hot glue into the side supports to make them rigid.

Apply glue in dots on the corners of the glass on both sides and place the glass in the side supports. Then fill the side supports with hot glue to make them rigid.

Step 7: making the body. Cut and scribe a plastic shoe box.

Cut into a shoebox using a template. In a shoebox it's long enough to cut out each end to get two sleeves.

Step 8: Cut and bend the metal strip, place it in the casing and seal the sides.

Again using the file folder metal strips, cut them to size using the templates, bend them, and place them inside the bottom of the casing. Fold back the casing and secure the metal strips in place.

Step 9: Put the latches on the top of the case.

You can use any type of schnapps or even staples to finish the frame. The ones I used are plastic latches that cost about $4 for 60 will fit, but you need special pliers that sell for about $20.00 (Walmart). Metal latches work well and you don't need an expensive tool to use them.

Step 10: Attaching the prism lens to the prism supports.

Remove the metal strip of glass and apply glue in dots on the prismatic supports. Make sure the prism lens position is from the thin side towards the nose, hold the two prism lenses together and push them onto the supports. Place the metal strip on the glasses there.

Step 11: Make a back support, and staple and glue to the body.

An interesting story turned out with Google Cardboard; in general, Google developed them for an exhibition as a mockery of the ever-increasing trend of virtual reality, but the idea spread to the masses and now 3D glasses for smartphones are one of the trends.

In the android market and store iOS applications You will find many games and entertainment applications for Google Cardboard, they are both in the paid section and in the free programs.

How to make 3D glasses for a smartphone

Making your own Google Cardboard is very simple, download the drawing from the link below, insert two lenses and assemble these homemade 3D glasses using your smartphone as a screen.

Download Google drawing Cardboard Can .

The only problem may be the lenses; you need biconvex magnifying glasses with a diameter of 40 mm, magnification 3x, focal length 80 mm. But they can be ordered online.

Look at the animation on how to properly assemble 3D glasses from cardboard.

As you can see, no problem.

By the way, people make a lot of money on these 3D glasses!

During the Geek Picnic 2015 festival, these cardboard boxes were sold for “only 990 rubles”!

The funny thing is that this Google Cardboard set can be ordered from China for $3!!!

But visitors loved the cardboard 3D glasses!

And many who do not know their true price bought them, and took more than one copy, but also took them with them to give a gift to their loved ones.

Work 3D Google glasses Cardboard with almost any Android smartphone or iPhone. For Android, the only limitation is that the OS must have a version of at least 4.1.

Regular Cardboard app for Android is a set of mini-utilities that demonstrate the capabilities of 3D glasses. All applications are displayed in the form of a ribbon of icons, which can be navigated by turning your head left and right. The very first thing you should do is launch the Tutorial program - a very short and simple video teaching how to work with 3D glasses.

In addition to the instructions, the package includes the following applications:

Earth: you can fly in 3D Google maps Earth.

Tour Guide: Visit Versailles with a local guide.

YouTube: Watch popular YouTube videos on a virtual screen.

Exhibit: Explore cultural artifacts from every corner of the planet.

Photo Sphere: View your own or other uploaded spherical photos.

Street Vue: Drive around Paris on a summer day.

Windy Day: Interactive cartoon from Spotlight Stories

Also pay attention to the VR Cinema program.

VR Cinema for Cardboard - Virtual reality cinema for Cardboard

Thanks to this application you can watch movies on your VR display. The application splits any MP4 video. The screen is divided into two halves with the same picture on both sides. It's not real 3D, but the feeling is comparable! Videos are downloaded from the memory of your gadget or from Google Disk. VR Cinema allows you to watch videos captured on your gadget's camera. The app also has a VR camera feature that uses the front camera. It's a funny effect, but I didn't appreciate it. The application has not yet been finalized and you can feel it. In future versions, the developer promises to introduce control using a magnetic ring, the ability to transfer video online and will increase the number of processed formats.

If you cannot get lenses or they are offered to you at a price above $3, then order right away Google ready Cardboard worth $3.2!

All you need to do is fold these 3D glasses from the disassembled state, insert your smartphone into them and you can enjoy 3D reality!

Buy Google Cardboard Can