Monday, April 28, 2014

Ok, so here's where it all started.
The idea was to take one of these Hasbro 3d viewers and use it to like a poor man's version of the Oculus Rift.
Why not just get a Rift?
Because you can't. All you can get right now are the development kits and the next one doesn't ship till July (at least). I've got one on order of course.

In the mean time, you can cobble together a lesser version of the oculus for a whopping $7.

If you just get the Hasbro Viewer, it all just works. No fiddling around.
Slap your phone in it... download the software and away you go.
http://www.durovis.com/getstarted.html

I suggest the rollercoaster game for starters.
The downside is that you have to hold the viewer. This gives you the idea of what's going on, but it's not the same as just looking around. For that, I strapped everything to the headstrap for a welding shield....


Crude, but effective.

Well, that was fun and wonderful and extremely non-work-intensive. Proof of concept->done.
Time for refinements.

First thing's first.... ditch the headband and lose some weight. A big honkin cellphone hanging off a big case on your face is less than comfortable.

So, I disassembled the Hasbro Viewer. Lo and behold, they've got the focal length completely wrong. The thing's like twice as long as it needs to be! No wonder's everything's blurry as hell. Ok, cool... so shorter viewbox = less pressure on face. Good. I also ditched the extended battery on my phone and put the much lighter stock one back in.

I took a small box I had lying around and cut a few holes in it, added some velcro and dropped the lenses from the Hasbro Viewer in it. I took a GoPro headstrap and mounted it to that. Insto Presto, V2....


Now this one's usable.
It's not polished, but I can hand it to friends and they can use it, no fuss, no muss.

Here's a few better pics




Next Steps?
Get it running Oculus Software
Better optics.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

And it was fantastic, thanks for letting Dan and I try it out yesterday