Mobile VR

Virtual reality through your phone and a headset

While everybody is following the development of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset (final version due out Q1 2016), I’m enjoying experimenting with some tech that’s available today – mobile VR. This involves sliding your phone into a headset casing, and your phone becomes the virtual reality headset and head movement tracking system.

There are a few of these around – Gear VR, Google Cardboard, Durovis Dive. I’m experimenting with the Zeiss VR One.

It’s a really well made unit, and I look forward to experimenting with both virtual as well as augmented reality experiences on it.

So far, I’ve only had time to do one quick experiment with it, and that was about figuring out how to code a basic VR scene that can work on my iPhone and slot into the headset, with a stereoscopic view and accurate head tracking.

The Zeiss VR One comes with a pretty useful demo kit for Unity programmers, so I had a really easy time getting up and running with a complete working VR environment in a day.

My first test was on a made-up 3D environment. If you’ve seen my Shoe demo or 3D scans for the ANU Classics Museum, that might give you a clue on how I might make an attempt at recreating a real-world environment as a 3D VR experience.