How to use Riftcat VRIdge with Kinects: ImmotionRoom Iridge server

A lot of time ago I described you how cool is VRIdge, the solution that makes you play SteamVR games using a cheap Cardboard or GearVR headset. I love VRidge, not only because it allows people to lower the entry point for playing VR experiences (a Cardboard is surely cheaper than a Vive), but also because it is made by very kind people (I’ve interacted with them and I can assure you that these Polish guys&girls are really fantastic).

Some times ago I wrote a tutorial on how to use VRIdge with Kinect and it got its success. Reason is that of course Cardboads can’t offer the positional tracking owned by Vive, so VRIdge users can supply it with other sensors, like Kinects for instance. Tutorial highlighted some issues in this process, since it required some dev skills (one of the required program doesn’t work on standalone, but needs to be run inside Eclipse!) and it used very rough programs. Since we at Immotionar work with Kinect and VR from almost three years, me and Gianni asked ourselves: why can’t we fix this issue? And we did it.

Me, doing funny things with a 3-kinects setup

Now you can use VRIdge with Kinect using ImmotionRoom solution, in particular using its Iridge server. What are advantages of this solution?

How to play Cardboard apps with Gear VR

A little article to talk to you about a small trick that may be useful in your virtual reality innovator’s life. You have a Gear VR and you have a Cardboard (no, I’m not making something like Pikotaro…) and suddenly you start wondering: why can’t I use my Gear VR as a Cardboard? Gear VR is super-comfortable, super resistant and has an awesome design… so why should I use a crappy card headset to live Cardboard experiences? You’re right… why?

The answer is: you have not. Since a Cardboard is just a hmd with two lenses, Gear VR is like a deluxe Cardboard. But there is a big problem: once you put your phone inside the headset, Oculus runtime detects that you have connected a Samsung Gear VR and launches Oculus Home and all other Oculus stuff. There’s no way to escape from that: with my Gear VR Innovator Editor there was still the possibility to put the phone so that the hmd plug didn’t enter completely inside the phone USB-C port, so that Oculus runtime wasn’t triggered (but you had high chances of your phone detaching from the headset and falling to the ground), but with new Gear VR versions this is not possible anymore. So how to do that?

How to mirror Gear VR or Cardboard to PC

Tomorrow we will be at the WTT to make a talk about the differences between AR/VR/MR and on how to use our ImmotionRoom system. We’ll take with us a laptop and a GearVR and so we’ll need a technique to stream Gear VR content to my laptop or to an external screen (or a projector) to make people see what my buddy Gianni will see inside the virtual world (otherwise, from the audience standpoint, he would just look like an idiot waving hands and feet like a zombie). But… how to make it? How to let people see what you’re seeing in your mobile virtual reality headset?

Google announced Daydream

Yesterday Google announced its new flagship phone, Pixel, and a lot of new epic stuff, among which its new virtual reality platform: Daydream. If you, like me, didn’t watch the live streaming (too lazy to do it), you can read the main points of the conference here.

So, Google abandoned Nexus brand to start the Pixel one: the phone is quite powerful, has a good design and has reduced the gap with Samsung and Apple phones. New software features like Google Assistant and free cloud storage to store your photos at high resolutions make it a lot appealing to consumers. This is an image of two Pixel phones… cool, aren’t they?

Google Pixel phones… look at how the design is beautiful (image from The Verge)

With this new phone, the company has launched its new virtual reality platform, that is Daydream and its new headset, the Daydream View.

Google Cardboard vs Samsung Gear VR

Sometimes people asks me what’s the difference between Google Cardboard and GearVR and which one is better. Both are mobile headset and this can create some confusion in people.

A Gear VR innovator edition with VR Cover… I use it with my Samsung Note 4

What VR headset should you buy?

In my last article, I explained how to decide if you have to buy a virtual reality headset. In this new one, I’ll try to explain you which one you should buy, depending on what you want to do.

CAUTION: before reading this article, you must be aware that virtual reality is becoming full of fanboysm, so expressing the wrong opinion about a virtual reality headset to your friends (like saying “Oculus Rift is great” to a Vive owner) can make them kill you with a shotgun or, even worse, can be the beginning of WWIII. So, use the contents of this article at your own risk.

Every day, new VR headsets come to the light. In this article, I’ll just review the most known ones, i.e.: Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, PSVR, OSVR, Gear VR, Google Cardboard.

How to use VRidge with Kinect

Yesterday I’ve told you what VRidge is and wrote a review about this cool product that lets you use virtual reality PC experiences with your Cardboard mobile headset.

Today I want to focus on one of its features: the ability to use a Microsoft Kinect to emulate positional tracking of the headset: this way you can have what mobile headsets really lack, that is the positional tracking, the room-scale functionality. The system works in a very simple manner: they use the head position detected by the Kinect as the position of the headset in the virtual world, in a way very similar to what we do in our ImmotionRoom solution. But how to make it work? And is it really working well? I’ll try to answer these questions in this article.

UPDATE: I’ve written a new article that offers a more elegant way of using VRidge with Kinect using ImmotionRoom system. You can find it here. Otherwise, go on to keep reading on how to use the standard way involving opensource software like OpenTrack.

What is VRidge and how to use it

Today I tried VRidge. VRidge is a cool software that lets you use your Cardboard to play virtual reality PC games for Oculus and Vive. The premises were just too awesome that I had to try it, so I spent some time trying to figure out how it works. VRidge just installs DLLs, drivers and stuff, so that when you launch your PC virtual reality game, it thinks that the required headset is attached. Instead, the service just streams all sensors data (gyroscopes and stuff) from the phone to the PC game and all visuals data (the images to show to the user) from the PC game to the phone screen.

Should you buy a VR headset?

Some months ago I started being part of the reddit virtual reality communities, like /r/virtualreality, /r/oculus and /r/osvr. This communities are really great (if you’re not part of them… what are you waiting for? Subscribe!), but sometimes there are questions that are just repeated one bazillion times: if I had one dollar for each time I answered them, I’d be the king of the world.

One of this recurring question is “Should I buy a VR headset?”, so I’m writing this post just to give you an answer from my perspective once for all (and so at the next time I’ll see this question on reddit, I could just type a link to this post… much easier). I’ll give you answers to other common questions in the next posts.

Let’s start : do you have to buy a VR headset?

The answer is… it depends. And with this answer full of wisdom, the article ends here, thanks for reading…