Android Phone Turned Into Virtual Reality Goggles 103
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."
Re:Sigh (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not stereoscopic (Score:3, Interesting)
This rig isn't stereoscopic and therefore isn't a pair of "virtual reality goggles" in the classic sense.
In outdoor scenes, you can't tell anyway. Stereoscopy only matters for objects out to a meter or so. The change in relative position of near and distant objects is a more powerful cue than stereoscopy. (You don't have enough information from Google StreetView images to do that anyway,)
When Jaron Lanier demoed his original virtual reality system to me in the 1980s, he mentioned that once one of the two SGI machines driving the two head-mounted displays had gone down, so they just piped the same image to both displays and nobody noticed.
I'd like to see a modern VR system with a frame rate of 120FPS or better and a lag of no more than two frame times between input from head motion to image display. That might actually not suck.
Better for augmented reality (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Why the hate? This is a good idea. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.