I wrote last year about the announcement of Oculus chip manufacturer Spectra7s new ultra thin HDMI connector chip. With head mounted displays being wired for the foreseeable future it’s pretty important that any consumer device has a thin flexible cable to connect to the PC. The Oculus Rift DK2 of course has a USB2 connector but this is now rather outdated.

So, enter Spectra7 with their TC7050 USB 3.1 chip with 5Gbps of bandwidth. This is easily enough to handle high resolution ‘inside out’ video streams that I see coming, if not in the first consumer version, but soon afterwards. Being able to see the outside world clearly and quickly is also quite important, so we can probably expect dual cameras to appear in the front of most HMDs as a standard feature. Not only would these cameras allow the user to quickly see the outside world for spatial positioning but they can also be used for processing the users real life environment. Want to see where your coffee cup is in VR so you can take a drink while flying a spaceship? This would require a fast transfer of data to the PC to figure out where you are and where your cup is.

The new TC7050 chip gives a 90% reduction in the thickness of the copper cable, the same as the HDMI chip. This means an ultra thin cable combining HDMI and USB 3.1 is possible for the Oculus CV1, or certainly in CV2. Oculus has already stated that the technology they acquired with their acquisition of Nimble would not necessarily make it into their first consumer version, but with the VR gauntlet now thrown down by HTC and Valve, with a good input solution and, perhaps most importantly, a release date, they might be tempted to adjust their schedule.

Product Brief PDF link : here

Also mentioned in the press release (but not yet announced on their site) are two new display chips.

“Spectra7’s TC7108 chip delivers two channels of DisplayPort HBR2 at 5.4Gbps each (10.8Gbps in total), while the TC7216 delivers four channels (21.6Gbps in total). The TC7050 delivers USB 3.1 Gen 1 data at 5.0Gbps. The TC7108 and TC7050 can be used together to build bidirectional links for ultra-thin high definition external displays and dynamic interfaces for wearable technology.”

‘wearable technology’ hints at VR, but until they release more information than these few lines we won’t know if this is of interest to the VR community…

We got some great feedback, they loved the idea, they liked the team and they liked the traction they saw we were getting online. We’re now on over 4400 Twitter followers, which is pretty great for a six month old account, about a dozen people are signing up on our website each day and we haven’t really started any promotions yet. We’re hoping that lot of you guys are potential customers and not just hoping to win a free sim.

Now we know that not only is VR going to be huge in 2015 and the first affordable motion simulator that hits the market will be huge. Perhaps you know this too.

Sadly the guys at HAX were not quite as convinced, but they had a lot of applications and it seems we just missed out. They also had several re-applications that they rejected last summer, which were offered a place this time around, and the message we heard was to “keep working on the project” since they want to see it move forward. We’re still in touch with them.

Getting into the program would have been a huge shortcut and we’ve spent the holidays reassessing what we need to keep going. Some people have urged us to start an Indiegogo campaign and fund the project that way, but we think that would be a little premature.

Instead we’re thinking of heading to China anyway to prototype, recruit some more staff and begin looking at partnering factories. We may reapply to HAXLR8R for the summer program but this is yet to be decided, they give not only $100,000 for a 9% slice of equity, but provide mentoring and support. We’d like think that we can perhaps go it alone but we’re humble enough to know when a helping hand is a good thing.

Instead we’ve decided to try a small campaign with Seedrs, an equity crowdfunding site in the UK. We say ‘try’ because they vet every application, so it’s by no means guaranteed but we think we shouldn’t have a problem. This gives our friends, family and a few interested angel investors a route to show interest in the project, while keeping everything legal and easy to manage.

So we’re planning on trying to raise a small, quick round to take us forward to China and this also lets us show our neighbours at HAXLR8R something amazing if we decide to reapply. Nothing beats a pitch for a hardware device like being able to try it in person.

If our campaign is approved then there will a lot more information about the market and our strategy, plus you can ask private and public questions. You’ll also see a video of the team and be able to check our facebook/linkedin pages etc.

But like anything to do with investing money I urge everyone to do some proper research, and if you don’t understand something, don’t invest. Seedrs is a very transparent platform, and we picked them because they’re more concerned with protecting investors than entrepreneurs. Right now they’re limited to Europe but they’re also about to accept funding from the U.S., hopefully in time for our campaign.

If this sounds like something you’re interested in then head over to Seedrs to see what they’re about. If you sign up with our referral code : G5QBJMC8 you’ll also save 50% on any fees, instead of them going to us. It also lets them know that we have people interested in our project which might push our approval through a little quicker. We’ll be letting you know when the campaign is ready.

Even though you can put in as little at £10 be aware it might be years before you see a return on your money, and while we don’t anticipate any billion dollar acquisitions…. you never know If you’re considering putting in a little more than that we’d like to hear from you, so we could plan a little better and hopefully keep the momentum going. Feel free to email us with any questions.

We think we’ve got a great project and we hope you do to. We’re still aiming to launch the Kickstarter this year and your name is still in the hat! Please remember to spread the word and feel free to forward our updates to anyone you think might be interested!

An adapter for the brakes would also be needed but the sphere would be able to provide resistance, feedback and rotation information just by turning the handles bars….

I’ve played with Facebook ads before for a previous failed start up so I have some experience with it. My initial disgust with paying for something I should be getting for ‘free’ wore off before when I realised that even though I have several hundred friends on facebook not all of them are really interesting in my projects. They might think they’re cool, but not enough to actually want to pay for them.

Instead we can use the demographics built into facebook to reach out to our ‘perfect potential customers’. So, men, living in the developed world, 18-35, single and interested in VR and simulation games. Putting that into the facebook ad generator gives me about 2m people who might want to give me their email for the raffle. I supposed I could include women as well but if my google analytics figures are reasonably accurate the feelThree is a 97.7% male interest. The prices for 1000 impressions isn’t to outrageous, about £0.24-£1.30, or they let you just pay for ‘clicks’. One of the best things though is the ability to use different pictures and see which is the most effective, plus trying the same advert with some slight variations and seeing which is more effective.

All you need is cash! :p

One of the more important things I can do to promote the project right now though is to create a decent 2 minute video explaining how it works and why it’s so amazing, but that will have to wait until I reinstall my broken Windows 7 installation. Then I’ll have to finally figure out how to properly animate the omnichain since that’s what people will want to see rendered…

I also added some tweet and like buttons to each post, at the top and bottom, just making it a little easier for people to share any posts they like and hopefully spread the word a little easier. I also got rid of the ‘DISCUS’ comment system, since I added it I’ve only had a few comments since you have to sign up to write anything, it looks like people couldn’t be bothered. I reimplemented the old system and added a ‘math-captcha’ so you have to solve an easy math problem to post, that should be enough to ward off the bot-spam my site is now attracting….

I also changed the ‘about’ line on out twitter account to read ‘Oculus Rift’ rather than #oculusrift which has moved us up to position 21 (from about 150) when you search for ‘oculus rift’ in twitter. I’m not 100% sure how they organise the list but I think it’s a combination of ‘oculus rift’ in your name, how many followers you have and where ‘oculus rift’ appears in your desciption, since a few people are higher than us and have less followers… It now reads ‘Oculus Rift Motion Simulator! ‘ and will take Twitter about a week to rejiggle the names. I doubt it will give us a million extra followers but Oculus get quite a lot of followers everyday, about 100, so if they search for them and click follow on us too just below them it’s a simple way to pick up potential customers.

Still no word from the HAXLR8R organisers, although they moved the deadline to the end of the month. My email to our mailing list asking for support was moderately successful, 14 people tweeted their support to @haxlr8r, nothing amazing but it shows we’re trying.

Hot on the announcement of new gesture recognition chips on the 8th of November Spectra7 released a press announcement for what looks likely to be the replacement for the VR7100 chip that significantly reduces the thickness of the DK2 HDMI cable, the VR7200.

From the press release :

“With Spectra7’s new VR7200 chip which features the Company’s patented high-speed, active signal processing and power delivery technology, dual screen VR HMDs with a single super-thin cable and ultra-compact connector are now possible. Next generation VR interconnects built with Spectra7’s VR7200 are capable of dual 2560 x 1440 Wide Quad High Definition (WQHD) display resolution with 4:4:4 Chromaat up to 80 FPS perscreen without any image degradation as a result of Luma and/or Chroma subsampling and do not require a separate external HMD power connection”

Samples are available next month which pretty much rules out the rumour of a February release for the CV1 I read today on twitter. This falls a little short on the 90fps we were expecting but is still an improvement on the 75fps from the DK2.

We also saw an announcement for actual order amount for the new gesture chip, 500,000 of the VR7050 according to TMXMoney, along with the VR7100 replacement, which is undoubtedly the VR7200. “The order calls for delivery of over 500,000 devices including the Company’s recently announced VR7050 Gesture and Motion Backhaul Processor and the second generation of the previously announced VR7100 ultra-miniature Digital Video Link Processor chip.” This is half of the usual ‘million unit’ figures Oculus talk about for the CV1 but it’s still early days for further orders.

So are these two new chips for the Oculus consumer release and when could they arrive?

Well, the VR7100 chip was announced in October last year and began production in May 2014 for the DK2, so this is likely to mean we follow the same schedule and see assembly begin in the middle of next year….

So, CV1 confirmed for Xmas 2015 and WITH a built in hand/gesture recognition system? Who else would order half a million of these new chips?

Spectra7 also recently took out a 2-year loan of $4.75m which might be Oculus ensuring that the supply of chips isn’t in any danger of drying up while the CV1 is being built.

So what screen? A Samsung S5 panel fits the resolution and these should be widely available now…

Maybe we’ll know for sure in about 10 months

PDFs:

Gesture : http://spectra7.com/S7-VR7050-Press-Release-20141008-F4.pdf

New HDMI : http://spectra7.com/pdfs/Spectra7-VR7200-Press-Release-20141113-F.pdf

Old HDMI: http://www.spectra7.com/pdfs/products/VR7100-S-Product-Brief-Rev2.pdf

The VR7100 inside the DK2 cable (ifixit)

I watched the Tom Forsyth Oculus Connect talk about developing VR and he said something interesting at around the 40 minute mark about ‘blink transitions’. So you get into a car, your virtual ‘eyes’ in the Rift blink and you switch positions nearly instantly but your brain ignores this transition because of the ‘blink’ effect in the HMD….

To repeat, you’re not PHYSICALLY blinking, the screen is doing it for you.

I asked Tom, and he doesn’t know if anyone has tried it, so I threw my idea into the Tuscany demo.

You can rotate as usual with Q and E with 45 degree turns but now ‘shutters’ close for 150ms, you turn and your ‘eyes’ open at the new orientation 150ms later. You can look around as normal with your head. It’s reasonably crude but demonstrates the idea.

So if Tuscany makes you sick please give this a go and give me some feedback. If you want to steal the idea or code for your own implementation please do, or if you want to add some ideas to my repo go right ahead. If you don’t suffer from nausea then this thread is probably not for you… congratulations! :p

https://github.com/traveltrousers/Blink_Comfort

Constructive criticism always welcome, and if you don’t like it… well, lets see your solution to sim sickness! :p

relevant videos :

http://youtu.be/addUnJpjjv4?t=40m5s

“We’re a little worried about some of the bigger companies putting out product that isn’t quite ready. That elephant in the room is disorientation and motion sickness.” He said.

By bigger companies of course, they mean Sony. “Don’t poison the well here”, but I think perhaps the bigger danger could be from Oculus developers rather than Sony. The PS4 is a known variable, as will the Sony headset when it’s released, and developers will be more comfortable with the Sony development ecosystem when their HMD is made available. If I decide to develop a VR game for Sony, well, that decision isn’t mine. I have to apply to the development program, buy a dev kit for $2,500 (assuming I’m accepted) and then persuade them to give (or sell) me a Morpheus HMD. Even if I manage to create (what I regard as) a great game it’s likely that Sony will veto any VR title that doesn’t create a good experience for users.

Oculus on the other hand is totally open, so I can cheaply buy a DK1/2 (and even this is optional) and create whatever I like. I’m not arguing against this openness since the low barrier to entry is a great way of encouraging new demos and games but poorly executed code are far more likely to create the ‘disorientation and motion sickness’ that Iribe is so concerned about.

It’s a well known fact that perhaps 10% of the population are susceptible to simulator sickness and while Oculus are attempting to address this by recommending following their ‘best practices’ guide it’s still a black art knowing what will cause nausea in some people and not others. Generally this is some kind of movement, either unexpected or something that throws their vestibular system off. If you have sub-millimeter positional tracking and are rendering at a locked framerate of 75-90hz 99.9% of people will be fine when they’re not moving and just looking around. Figuring out exactly what the problem is once the user begins to move is something that needs a more methodical approach to solving.

From 6:30 to about 9 minutes, Tom Forsyth talks about how even Oculus are still not sure about why people get sick and what specifically causes it in different people. Now if the egg heads at Oculus are still figuring this out then what chance do regular developers have? We can follow the best practices and our users might still get sick when faced with the wrong type of stairs :p

So here are my three simple suggestions for tackling the whole ‘disorientation and motion sickness’ issue that Oculus, and all the VR companies, still face.

Demos

For most first time Rift owners the standard demo that is loaded first is usually the ‘Demo Scene’ with a simple desk, a plant and lamp… it’s simple, effective, non nauseating…. and quite boring. Now a ‘boring demo’ is fine to show what the rift can do to ‘VR virgins’ but you’ll have a hard time convincing them that they also need to go out and buy a HMD and good PC just so they can look at a desk. Most people jump into the Tuscany Demo from here, but sadly even that can cause nausea in some people. A better option would be for Oculus to release the demos that they recently released for the Crescent Bay demo, or something similar. Give Rift owners a well constructed suite of demos known to run well and guarantee the first time user a great experience. Sadly too many rift owners seem to enjoy throwing first time users into far too intense or scary experiences. Dreadhalls or rollercoaster demo’s are great fun, but you might be showing the rift to someone who’s never really played a video game since Pacman and you run the risk of giving them immediate motion sickness, a delayed nightmare or even face planting into concrete.

A users first time experience should be fun, safe and non nauseating, make something not enjoyable and you might put them off for a long time. We need some awesome introductory experiences to amaze VR virgins, not make them ill.

If Oculus want a cheap way of finding some great new intro VR experiences, run a competition giving a few CV1 headsets away.

Training and testing

After giving someone a ‘nice’ experience give them a disguised ‘motion sickness’ test. We construct a carefully designed level, perhaps constructed as a museum or art gallery, that the user can explore while we test their comfort level. So they move around the various floors looking at various exhibitions and the like, but at each intersection or ‘level’ we ask them to rate their comfort on a scale from 1 to 10. Assuming they stay comfortable we can then begin to alter the parameters of the test, such as walking speed, comfort mode turning, stairs, blink transitions and the like. Our aim is not really to make users sick but identify when it happens.

This gives Oculus a chance to not only test users but train them in the (yet to be determined) new standards of movement, UI and the like. It also gives you a chance to teach users about recognising nausea, what causes it and assure them that it’s temporary and gets better with exposure.

This gives us a standardised, repeatable test that we can use to strip away, and hopefully identify, the causes of simulator sickness. If we also anonymously gather the users age, sex, IPD, height and perhaps glasses prescription, plus the computer specifications and frame-rate, we have an easy way to quickly and scientifically test hundreds of thousands of people, and their hardware, to look for patterns. This also lets content creators identify what experiences are most likely to affect their users so they can either alter them for wider comfort, or warn users that a certain game might make them sick.

Now it’s also understood that simulation sickness is something that can be mitigated through repeated exposure so perhaps after a few weeks playing one game the users simulator sickness level could be reduced, so the test can be run again and the comfort remeasured. At the end we can now tell the user that their perceived comfort has improved by say, 20% overall or in certain areas, and the user would now probably handle “GTA VR” with no problems, whereas three weeks before they wouldn’t last  5 minutes in that game. Perhaps some games will push certain aspects of users nausea and these could be used to acclimatise users to the effect, so if a user can’t do ‘stairs’ they can train on demo that uses gently sloping ramps instead, improving their tolerance for virtual stairs.

So Oculus, give us a nice training and test mode and we’ll give you the data to pin point exactly what makes some of us sick, letting you nail down a solution to motion sickness.

Reporting

I think it would also be incredibly useful to bake a ‘report nausea’ feature into the SDK, which sends some screenshots and fps graphs back to Oculus. This would allow Oculus and devs to identify elements in games, demos and practices that are causing problems and find fixes. Perhaps devs fail to spot areas where there is a problem and this would help pin point problems.  This could be dynamic, so you could ‘power through’ something that affects you temporarily, while noting it’s affecting you, or as simple as adding a ‘Nausea Quit’ button in the menu.

So, nice demos, a training and test game and better ways of reporting what makes us ill sometimes. Three easy things.

Comments are always welcome, or join in the argument on reddit

Since the invention of the classic six degree of freedom platform sixty years ago motion simulators haven’t changed much. They remain massive, ugly and slightly dangerous. Despite the advances in materials and engineering they still require large, powerful, and expensive motors to lift a platform to simulate movement. This keeps motion simulators stuck in the realm of an expensive niche product. After all who has £5,000 to £20,000 lying around?

With the dawning age of virtual reality gamers will no long be content to peer through a monitor screen and they’ll begin to demand a more visceral experience to match the feeling of being inside another world that the rift provides. The market for the first affordable motion simulator is potentially massive.

What is needed is a new design that gives the user not only an affordable, modular device but one that is safe, stylish and smart.

This is the philosophy behind the Feel Three Motion Simulator for Oculus Rift.

Instead of lifting a chair in a fixed rectangular frame, we use interlocking aluminium hexagonal and pentagonal panels which are curved into a semi sphere. They’re light, cheap and very strong. This design allows the user to decide their range of pitch and roll, since you decide the amount of panels. 360° yaw is also built in and as John Carmack said recently “Swivel chair VR is going to be kind of a big deal”. If you want to go all out, make a fully enclosed sphere to roll and loop all day. The platform can even turned into a snowboard or hang glider simulator, and if you’re not a hardcore gamer you can just fill it with cushions and chill while you gently sway to the latest demo.

A motion simulator disguised as a chic sofa? Your wife will love it!

An electronic gyroscope on the platform works out where you are 1,000 times a second and the Oculus Rift camera is mounted to the platform. The base powers the sphere with revolutionary ‘omnichains’, which allow 3 degrees of rotation simultaneously and an optional heave module allows low power vertical movement with counter weights. The whole kit is tiny when unassembled and since it’s modular you can buy the basic platform and build your unique design .

And the price? Slightly more than a decent gaming PC.

A cool, safe, affordable motion simulator for the masses. It’s time.

You feelin’ it?

Hand tracking really is key to a more immersive VR experience, a problem that the people at Perception neuron used to garner a sweet $570k on kickstarter recently. But gloves? In 2014? It’s a cool set of kit, but so many parts to break, wires to cut, parts to snag and you look somewhat foolish wearing the full setup. And $200 minimum investment? Ouch!

So what do we really need, at a bare minimum? Being able to see our dominant hand (preferably both) in VR space reliably, if we can track our lower arm accurately we can pretty much track the rest of the arm too. Your elbow is a pretty simple joint, approximating the upper arm isn’t hard if you know where your wrist is and where it’s pointing. The VR guns that are appearing more and more don’t give us that information, but guns are easy, fingers are where it’s hard. Showing your hand and fingers, which 99% of the world automatically look for when they first don a Rift, is really what we’re always going to wanting to do.

The main issue is cost, it’s mostly a solved problem if you have the money, but unless you can do it cheaply no one will adopt it and you’ll end up with early adopter blues. Nintendo powerglove anyone?

So, who wouldn’t want to be able to see their hand and fingers move accurately in front of their face while in the Oculus Rift. Everyone right? Now who wants that for less than $50?

It’s easy if you know what to hack together

Once again, it’s a PROTOTYPE! It’s not perfect, nothing ever is, but show me how to track your hand in VR, move around and shoot for less than $50 and I (and everyone else) will be very happy! I threw this together in a couple of days, if you like it, tell me! If you don’t like it… well, go make your own bloody controller!! :p

And if Oculus is watching, please give us access to the ‘skeleton’ of the camera in the SDK. We know you’re working on your own controller, but you never know, someone else might come up with a better solution and it will die on the vine because it’s impossible to support easily.

Here is a quick video, some pics, a break down of the hardware and how you can hack the software together to make it work.

Note: The MPU isn’t attached, and the nunchuck isn’t plugged in.

Hardware

The hand tracker is actually quite simple. I’m going to break down each part, what they do and why they’re needed.

Cuff

This is the base of the prototype, everything hangs on the wrist cuff. In its current incarnation it’s a little rough and could be more comfortable. A later version will have foam padding for comfort and a quick release buckle, or velcro, for a snug fit. It will also need a box for the arduino and gyro. Ideally it would also contain a small USB3 hub so the leap motion and the arduino can communicate to the the PC over only one lead. This raises the price a little for convenience. We also have the option of adding a few more buttons to the cuff which can be activated by the off hand.

(the tubes on the side are for support, printed plastic can be quite weak when printed like this, the tubes allow us to insert a 3mm length of filament for strength)

Wii Nunchuck

Why reinvent the wheel? The nunchuck can be found for as little as $3 online, it has a joystick and two trigger buttons as well as a 3 axis accelerometer for simple motion detection. It’s cheap, reliable and easy to replace. It also has a convenient arduino library just waiting to be used.

Ideally we would be able to connect and disconnect two nunchucks, for use in both hands, although using only one is perfectly fine. The cable is long enough to allow use in the ‘off-hand’ so the user could move with one hand and aim/’finger shoot’ with the other. it has a slightly inconvenient proprietary plug but this is easily adapted with a $1 gizmo from ebay.

Arduino

A fully formed computer for $3? How can we refuse. This forms the brains of the gyro sensors and interprets the nunchuck signals. Using a pro-micro we can also emulate a joystick with no drivers. Handy!

Gyrometer/accelerometer/magnetometer

This tiny miracle on a chip provides a mass of information a thousand times a second. With this we can accurately measure where your wrist is pointing since it’s attached to the Cuff. They’re also only $8 each.

Female Arm

A simple printed arm is attached to the cuff. This provides some simple cable management too. Requires a couple of bolts to attach to the cuff.

Male arm.

Another printed part that can be used to adjust the total distance of the arms. A bolt locks it to the female arm and allows adjustment.

The leap holder.

The fourth and final printed part. This hold the leap motion sensor which will be pointing at the hand and providing constant hand and finger tracking. It also has some holes for wires and needs two bolts to attach to the arm.

Leap Motion

Another miracle in a small package. You can find them second hand online now for $25. It has fairly mature drivers and a SDK for use with games. By mounting it to the wrist we can over come it’s problems with range and free it from the desk. The leap gives a better experience than putting on sweaty gloves for a fraction of the price. It also has zero moving parts, so there is nothing to break.

Ping Pong Ball

This is attached to the end of the leap holder and has a hole inside it. Illuminated from the inside it gives a cheap way to give us positional information. 25c

LED and wires.

This gives the eleventh and last component something to look at in the darkness. <$1.

PS3 Camera (or equivalent).

The camera tells the PC where your arm is in space, just like the Sony Move works. We can use open source software to track it quite easily and if we use an IR filter and Infrared LED inside the ball we can cut a lot of the tracking processing. Available on ebay for $5.

3D Printing Alternatives:

If you don’t have access to a 3D printer you could always make a leap holder from some wood, or even better use friendly plastic. You melt the pellets in boiling water and mould them into shape, this stuff is perfect to make a project like this and it’s very cheap (and reusable).

Bill of Materials

1. Printed Cuff
2. Printed female arm
3. Printed male arm
4. Printed Leap Holder
5. Arduino $3 (new)
6. MPU-9150 $8 (new)
7. Wii Nunchuck $3 (new)
8. Leap Motion $25 (second hand)
9. PS3 Eye camera $5 (second hand)
10. Ping Pong ball 25c
11. LED + 40cm wire + 10 oh resistor $1
12. 5 bolts and washers ~$1
13. Extra cuff buttons 25c each (optional)
14. Wii nunchuck adapter $1 (optional)
15. Cuff Velcro $1 (optional)
16. Cuff comfort foam $1 (optional)
17. Short pieces of wire to connect the MPU and arduino
18. USB lead for arduino (on hand)
19. 5 meter USB3.0 extender for the Leap Motion $7
20. 5v motor for cuff vibration $1 (optional)

Total : $46.25

or $58 with optional extras.

notes : The Cuff is ideally printed using Nylon since this is more flexible than ABS or PLA and should last longer. The leap can be position to be facing the palm or the back of the hand, although the latter, while more convenient, might be less accurate. It’s also possible that if an optimal position can be found we can reduce the required printed parts to a complete arm and cuff, removing the need for the bolts, and improving the appearance. A USB 2.0 lead can be used for the Leap Motion but this lowers the data speed and may affect accuracy.

 Software

This is a work in progress… but we can break it down into 4 distinct areas, all of which have open source software available.

Finger Tracking : Sign up with Leap here for their SDK

Position Tracking : Choose from two open computer vision projects, SimpleCV or OpenCV

Rotation Tracking : It’s a work in progress over at Arduino

Nunchuck libraries : Tim Teatros or check the arduino Site

The seed was planted long ago

Just like the Rift the best way to do something new is to put together existing technology, open source it and let people play with the idea. I’m printing parts of a ‘proof of concept’ now, which also means it should be pretty easy for people to try the idea and improve it.

Who wouldn’t want to print 4 simple parts, put together some simple electronics, install a program and have hand/finger tracking for less than $100?

Can anyone point me in the direction of a IR camera tracking solution on github….?

I’m also thinking of making a simple curved screen version too for a projector. A version for iracing with an iPad for the car telemetry behind the wheel would be really cool.

I’m also hoping to show a simple surfing/boarding version using the inverse kinematic built into unity. Watching c-3po standing on a board and shifting his balance as it moves would be pretty cool. I can also make a fairly realistic paragliding version too.

As soon as I get the rotation working I’ll put out a VR versions for the rift. I’m less concerned about the frame rate now I know how easy it is to hide and show the various elements with a simple script.

2. Simple rotating view of the panel components floating in space.

3. Using a hinge for motion/rotation instead of a collider for better control and smoother appearance. It also lessens the CPU work.

4. Ragdoll C-3PO in a sofa version.

5. Set it inside the bridge of a Star Destroyer.

6. R2-D2 and training bot props for flavour :p

7. Enable/disable various elements to increase the FPS and allow you to examine the models a little better.

8. Some simple controls… preferably with a controller thumbstick.

9. A playback demo that everyone could relate to…. having the attack on the death star scene from star wars playing on a virtual screen while the sphere moves in time with lukes X-wing :p

It would be nice to get this version out before the #VRTGO conference on Thursday…. (and to build my sphere)…

I now have 444 followers on twitter, although this isn’t such an amazing feat, lots of these people are not really VR experts or aficionados…. lots of people favourite my tweets but retweeting is the only thing that’s worth a damn on twitter it seems.

My subscriber list is marching up nicely and it might be time to start to use this to recruit more people to the cause. It seems like everytime I post to reddit I get a nice bump in traffic and of course getting to the front page would be a major coup…. I need to make some better renders and a proper ‘press pack’ and see if I can get some real tech sites interested.

19Mb download, hold shift when running to change the resolution.

I also made a webplayer version too : http://www.feelthree.com/unity/demo.html

feedback appreciated…

Here is the regular link and the google translated version if you prefer.

Well, I’m building a hardware device that going to be used in virtual reality (duh) so it goes without saying that my customers will be people that have, or are getting, Oculus Rift headsets.

Yes, this is pretty obvious… but the twist is that if I can put my model into a simple VR demo then people can walk around it, see it moving, perhaps control it themselves, look underneath and peek inside they’ll ‘get it’ better than any 2D representation. The actual presence of VR means my core audience can experience, visually at least, what I’m trying to make. This creates a much more visceral experience of what I’m aiming to achieve…

Happily I already know Unity quite well so I don’t think I’ll need to long to put together a crude demo… It could also fit quite nicely inside the Millennium Falcon :p

Now I don’t think this is going to make me the the top hash tag of the year but it’s a start, I don’t have to impress everyone just the right person who puts me on the right blog at the right time…

I also made a strategic post to the Oculus board on reddit which resulted in a nice spike in traffic. I kind of missed the wave when my blog was discovered on reddit, the DK2 was released and then someone noticed my blog… which was buried under the DK2 excitement. If I had launched just a week earlier… :p Someone posted his site to the fitness sub-reddit and it netted him 140K hits in 24 hours!! Suffice to say if I got that much traffic my raffle entries would explode past what I think I need and I could begin the kickstarter the next day…

Speaking of which, I think it’s time to submit my kickstarter campaign for assessment. It doesn’t have to be complete but if you do it earlier you won’t have to wait when you’re really ready to launch….

A quick orbit video is coming, and I need to make a base cover so it looks like it can move without trapping fingers.