6. Head-Mounting
This last step is not complicated but it involves a lot of duct tape and some trial and error. It is also the last step separating you from having awesome, immersive virtual reality strapped to your face.
Important: make sure your screen is clean before moving to the next step!
First we must remove the transparent visor from the Smith Optics SC Black Clear Lens Goggle (or any other cheap Ski goggle you decide to use). Carefully align the nose part of the goggles with your case’s nose cut out. You must then close the bottom flap of the case with duct tape while making sure the nose portion of the ski goggles is “trapped” in place.
Next, pull over the top portion of the goggles so it stretches above the foam-core case and use a thick metal nail (piercing both the goggles and the top of the case) to secure it in place.
Your goggles should now be in place but the whole thing still feels very fragile. That is when the duct tape comes in – lots of it. Use as much duct tape as you need to secure the goggles in place and block all light from the outside world. If you don’t have any black duct tape, you can use electrician tape on top of the duct tape to make the whole thing opaque.
As you apply the duct tape, don’t forget to try on the headset a few times, this will help you account for the fact that the headband will be pulling the goggles away from the case when the headset is being worn.
Finally, you can use a piece of non-conductive two-sided foam tape to secure the Hillcrest Freespace tracker to the top or the bottom of the case.
Here are some images of the final product:
It’s alive!
If you made it this far, now it is time to take your new HMD for a spin. Unless you are reading this after the Rift’s official release, odds are that there aren’t any applications out there that will work with your new HMD.
Here is a list of things you can try today, I will constantly update this list so make sure to check again every once in a while:
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- You can write your own games and virtual reality experiments using one of the many free 3D engines available.
- Crysis 2 supports native SBS stereoscopic output and depending on your IPD, it might just work for you as is, so give it a try!
- If Crysis 2 SBS works for you, you can also use TriDef to enable non-native SBS mode for hundreds of other games.
- Since there aren’t many games out there with head-tracking support, you can use FreePIE to enable basic 2DoF (degrees of freedom) tracking through mouse emulation on most games. It is not great but it is better than no tracking at all.
- You can check out this demo application: http://bit.ly/SYLgdS
- Try those MTBS3D community drivers: http://bit.ly/QTnz7h and http://bit.ly/Vlrvl7
- Write your own free-open source driver and share it with the community!
[/list]
