vrAse Week One
One week in and I’m still loving my vrAse. I’ve been really putting it through its paces trying to determine the viability of the tech and the ecosystem and so far I’ve been pretty impressed.
( Photo Credit Javi Cruz )
Device
Essentially, the vrAse is a box with lenses in it that you put your phone in and strap to your face. The device itself is well concieved, with no extraneous bits or things to screw up. Putting it on and taking it off is exactly as easy as it would be with a pair of skii goggles. I’ve been using mine mostly with my bluetooth headset and haven’t had any issues with the strap.
Comfort
The only issue I’ve come across so far is that with extended wear it becomes uncomfortably heavy on my nose. There doesn’t seem to be any padding in the nose area which is the source of this problem. There’s a place for an extra strap to be connected that goes over the wearer’s head (like a mining lamp) and I think getting a strap in there may help alleviate this issue. Other than my aching nose, I’ve found it to be a pleasant experience; the device connects to my face firmly and doesn’t wobble or move around much once its there.
Headtracking
In a word: excellent. I have been nothing but impressed by the quality and consistency of the head-tracking in pretty much all of the apps I’ve tried so far. It seems that using a camera in tandem with gyro and accelerometer is a winning combonation for low-power, low-latency tracking on the cheap (not to mention it leaves the door open for awesome augmented reality experiences).
Graphics
This is probably the weakest point of the technology right now and it’s not even much of an issue. The 3d graphics currently available on android devices are somewhere around the quality expected of a Playstation 2. While this is not spectacular, and people tend to react to it, it’s not a showstopper. Plenty of PS2 games were immersive and fun to play, and with the smoothness of the headtracking I mentioned earlier, it’s easy to forget a little jagginess and really get into the environment you’re simulating.
Ecosystem
There are a handful of splitscreen-vr android apps available already (sometimes tagged with SBS for side-by-side). Considering the fact that these devices haven’t even really been released into the mainstream community yet, I’m pretty impressed with the quality. I’ll be following up this post with another just about content, so hang onto your eyeballs.
Durovis Dive seems to be the dominant force in the developer community, they have a Unity sdk that includes a head-tracking plugin that most of the android apps right now seem to be using. I downloaded the SDK but havent really dug in yet (more to come on this later). vrAse has their own sdk I’m assessing before I start in on my first vr development, but so far I haven’t seen any buy in on it.
The Future
I can’t stress enough that this tech could really be The Future. The intersection of massive availability and constant competitive development make mobile handsets an appealing platform. There’s something truly wonderful about taking your phone out of your pocket, sliding it into the goggles and slapping it on your face. That this tech is within reach of so much of our world’s population seals it.
Originally published at simpleactually.tumblr.com.
