Linux Compatibility With VR Goggles?

WorldWarCheese writes "Many's the time I wish I had a little more mobility or comfort with my computer. Laptops are OK, but anyone interested can see right onto my screen; and a laptop doesn't quite have that 'cool' factor that VR goggles / headsets do. The problem is, whenever I've looked at the options, Linux compatibility is not mentioned. Is there a VR headset out there that is compatible with Ubuntu? If not, what could I do to make it compatible, and how feasible would that be?"

The VR Goggles...

[Anonymous Coward]

...they do nothing!

Re:

[LoRdTAW (99712)]

Poser. Real tough typists just give the keyboard a menacing look and it types for them.

VR goggles, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations, your half-way to becoming the newest member of the Borg collective! Just need a machine suit and a bunch of implants, and the transition to your new life is complete. :D

Re:VR goggles, eh?

[CRCulver (715279)]

Congratulations, your half-way to becoming the newest member of the Borg collective! Just need a machine suit and a bunch of implants, and the transition to your new life is complete.

Kevin Warwick [wikipedia.org] has him beat. I'm surprised he didn't immediately pop up in a first post. He's a well-known figure in nerd subculture. If you haven't heard about his odd lifestyle choices yet, his autobiography I, Cyborg [amazon.com] does much to explain his thinking.

Kevin Warwick

[titzandkunt (623280)]

Kevin Warwick may be a "well-known figure in nerd subculture", but among nerds in the know, he's widely regarded as a shameless self-promoter, all-round media-tart and frankly, a bit of a joke.

His claims and ideas put him more into the realms of science fiction author / futurologist, rather than serious scientist / engineer.

Here's a gem, courtesy of The Reg: Captain Cyborg pushes kid chipping via Maddy abduction case [theregister.co.uk]

Re:

[TheP4st (1164315)]

I too am puzzled as to why somebody would drop 1300 bucks on a pair of 640x480 goggles when they can be had for 300.
http://www.myvu.com/Myvu-Crystal-Standard-Universal-P85C24.aspx [myvu.com]

Re:

[Psion (2244)]

Well, that's nice, but the location of the screen is fixed. So you have a really great, 3D display, but it sits on a desk in front of you. Properly configured, VR goggles might give you a lower resolution directly in front of your face, but that resolution can scroll over a much larger area. Look to your left and you see a 640x480 view into a document you're referencing ... face forward and you can return to the new document you're writing ... and to your right is the hot chick stripping on her webcam-- I m

Re:VR goggles, eh?

[JWSmythe (446288)]

    He was talking about 3d glasses, if I recall correctly.

    But, for a while I used a pair of Sony Glasstron (PLM-A35) glasses. I had gone out to a worksite that was "suppose" to have a crash cart. They didn't. So I'm sitting there with a dozen servers, no monitor or keyboard, and no way to set the IP's when they finally do provide them.

    We went shopping, and found this crappy little store that had the glasses for like $200, or a 14" LCD screen for $400. This was a while ago. Since we were out of town, "what will fit in my luggage" was actually a big concern.

    It didn't have VGA inputs, so I got a VGA to RCA adapter, and started working. People at the datacenter got a kick out of it. I was sitting on the floor, keyboard in my lap, apparently staring off into space. :) The best part was, it fit nicely in my laptop bag.

    The extra cabling I had to tote around was a little annoying, but I could do an overnight trip with just my laptop bag and not have to check any luggage. This was pre-911. Since then, I have to check a bag just to bring a screwdriver. {sigh}

My name is Kent Mcclure

[binarylarry (1338699)]

and I own those exact goggles.

They're basically just a low res monitor... or a highly secretive way to watch porn without anyone knowing.

If you're looking for stereoscopic support, that's up to your display driver manufacturer. Nvidia's stereoscopic mode barely works on Windows, let alone on Linux.

Re:My name is Kent Mcclure

[YourExperiment (1081089)]

Your name is Kent Mcclure... I may remember you from such Slashdot stories as "Jobs Not Giving This Year's Macworld Keynote" and "How Do I Manage Seasoned Programmers?"

Re:My name is Kent Mcclure

[prefect42 (141309)]

That's simply not true. I use Nvidia Quadro cards for active and passive stereo under linux, and have been for years. It works kinda like you'd expect stereo to work.

Re:

[binarylarry (1338699)]

Well, when it comes to games, Nvidia maintains a large compatibility list with the drivers.

And most of the games have ratings like "kind of works, black blotches on the screen," etc etc

My name is Kent Mcclure....

[117 (1013655)]

.... you may not remember me as I am neither Kent Brockman [wikipedia.org], nor Troy McClure [wikipedia.org].

Re:My name is Kent Mcclure

[Arancaytar (966377)]

watch porn without anyone knowing

With the caveat that people might still be able to see what you are doing just by looking at you.

It works for me

[Plazmid (1132467)]

I've been running Nvidia's stereoscopic mode on my display with anaglyph glasses(red-green glasses) and it works fine with games, if you exclude the whole see the game in a nasty brown color. I am also disappointed there aren't any stereodrivers for more productive uses like 3d modelling programs.

Cool

[bperkins (12056)]

doesn't quite have that 'cool' factor that VR goggles / headsets do

That word.
I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:

[egandalf (1051424)]

Inconceivable!

Re:

[speroni (1258316)]

Anybody want a peanut?

Contact the company?

[Anonymous Coward]

The model you're linked doesn't specify compatibility, though it does list its inputs:
VGA / SVGA / XVGA Input: Scaled to SVGA (800 x 600)

It 'might' work out of the box like a plug and play monitor but it also may not.

The best way to check on Linux support is to contact the manufacturer of the devices you are looking at.

Custom drivers can be made for linux but it is easier for people to do so with the cooperation of the original developers.

Depends on what you want.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus (1223518)]

There are, now that small LCDs have gotten cheap, numerous "display glasses" type products that toss an LCD in front of each eye and have some sort of video input(generally VGA or composite, sometimes both or other). Basic VGA-in display glasses should work exactly like any other monitor on virtually anything. No guarantee that the EDID isn't complete nonsense; but it should basically work.

Any sort of OMG Stereoscopic Vision! drivers, though, will probably be useless in Linux. Those guys [prnewswire.com] claim to support stereoscopic shutter glasses under certain conditions; but seem to be aiming at the Real Serious Workstation market. If you can deal with normal, non-3D glasses, you should have no problems, 3D, possibly not so much.

Re:Depends on what you want.

[mikael_j (106439)]

I was actually messing around with that idea for a while, unfortunately I was hindered from putting my plans into practice due to the cost of good VR headsets. What I was going for was a setup with three or four small webcams, two regular ones and one or two modified to act as IR cameras, a few IR LEDs to provide illumination when needed and then trying to integrate the whole thing with various pieces of hardware and software. One idea that didn't seem too hard to get working was maps + GPS displayed in 3D, sort of a poor man's Google Earth strapped to your head.

/Mikael

Should be Standard VGA, No?

[camperdave (969942)]

VR goggles are nothing more than miniature displays that are mounted on eyeglass frames, so I doubt there'd be a compatibility issue, per se. You may have to get your hands deep into the xwindows config files to fine tune things, though, because they likely won't be set up already. Apart from that, they should just appear to be a standard VGA display, I would think.

Re:

[N1ck0 (803359)]

Normally dual displays just expand the size of the viewing area from one camera point. To have stereoscopic support 3D images need to have 2 viewing cameras setup, at a slightly different offset; viewing the same object from different angles.

So a dual monitor desktop still has just one perspective, for 3D you need 2.

Its a lot easier to do this with dual displays, as you only really need to modify the camera config in openGL, or your F/X API of choice (of course this is best done in the software itself or v

Re:Should be Standard VGA, No?

[blueg3 (192743)]

Someone, somewhere is doing it wrong. VR goggles should work fine if you're farsighted. The actual location of the display isn't what matters, it's the distance your eyes need to focus to in order to bring the image into focus. With proper image separation, you should be able to focus on "distant" objects in VR goggles.

On the other hand, often, focusing on any object for someone with normal eyesight using VR goggles is challenging.

Problem with VR glasses

[NinthAgendaDotCom (1401899)]

is that they are all low-res. I don't think I've heard of any that are above 1024x768, and even that's considered high for those. They're gimmicks. I think they're just too bulky still. People don't want to have to put something on their faces.

Re:

[scubamage (727538)]

They do have high res ones, but they're so prohibitively expensive that I doubt anyone on here would get a pair without a hefty research grant and a very specific reason to use them. It took some heavy searching before to find one when I was interested. I sadly can't turn up any links now.

There's the Z800

[zilt (33232)]

I wrote a linux kernel driver for the eMagin z800 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z800_3DVisor [wikipedia.org] ) HMD available here: http://antimass.org/z800/ [antimass.org]

I will be updating it over the holidays to the latest kernel release as I've finally got some time to work on it.

Eyetap...

[GenP (686381)]

Keep bugging Steve [wikipedia.org] to release the Eyetap [wikipedia.org]. AR is way cooler than VR!

Content

[Thelasko (1196535)]

You can probably get the goggles working fine, the problem is finding content for them. In my opinion, this is really the only thing standing in the way wide adoption of VR goggles or LCD shutter glassses. [wikipedia.org] We have the technology to do it, and I think gamers are willing to spend the money, someone just needs to write the code.

Re:Content

[Shag (3737)]

You can probably get the goggles working fine, the problem is finding content for them.

You mean the prospect of being able to do ls -lf in glorious 3-D color isn't sufficiently enticing?

Re:Content

[FLEB (312391)]

This adds a whole new dimension to the "schizophrenic or Bluetooth" game, watching people frantically waving their arms and ducking and peeking around nothing, mumbling "My files... where the %$#* are my FILES?"

Re:

[genner (694963)]

This adds a whole new dimension to the "schizophrenic or Bluetooth" game, watching people frantically waving their arms and ducking and peeking around nothing, mumbling "My files... where the %$#* are my FILES?"

You just discribed the average day at my office,

What is the actual question here?

[Java Pimp (98454)]

Many's the time I wish I had a little more mobility or comfort with my computer.

Not sure what that has to do with VR goggles...

Laptops are OK, but anyone interested can see right onto my screen;

Not sure what that has to do with VR goggles... that's a security thing...

and a laptop doesn't quite have that 'cool' factor that VR goggles / headsets do.

umm....

The problem is, whenever I've looked at the options, Linux compatibility is not mentioned.

So true. I myself have been interested in messing around with some

Re:

[smoker2 (750216)]

The point might be that you can use the goggles to project a running linux system. Yes it would be silly if you are sitting at a desk, but a decent wearable computer with goggles could be quite nice. Eye tracking for HID and what else do you need ?
Network the thing and crowds could be linked together, etc, etc.

VR Lab

[blueg3 (192743)]

The Clemson VR lab uses (or used, at least) Linux workstations to run provide input to their VR goggles. Compatibility shouldn't be an issue, but you basically have to provide content yourself -- things won't automatically be cool. We didn't even use any kind of support in the drivers -- the goggles were two 640x480 screens, but were treated as a single 1280x480 screen. We just used OpenGL to draw two versions of our scenes from slightly different positions and presented them side-by-side so that they mapped properly onto the goggles.

Note: VR goggles are not actually cool to use. They're remarkably uncomfortable, both for your head and your eyes, and they have terrible resolution.

Re:

[Eponymous Bastard (1143615)]

Since you seem to be knowledgeable about the subject:

Do you know of any VR Goggle with a wide field of view? Everything I see has at most 40 degrees field of view, which would be like looking through a tunnel. I can get a wider field of view by standing near my monitor (Which I do).

For things to be inmersive I would want the display to include my peripheral vision, even if only with very low resolution on the sides. I don't want to feel like I'm wearing swimming goggles.

My personal use for it (together with

Cool == Dorky

[drenehtsral (29789)]

Y'know, as somebody who has done the whole 'wearable computer' thing, just a warning: We geeks thing wearing a HMD is 'cool', most everybody else things you're a dork. (Some people even took me for a suicide bomber with my battery packs). *sigh*

Re:Cool == Dorky

[genner (694963)]

We geeks thing wearing a HMD is 'cool', most everybody else things you're a dork.

So in other words it changes nothing.

Re:

[tchuladdiass (174342)]

And there was a point in time when wireless bluetooth headsets looked dorky. They still do, however they have become somewhat accepted.

Re:Cool == Dorky

[scheme (19778)]

And there was a point in time when wireless bluetooth headsets looked dorky. They still do, however they have become somewhat accepted.

If they don't look dorky, they make you look like a self important asshole. Or you might get the best of both worlds and look like a dorky, self-important asshole.

Comfort?

[socrplayr813 (1372733)]

Many's the time I wish I had a little more mobility or comfort with my computer.

Even nice headphones get uncomfortable after long periods. I can't imagine bulky goggles are terribly comfortable...

no freaking way

[Speare (84249)]

In my last contract, I worked a VR lab with lots of toys. I have tried everything from $60 to $40,000 head mounted displays. In case you're wondering, the $60 option is an NTSC TV fed into a dimly lit monoscopic visor, while for $40,000 you get an amazing 1280x1024 digital LCD stereoscopic per eye at 90Hz. Nowhere in that range is a device that you can wear to use a GUI or a CLI interface for more than about 40 minutes. Even if your eyeball's diopter requirements are calibrated very carefully, even if your visual acuity is excellent, even if the contrast is good and the font sizes are large and beautiful, you will just not be well-served by reading text on a near-range display for more time than that.

It may be cute in the movies, but there are no options for head mounted displays that will do what you want to do, essentially live in the visor.

Re:

[blincoln (592401)]

It may be cute in the movies, but there are no options for head mounted displays that will do what you want to do, essentially live in the visor.

Agreed. VR systems have a lot of challenges to address, but the biggest one IMO is the visual part. You've tried out a much broader range of HMDs than I have, but our experiences are very similar.

I was disappointed enough that I've more or less discounted that type of interface until someone comes up with a high-resolution direct feed into the optic nerve or the br

kole

[Quiet_Desperation (858215)]

doesn't quite have that 'cool' factor that VR goggles / headsets do

Obviously a definition of cool of which I was previously unaware.

From an Earlier Time

[BigFootApe (264256)]

Hi,

    Here's some software to read a Mattel Powerglove through the Linux
serial driver, you must be using a Menelli box to interface to the glove.
I also wrote a predictive filter to try and eliminate glitches, a TCP-IP
server-client pair to read data in your application, a posture look-up
table to recognise hand shapes, and a simple attempt at recognising 6DOF
movement with vectors and tokenising them into gestures.
    I'm not supporting the software, but I will be hacking around with it
again after Christmas, so the only condition on using it is to send me
any fixes, improvements, and ideas on making it better.

(there is a also an AMI PRO document to go with this stuff, which is
the project report I wrote for my BSc degree.)

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/hardware/drivers/linux-powerglove.README

Re:

[binarylarry (1338699)]

Well, 800x600 is a little different when the screen is literally an inch from your eyeball.

Re:

[loonycyborg (1262242)]

Linux is a toy.

So is Windows. But this fact doesn't prevent it from enjoying wide hardware support. So this is non-issue.

Re:

[Nursie (632944)]

There are a whole bunch of solutions for this, I looked at them a while ago, they're really cool.

They either take as input a composite video signal or straight VGA. Should be no problem treating them as a generic display from Linux.

3D is a different proposition. I don't think that's what the original question is about though, even if it is phrased as "VR googles".

Re:Use this instead

[HTH NE1 (675604)]

Really, just skip the VR goggles all together; Set up your VR Environment, aka holo-deck if you want to akin it to Star-Trek. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_Automatic_Virtual_Environment [wikipedia.org]

Yeah, but at exterior dimensions of around 35'x25'x13', its hardly portable.

Re:

[netsavior (627338)]

Yeah, but at exterior dimensions of around 35'x25'x13', its hardly portable.

If you had a holodeck it would not need to be portable because you would never need to leave...