the-problems-and-limits-of-cheap-vr-in-early-2021
December 31, 2020 - 4 min read
Turns out cheap VR in early 2021 is extremely problematic and limited in use, but there are still some things that are possible and fun, especially if you or some of your friends and family haven't tried VR yet.
As a VR-optimist without actually never actually invested in a VR-headset, I have been following VR/AR/MR/XR from a distance over the years. This holiday season I bought 9 copies of the cheapest VR headset and bluetooth controllers available with the goal of enriching mine and my family and friends life in some ways.
Why cheap VR?
What I bought
Streetz VR Glasses VRBOX2 - 10€
Bluetooth Remote Controller - 7€
What makes this “cheap”?
Why <50€ instead of 300-500€ that ordinary VR headsets costs?
These kind of headsets - nicknamed “Google Cardboard” headsets - are just some plastic, straps and lenses to be able to use VR capabilities in your smartphone.
Obviously, it is only cheap if you already have a smartphone.
Why 10€ instead of 25-50€ that other “Google Cardboard” headsets costs?
The producer has simply bought a cheap headset (loosely based on VR Box 2.0 models) from a factory somewhere and put their name on it, distributing it via existing resellers (the producer does not have a webshop), without providing any documentation or support at all - not even a Cardboard QR Code (more on that later).
Limitations of cheap VR
- sdfdsff
Mission 1: VR Meetups/Hangouts
Goal: Meet in a virtual space using our iPhones, a simple “Google Cardboard”-style headset and a Bluetooth controller (if necessary for moving around in the space).
What I hoped for
without investing more than picking up some free cardboard VR headsets back in 2017.
Discovered problems and limits
We each bought simple smartphone-powered headsets and hoped to be able to . This turned out to be harder than expected, and I got a decent exposure to the landscape of vr meetup software in the process. Learnings: Cheap VR is basically no VR, most meetup software require “real” (6dof) VR headsets. Support for cardboard is abysmal. It is not even possible to use hubs with cardboard on iOS since it requires google chrome and hubs doesn’t work on iOS chrome (took me a long time to understand that). I only found one app that even nominally has cardboard support for its ios client: vchat, but the state of the cardboard support in iOS 14 is terribly broken, so it only works an undefined length of time after a phone restart, then the orientation starts spinning badly. Is there any hope for us to be able to meetup in vr with cheap vr and our iPhones and a Bluetooth controller - in the near future with eg hubs? Or at all (ie is there any iOS platform limitations that makes this impossible - eg something more than webgl is required)? (I tried the webxr viewer with no success btw) Happy to share more learnings from briefly looking into the space from outside for the first time recently :)
Little left
- Most VR resources, startups, apps and technologies are from 2016, and very few have survived to 2021.
ios14 bug with Google Cardboard
what I learned
Finally, it turns out that it is actually possible to do
Lesson 1: The Google Cardboard ecosystem is severely crippled
google dropped the ball - the cardboard app has not been updated in 4 years most apps are abandonware or have very little resources or interest in updating plugins
Lesson 2: sdsdf
Reflections
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