Nimra Tomsen

As far as I understood the technology used by Gyre and the cardboard, the 3D effect is emulated (or faked) by a slight differenciation of the two pictures for the eyes. The percepted depth of the visible world is limited, but the immersion effect still works well, first because of the filling of the complete view, and second because of the interaction by moving the head around. As I said: This is not a NASA device, but it enables a quite different experience with SL.

Hello all, I would like to share a very interesting experience I made today: A real VR immersion in SL possible without any expensive and/or not-yet-available gadgets like the Oculus Rift. 1) Google Cardboard A very simple cardboard device, sold via Amazon for a few bucks. You need an Android or IOS smartphone with a display of 4 to 5 inches, this plays the role of the display when inserted. Check out https://www.google.com/get/cardboard/ - this is only the construction principle, and you may build one as DIY. But there are some sellers offering this thing neatly prefabricated. This cardboard item is a flash for itself, independently from SL. Check out the amazing apps available (my favourites: "Tuskany Dive" and "Lost in the Kismet"). The higher the display resulution the better. I use it with a Sony Xperia SP with 1280 x 720 btw, which is perfectly fine. 2) Trinus Gyre A little piece of software, which a) streams the content of your PC monitor to your smartphone display (by USB or wifi), b) is able to emulate the SBS effekt neccessary for the cardboard (and all other HMD devices), and c) will re-feed the position changes of the cardboard detected by the sensors of the smartphone to your computer. http://oddsheepgames.com/trinus/?download. Gyre is still experimental somehow, but the effect is astounding, when working: You can use this not only for SL for virtually all games and software to get the video stream and some 3D effect into your cardboard. I tried it with Anno 1404 - my cathedral never looked that good before! 3) Second Life Just start the normal viewer in window mode and reduce the window to 640 x 720 pixel, or whatever your smartphone display is able to compute. As there are two separate pictures you need half the resolution of the smartphone on the screen. 4) Result Now you can put the cardboard to your eyes and you will see the SL landscape filling your whole sight. Your mouse pointer is moving according to the turns of your head. In normal mode this is not very impressing, but try out mouselook! You can turn around yourself, watching all the 360 degrees of scenery. And if you put a finger on the forward button at the keyboard you can move. I enjoyed walking through some jungles immensely, looking left and right all the time. Of course this is a cheap solution ($10 or so) and not comparable with high-end-devices. But still it gives you a way to be into SL unknown before. I am not really a computer guy or VR specialist or so, just a normal user. But it seems that SL isn´t be used with the cardboard really. So hopefully this posting stirs some experiments - I´m curious about your experiences, opinions and proposals for further improvements. Now I have to leave. Can´t wait to visit the next beach by VR... Have fun! Armin