Proposal for a new Mobile VR control scheme

by Kbeam on Jun 7th, 2015 10:17 AM

Hi all, by now, I have tried quite a few mobile VR apps. What struck me was the total lack of support for motion controls, not even at a rudimentary level. I experimented a bit and I think that a cheap gyro mouse/joystick can be a good cheap and very low-latency solution. I put below a set of two videos as a proof of concept of a simile but effective mobile VR control scheme using a 15 EUR airmouse. I did a video with the unity player to show a crisp image with screen capture and demonstrate the interaction capabilities that such small addition opens to developers (the "look to shoot/operate" control scheme that is now almost everywhere is so limiting and unnatural). Here is the video of the Unity Player https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz25fAeCC0s. I also did a very amateur video with an old android phone (sorry for bad quality) showing the airmouse working on a Kindle Fire HDX with decoupled hand/head orientation (actually, I have 2 sub-schemes toggled with a button) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbV1rUXUFXI. Now, there are limitations, since the airmouse hardware is not designed for such operation: (1) Unlike Windows, Android does not have a native DirectInput support, so once your cursor reaches the edge of the screen, tracking is lost; this can be alleviated by lowering the pointer sensitivity in Android, but this is unfortunately not available in Kindle Fire OS; the best way of solving this would be at driver level where the airmouse would not output mouse, but gamepad to Android, thus unlimiting the virtual axes; (2) Again, unlike Windows, Android does not let you hide the cursor which might be annoying at first, but you can get used to it; the OUYA custom Android ROM can switch off the cursor, but not in Android; again, the solution is to make the airmouse output gamepad control to Android instead of mouse; (3) from the airmouse hardware you are limited to 2 axes - horizontal and vertical, so you cannot replicate all movements and have to use buttons instead, it is still better than nothing; (4) button placement is very inconvenient for VR, ideally it should be in the shape of a Wii Nunchuck with 4-5 buttons and everything else can be with VR menus, I may experiment with VR menus, but it was not a priority for me so far. And this is the link to the app https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_7L0f ... sp=sharing

Re: Proposal for a new Mobile VR control scheme

by Torben on Jun 22nd, 2015 09:48 AM

Hi Kbeam!

Wow nice! Very impressive!!! Which cheap airmouse are you using, if you don't mind to share
I've also tried something with with teensy raw hid and mpu 6050 to circumvent
android's relatively stupid mouse "features". Works super nice on Windows and Linux, but I'm having a little trouble porting it to Android...

Re: Proposal for a new Mobile VR control scheme

by Susuninja on Dec 14th, 2015 10:38 AM

The new knowledge that I need to know.




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Re: Proposal for a new Mobile VR control scheme

by Kbeam on Feb 21st, 2016 09:13 AM

"Torben" wrote:
Hi Kbeam!

Wow nice! Very impressive!!! Which cheap airmouse are you using, if you don't mind to share
I've also tried something with with teensy raw hid and mpu 6050 to circumvent
android's relatively stupid mouse "features". Works super nice on Windows and Linux, but I'm having a little trouble porting it to Android...

Hi, sorry to answer only now, I had forgotten that I had posted here too. Just go to Aliexpress and type gyro mouse and you would find plenty of choice around 10 Eur I would recommend one with a USB dongle (bluetooth mice often drop connection with many phones), I think the gyros in iPazzPort are quite good, but you should wait for a promotion around 15 Eur. In the meantime I did a more detailed video here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... BzuAMJjREC and a separate experiment with multimarkers here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL9dDFq_o4U