Condor in VR using mobile phone

[Loaded_Dice]

**Update:**
Loaded_Dice mentioned 6DOF capability with ALVR and ARCore. I tried it the WhiteIsland demo (see link) and it was very smooth.
https://github.com/ChristophGeske/ARCor ... /README.md

Questions:
1) Is there a way to recenter the view without restarting ALVR when headtracking is offset by 90deg just after enytering the task? (It happen a few times)
2) I am now wondering how ARCore could be used with Condor Streamed with ALVR to GearVR with S9 headset. Any suggestions?
3) Can an overlay of XCsoar be toggled in and out of VR view (maybe with some transparency) during flight or added later directly as one page in the onboard PDA display?

Thank you for your help in advance,
Donat

Haven't got Condor 2.0 yet still on Condor 1 Expecting my girlfriend to get it for me as a gift for my birthday in a week or so

However, I made huge strides towards using my Samsung S8 with Gear VR and ALVR 6DOF inside out positional tracking.

1. Probably you should use in game centering view button. For example in DCS World is NumPad 5
2. Since ALVR uses SteamVR to launch the game, you will need Revive or some othe wrapper to launch Condor 2 with ALVR.

Regarding 6DOF inside out positional tracking, few advices:

1. Phone will get hot pretty fast due to high load on phone GPU to track surrounding planes with ARCore through the camera. Once the phone gets hot, first it will throttle down the GPU hence tracking precision will degrade and drift will become noticable (at least on my S8, S9 should be much better). After a few minutes the ALVR ARCore app will throw exception that Gear VR needs to cool down. To resolve this issue you need to buy flexible usb fan like this one:
https://www.amazon.com/Portable-Flexibl ... B017B3Z39G
This is enough to cool the phone if mounted on monitor or keyboard USB port and directed in the face

2. Tracking precision. Use the stock Google Measure App:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... sure&hl=en
to check if the walls around your PC are detected properly.
If not use some wall stickers with contrasting pattern (black white) and check that wall is detected fast enough.

Also use a cardboard print out over your monitor with a a pattern like this one since most monitors don't have enough contrast to be tracked:
https://www.vectorstock.com/royalty-fre ... r-13732995

When you see it it will work but never good enough (30 frames only for positional tracking) as a factory made VR (also FOV of GearVR is not enough 100 vs 110 due to small phone screen size ). So, it is probably not worth the time to experiment ...

[dpluigi]

Hi,

Thank you for sharing your experience. I hope you can switch to Condor2 soon, it is worth it. I have tested both ALVR Normal and ALVR+ARCore Client. The ARCore client did get hot, I stopped it at the first warning and replaced it with the Normal Client, started in the same offline session (i.e. using the same ALVR Server).

ALVR Normal has been stable, although it crashed last week during a task, making me lose joystick control and dive into flutter before I could restart both Client and Server. Some error message about .NET. I will post on ALVR forum with the error log if it happens again.

At the moment my biggest issue is :
(i) convenient VR View re-centering from ALVR,
(ii) zoom function along view direction (or panel zoom) when using 3DOF Headset, which could be delivered by either Condor or ALVR.
(iii) Camera passthrough is not included in ALVR Normal as far as I can tell, but it would be a convenient way to look up a map or XCSoar in transparency with VR View.

Regarding (i), when I switch ALVR ARCorte to ALVR Normal my view was offset and with some trial and error, I was able to correct it by applying an Offset in the Other/Apply Offset x=0.1 y=2 z=0 to player position. Not something I could easily do while in a real-time multiplayer session.

On a different note is CoTASA or similar not visible in COndor VR Mode?

All in all, so far even with a 100deg FOV and 60fps Gear VR is a viable approach. I am waiting for next-generation VR Headsets at a reasonable price. My ideal headset, wide FOV, min 120deg, higher resolution, inside out tracking/wireless, eye-tracking option for future foveated rendering.

[Loaded_Dice]

Hi ,

Just to add to the discussion, already tried Oculus Rift and the major turnoff was the low resolution and somewhat blurry image compared to GearVR. However I believe this can be offset by using high pixel density (aka supersampling) if you own a strong GPU (1070 in my case )
Another strength of the Oculus is the asynchronous time warp ( should be much better if you have a slow GPU which can't do 90fps then the one in the GearVR which is preset to 60fps). And of course you get reliable 6DOF.

While I cannot get it here in Macedonia there is a great offer in nearby Thessaloniki, Greece, 249EUR for the first combo which only has a single sensor and the old remote. Taking off the tax (one advantage if you are not in EU) I can get that down to around 200 EUR which I think is a bargain

P.S. Anyone has experience with single sensor positional tracking of the Oculus headset since current combo includes two cameras ?

[HornetSk]

It was working good, especially for seated experience.
Here is something about it: https://forums.oculusvr.com/community/d ... gle-sensor

The price is very good indeed

[eisenhans]

There is a better free alternative to Riftcat in case you are using a Samsung phone with Gear VR:

https://github.com/polygraphene/ALVR

The streaming quality is much better due to the use of Moonlight protocol with Gear VR (something that Riftcat has not been able to achieve) and much more user friendly.

I have both, while Riftcat is not bad, give ALVR a try, you will be surprised how stable it is.

I even managed to get 6DOF positional tracking with ALVR ArCore version, however my Samsung S8 overheats i around round 10 min or so

Would like to hear if you have some solution to positional tracking with a DIY VR setup.

Was about to buy the Rift, however the resolution on the S8 is so much better and sharper so still thinking.

Thx 4 your hint. ALVR is not working on Win7 right now so i had to setup my Win10 Notebook to test it.
It works like a charm with the GearVR. It is fluent and image quality is nice. My S8 wasnt overheating yet but the battery drain is hardcore.
I have to find out if there's a way to charge the phone while using it with the gear VR.

I just have to figure out the headtracking. The Riftcat Tracking was smoother. Ill play with the corresponding ALVR settings.
Other thing not working right now is recenter function with gear VR Trackpad.

Ill do further investigation if i find some time. THX

[h.kreso]

Hi,

I had some tests, to fly with Gear VR with Samsung S7, but I was not happy. I used ALVR, and had to 40-50 FPS, with many time to freezing.
I was surprised how many traffic was over WiFi. I flu 30 min max

[janjansen]

That shouldnt be surprising. You are sending high quality live video over wifi and it has to have very low latency, so it can not be compressed the way video usually is compressed. That traffic is just local though, it doesnt go over the internet, shouldnt affect your internet provider caps or anything.

[Loaded_Dice]

Hi,

I had some tests, to fly with Gear VR with Samsung S7, but I was not happy. I used ALVR, and had to 40-50 FPS, with many time to freezing.
I was surprised how many traffic was over WiFi. I flu 30 min max

If your WiFi is not on 5Ghz don't even try it.
Also I can assume that the GPU on Samsung S7 (had one before S8) is not powerful enough to run H265 decoder.
So you need to try 5Ghz with H264 and start with a bit lower quality at 30Mbps.
However whatever you do there will be never enough power on the S7 to use ARCore at the same time for 6DOF tracking.
Even on the S9 where there is less overheating I don't think is worth it, but 3DOF streaming should run perfectly at least on S8 and S9.

[h.kreso]

Rift S is coming very soon. I'm looking forward. This was just test.