D.I.Y. Oculus Rift / VR Goggles

The Oculus Rift has been getting a lot of buzz lately.  They offered to give free dev kits to Philippine Game Dev companies several months ago.  I applied for it but unfortunately they weren’t able to provide it to everyone.  I also wanted to buy one myself but it seems I have to wait until August.  Drat!

Anyway, to keep myself occupied I just decided to try to build one myself.  It took about a day to buy all the parts but assembly time was about 4 hours.  It’s not really complicated to build.

First you’ll need a base to mount it on.  I used plastic welding goggles.  I initially thought I’d need something more to hold the goggles steady on my head but the small lcd monitor was light enough for the goggles to hold it in place without any added head support.

You’ll also need a small LCD monitor.  I just used a 3.5 inch? one I had.  I think it was originally for those car rearview cameras.

Next is a couple of magnifying glasses.  The ones I bought at a bookstore were the type that had a built in stand.  You’ll see in the pics that these kind already provide a nice way of mounting the glasses on the goggles and the LCD monitor as well.

That’s it for the goggles themselves.  I also mounted 4 battery powered LED lights in front of the assembly.  This is for motion tracking using a webcam.  The idea is that it will be able to provide something to track head movement with.

The software for the goggles is just any stereo graphics app that can display the left and right views on your screen.  Unfortunately the LED/webcam tracking won’t work.  It only works on my own apps.

Anyway, that’s it.  I’m sure a lot of you guys out there will be able to build something a lot better.  Happy hardware hacking guys!