pc vr gaming with phone

[Animesona]

im curious is there anyone making a phone app that allows you to use your phone as a pc vr display so you can connect your phone to your pc and do vr with your phone without having to spend an extra 1000$ on a vr headset like the index?

[Guest]

There is. Someone made a YouTube video once. It's very not user friendly & unstable.

[Animesona]

im curious cause i have like this 900$ phone and i was wondering if it would be possible to use it as a vr screen for my pc its vr ready thats for sure cep i dont want to spend more money on a headset just for vr

[ZeusXI]

3 minutes ago, Animesona said:

im curious is there anyone making a phone app that allows you to use your phone as a pc vr display so you can connect your phone to your pc and do vr with your phone without having to spend an extra 1000$ on a vr headset like the index?

RiftCat

[Animesona]

what is that?

2 hours ago, ZeusXI said:

RiftCat

whats that?

[ZeusXI]

Just now, Animesona said:

what is that?

whats that?

Its an app you download on your pc, and your phone, and it simulates VR through your phone

 

[Animesona]

2 hours ago, ZeusXI said:

Its an app you download on your pc, and your phone, and it simulates VR through your phone

 

and i can use it to play half life alyx?

[Alex Atkin UK]

13 minutes ago, Animesona said:

im curious is there anyone making a phone app that allows you to use your phone as a pc vr display so you can connect your phone to your pc and do vr with your phone without having to spend an extra 1000$ on a vr headset like the index?

You do realise the Index is one of the most expensive, right?  Plus you need controllers, which need to be tracked somehow.  By the time you've added hardware to try and make it work, you might as well have bought a Rift S.

I went through GearVR then PSVR, tried to get both working on the PC and it was a huge waste of time.  Buying the Rift S was the first time it actually worked.

The phone was by far the worst experience, it was too heavy on my face and the lenses far from optimal and that was using the native VR apps.  I never got it to work for PC.

[Animesona]

2 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

You do realise the Index is one of the most expensive, right?  Plus you need controllers, which need to be tracked somehow.  By the time you've added hardware to try and make it work, you might as well have bought a Rift S.

I went through GearVR then PSVR, tried to get both working on the PC and it was a huge waste of time.  Buying the Rift S was the first time it actually worked.

you watched the video linus made about where the quest doesnt need those hand controllers to work right im sure i wont need them

[Alex Atkin UK]

6 minutes ago, Animesona said:

you watched the video linus made about where the quest doesnt need those hand controllers to work right im sure i wont need them

The Quest isn't a phone, its fully customised hardware integrated into a VR headset with cameras to do tracking.  Its vastly superior to any system where you slap a phone into a VR headset shell.

I've also watched a few videos where its clear the hand tracking sucks for gaming, its mostly just a proof of concept right now.

[Sakkura]

3 minutes ago, Animesona said:

you watched the video linus made about where the quest doesnt need those hand controllers to work right im sure i wont need them

Phones can't do that hand tracking yet, and won't ever do it well. In any case, hand tracking is still experimental and not supported in basically any games.

 

The best advice is to buy a proper VR headset. Or if you don't like the ones on the market now (price, features, whatever) you can wait for better options.

[Animesona]

2 hours ago, Sakkura said:

Phones can't do that hand tracking yet, and won't ever do it well. In any case, hand tracking is still experimental and not supported in basically any games.

 

The best advice is to buy a proper VR headset. Or if you don't like the ones on the market now (price, features, whatever) you can wait for better options.

a vr headset is very expensive plus i already have a very good phone with a good screen why cant i use it?

[Alex Atkin UK]

3 minutes ago, Animesona said:

a vr headset is very expensive plus i already have a very good phone with a good screen why cant i use it?

We've already explained, there is no way for the phone to track your hands (it needs multiple cameras from different angles and software to process it, and it doesn't even work well enough for general games yet) so you'd at least need controllers and lighthouses.

Once you finished buying all that, you've likely spent as much as the Rift S and you'll still be trying to figure out how to cobble it all together for it to probably not even work.

[Sakkura]

Just now, Animesona said:

a vr headset is very expensive plus i already have a very good phone with a good screen why cant i use it?

There's more to a good VR headset than a good screen. Lenses are very important, controllers are very important, tracking is very important. Phone-based VR sucks on all three counts.

 

There's a reason Samsung discontinued their Gear VR.

[Animesona]

my phone has cameras

[Alex Atkin UK]

3 minutes ago, Animesona said:

my phone has cameras

Its not "just" cameras, I said "at different angles".  They have to be specifically aligned to see your hands in 3D space, and as we keep saying - HAND TRACKING DOESN'T WORK IN NORMAL VR GAMES EVEN ON THE QUEST!

That's before we even get into the business of how bad the latency is, how crap a picture that had to be encoded into video and streamed to your phone looks and that VR optimises the screen for higher refresh rate and lower pixel persistence. 

[Animesona]

2 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Its not "just" cameras, I said "at different angles".  They have to be specifically aligned to see your hands in 3D space, and as we keep saying - HAND TRACKING DOESN'T WORK IN NORMAL VR GAMES EVEN ON THE QUEST!

im sure it will just have to try

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 minute ago, Animesona said:

im sure it will just have to try

How?  There wont be any hand tracking software for your phone VR solution.

At best you can beam the image over, but you won't be able to actually play the game.

[Animesona]

2 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

How?  There wont be any hand tracking software for your phone VR solution.

At best you can beam the image over, but you won't be able to actually play the game.

why shouldent i be able to play vr with my phone its as expensive as an index so theres no reason it shouldent work

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 minute ago, Animesona said:

why shouldent i be able to play vr with my phone its as expensive as an index so theres no reason it shouldent work

Because its not designed to do it.  There is a HUGE difference between a phone and a VR headset.  Even phones designed specifically to do both were a pretty terrible experience, phones that aren't designed to do it just simply wont work properly.

Its rather like asking why can't you play golf with a baseball.

[WereCatf]

7 minutes ago, Animesona said:

why shouldent i be able to play vr with my phone its as expensive as an index so theres no reason it shouldent work

You can buy a $3000 CNC-machine and you can buy a $3000 used car. Even though they cost the same, only one of those two can actually be used to drive to work, grocery-shopping and the likes.

 

Them costing the same doesn't mean they work the same.

[Animesona]

im just gonna wait till i can vr game with my phone and not waste money for a vr headset that doesnt do anything else

[Animesona]

3 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Because its not designed to do it.  There is a HUGE difference between a phone and a VR headset.  Even phones designed specifically to do both were a pretty terrible experience, phones that aren't designed to do it just simply wont work properly.

Its rather like asking why can't you play golf with a baseball.

i guess because no ones thought of doing that

[ZeusXI]

9 hours ago, Animesona said:

and i can use it to play half life alyx?

not sure. i believe they have a free trial still. Could always try as I do not have that game.

[tikker]

10 hours ago, Animesona said:

im just gonna wait till i can vr game with my phone and not waste money for a vr headset that doesnt do anything else

Things are made for a purpose, there is not catch all. You can also say you wasted $1000 on a worthless phone. It can text/call and make pictures, but is useless for everything else. There's also the other side of the coin: why would my phone need to get more expensive, getting VR features that I don't want on my phone?

 

10 hours ago, Animesona said:

i guess because no ones thought of doing that

Plenty of people before you likely have thought of this, and it failed or just didn't take off because it's not worth it.

 

Sure there are things that let you use your phone as a display for VR, but you are still going to miss out on the most important thing for e.g. Half Life Alyx: tracking and performance. You just cannot compare the two. Your phone has been designed to take pictures, chat and call with people and run some basic apps all with miniaturized relatively, powerful hardware that needs to run for a day. A VR system is designed to track you around your room, do so with pin point accuracy and without noticable latency as that would break immersion and make you sick probably. The index is currently the best and most expensive set out there, for good reason, but there are more affordable options.

 

Do one thing and do it well. That's why we have phones, PCs, VR sets etc. that do the one thing they were designed for.

 

(I have the original Vive, this stuff is awesome and definitely worth the money imo. Hopefully Half Life Alyx will inspire more great VR games.)