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SteamVR: Introducing Room View 3D (For Valve Index Users)
- Thread starter Nzyme32
- Start date
It captures your environment via the cameras, like photogrammetry. so you have a virtual representation of your room in VR. this is way better since usually looking trough pass trough has some limitations like lower FOV, a strange offset (imagine if your eyeballs are 10 cm away from your head), additional lag etc.
at least that is what I think it is.
That seems to be the case because pass through ends up offsetting your perception. This looks to do something like a photogrammetry model of the room so at the very least you're still in the proper scale/perspective.
Ahh, gotcha. Sounds interesting. Wonder how they'll find ways to use it in the future since right now I just use pass-through to make sure I'm not about to smack into a wall when I can't get away from the guardian barrier, lol.
In my experience, the camera pass-through view is never quite right - the viewpoint and depth are always "off" somehow. Just scanning in the environment probably makes the function feel much better.
That said, the Oculus Quest's pass-through is getting much better. It even detects obstacles in your way now.
OP
OP
Pass-through isn't very good at actually giving you an accurate representation of your surroundings, nor is it very good for depth perception.
Try picking up a bottle of water using pass-through, or looking at where pass-through shows your surroundings and game controllers vs where the VR controllers and objects actually are. This should become quite obvious - it's really bad, and not designed for anything beyond literally pass-through.
What this appears to do is actually use computer vision techniques to understand and represent the room in 3D - mapping it out a bit like photogrammetry, mapping that out to your space.
This is definitely more critical for something like SteamVR where "room-scale" is more of a focus, increasing the value of being able to fully understand your surroundings to appropriate depth and scale
Currently, right now, prior to this, room view is shown to you as a 2D projection of the camera. You're basically looking at a big "TV" of what your Vive sees. It's.... alright, certainly better than pure blindness, but without stereoscopic vision it's pretty awkward to accurately determine any distances. So you can hold your hand up, and then kind of guess from your hand in the display how far away something is maybe. It gives some directionality but not really location.
This would actually display the world in 3D so you can tell how far away that door is before you jab your hand into it. This would be a HUGE improvement.
Honestly the offset and lag are teeny tiny issues compared to complete lack of depth information.
This would actually display the world in 3D so you can tell how far away that door is before you jab your hand into it. This would be a HUGE improvement.
Honestly the offset and lag are teeny tiny issues compared to complete lack of depth information.
The only thing I can think about is standing right there in your goddamn room while you're still seeing it empty all around you.
I love it.
I love it.
OP
OP
You've missed the point entirely. This has specific benefits for VR users, who need it because they have a headset on, or indeed for other uses that may occur for mixed reality. Pass-through is pretty crap as it isn't providing a 3D representation of your surroundings. For SteamVR in particular, where users tend to walk around, something like this is going to be extremely useful
Through those two shitty camera's on the front? That's impressive if so.
Is it real time? I'll need to try it out to grasp it tbh.
Stick left camera on left eye
Stick right camera on right eye
done
Yeah I get that, I used this one my first gen Vive even though it only was 2D
Just tried it. Obviously the scanning is artifact-prone. You see a lot of warping. But it's a notable improvement over the stereoscopic overlay. Really cool.
OP
OP
The Index cameras are not exactly shitty - they are pretty much there with computer vision in mind
I will have to try them with this, or mine are faulty because I got mine this year and the quality on them is absolutely terrible. :(
Tiny camera + Need for very low latency = Apparent quality
Don't mistake the photos you get out of your phone for actual camera quality.
I still don't understand the point of this? It just lets you walk around in the room you're in in VR?
Or does this use the cameras to automatically set your play area and chaperone guides? That would be cool if it's the latter.
Or does this use the cameras to automatically set your play area and chaperone guides? That would be cool if it's the latter.
Just gave it a try. Pretty cool though at the moment it's very wonky. Don't expect this to actually fix the perspective problems of the pass through view either. It's basically a wonky 3D version of what that normally looks like. Better than the 2D version but this isn't like the equivalent of a photogrammetry scan of your surroundings that you can walk around in. Curious to see how it improves over time though.
The Index (and the Vive) have cameras on the front for a pass through view to see your surroundings without taking the headset off. You can either activate this on command or set it so you see that it activate when you go through your chaperone boundaries. Originally it was just a 2D view, but this update gives you the option to see it in 3D.
If you've ever had small dogs, they like to say hello while you're playing VR
Legitimate tripping hazard dude
I have trouble seeing them myself through pass through, I'm just hoping this improves it for me
Looking forward to trying it tonight
Looking forward to trying it tonight
I just tried it out. It works as advertised, and everything around me basically appears to be in the right place. That's a good sign. It's not exactly photorealistic, and things sort of shimmer, for lack of a better word, especially when moving. It's weird. But overall, I consider this an upgrade.
am i missing something? mine is all green and black...
edit: Opaque passthrough fixed it. wow, this isn't bad.
edit: Opaque passthrough fixed it. wow, this isn't bad.
I can just imagine a game that takes your living room and makes zombies come through your doors or windows. Make holes appear in your walls like Silent Hill 4: The Room. You could also rust your whole room in a Silent Hill game, at the same time it happens on the screen, make light flicker too. A bunch of awesome stuff.
One thing I'm wondering is if they can somehow freeze the data in-place as you turn your head, basically pasting together a reconstruction of the room? I'm sure there's a good reason they aren't doing this already...
My Rift S does this too whenever I lift the headset off of my head. The sense of depth is unreal.
Are you on a Oculus device or something else? Back when I had a CV1 SteamVR would give me issues so I stopped using it and used OpenComposite or the Oculus native versions whenever possible. I don't know if it improved or if its just a lot less issue prone on my Index but I don't have issues with it anymore. I've heard Oculus support has always been buggy because Oculus themselves don't officially support SteamVR but could be wrong.
Nope, I have the full Index kit. SteamVR sometimes stutters like mad while each eye flashes differently. I can get right into Beat Saber just fine and play for a while, but after 15 minutes of HL Alyx and Pavlov, the games start to lag to hell and back (for frames and overall stuttering).
That... that sounds like something you should contact Valve around to see what the fuck is going on.
Not sure why I didn't think of this. But I just did it and thank you.
You sure it's not your PC? I used to have terrible VR performance and it turned out that by CPU kept changing it clockspeed constantly because there was an energy saving feature enabled called Speedshift. Took me the longest time to figure out cause only the clockspeed would change and not my CPU usage
Never knew this existed, and my 6700K is around that time too. I'll have to look into it. Someone also mentioned about making the GPU dedicated to PCI-e x16 3.0 instead of making it go auto or something. Not sure if it's the same thing. Sorry, this thread really got hijacked and I'm very sorry about that :(.
Oculus Rift S and Quest already have what Valve is doing- they call it Passthrough+. (But it's only black and white currently).
Photogrammetry is slightly different. You capture a static space from every possible angle, process the hundreds/thousands of pictures, and a standalone virtual 3D model of the scene is constructed.
The passthrough algorithm is more of a crude cheat, but at least you get to see where people, pets, beer cans etc are in realtime, and you of course get a more accurate sense of depth than just a raw camera feed, unless the headset cameras happen to be 64mm apart.