And seeing as this is quite simply a camera setup outside the headset, I suppose a Pimax module would be pretty easy to make? Give or take a delay or two of course, no need to keep mentioning that.
A bit of fish-eye lenses and we can span the entire Pimax large-fov, right? I have 100% faith in the Pimax developers that they can pull this off. They rock.
And yes, other things are more important, lets not list them all and stay on topic for the love of the pass through video gods.
Slapping a webcam on the front and connecting it using the usb slot should be pretty trivial.
Going from vive, which has a front camera, hasnt been loss for me, losing the side button for bringing up the steamvr ui was a bigger loss IMO.
The hard part of a front camera is making it actually useful, i know there is hand tracking via the vive camera/s but i havnt seen it used beyond the demo.
As Leap Motion supported pass-through I guess it shouldnât be to hard for something similar to be implemented with the Ultraleap Hand Tracking Module.
Example: Leap Motion VR Quick Switch Demo - YouTube
The only thing is that the new module uses a âstereoscopic IR cameraâ.
Would be great to have a full colour camera module that offers a reasonable amount of resolution and FPS. I hope thereâs enough bandwidth in the USB bus to allow for that.
Itâs not just about the cameras. You also need great software to do more than simple video-pass-through. I used a ZED Mini that is just two RGB cameras and an IMU.
The cameras themself are not really impressive but the provided software does a lot of things like live depth map, meshing including textures, finding surfaces, provides special shaders for a seamless mix between the video images and the augmented virtual objects including virtual lights and shadows.
Its hard to place the video pass-through cameras in an optimal position with the current Pimax headsets as they should be as close where your actual eyes are. However Doc-Ok posted a nice alternative:
Imho, the best use of the pass thru camera is with products like VRToolbox. When I was using my Vive, I would place a camera screen in front of my real office door. That way whenever someone came to the door I could look at the door and actually see the person for real facetime.
The other use was to place a camera screen on my VR desk top (VRToolbox allows you to set VR furniture in place of your real furniture, giving you a ârealâ office in VR). This let me see my actual keyboard/mouse setup when I was working.
A really trippy use was to place a screen on the floor⌠actually quite handy for petting the cats, if you can keep your balance, lol!
Bottom line: a pass thru camera is incredibly useful for actual real time VR âoffices/roomsâ. When my 8kX comes in, Iâm hoping that the resolution will make actual office work a real thing rather than just a novelty, in which case Iâm going to seriously miss that camera!!! I can get by with a webcam (VRToolbox supports those, too) but itâs not as good.
