Trinus VR, an app which uses video streaming your WiFi to let mobile and standalone VR headsets act as if they were PC VR headsets, launches in early access today for Daydream. Daydream is Google’s VR platform which runs on compatible smartphones and the Lenovo Mirge Solo standalone headset.
That means that if you have a Daydream compatible smartphone and a gaming PC, you can grab a cheap DayDream View headset for $50 on Amazon and jump into any SteamVR content that doesn’t rely on 6DoF headset or tracked controllers.
If you’re running Trinus with the Mirage Solo, things go to the next level. The software fully supports the headset’s 6DoF positional tracking, passing it through to SteamVR. You can duck, lean and walk around the experience (provided you disable the Solo’s built in 1×1 metre boundary system). It will also have the VR game on your PC render at the correct 75Hz refresh rate of the Mirage Solo.
Trinus also supports PSVR and Google Cardboard. For Oculus Go and Gear VR users, the open source project ALVR already provides the same functionality as Trinus for those headsets. Trinus tell us they plan to add support for Go and Gear VR in Q1 2019.
Trinus recommends using a direct connection to the PC
To keep perceived latency low and compensate for dropped frames in the transmission, Trinus incorporates its own asynchronous reprojection on the headset itself. While this increases battery life, it’s generally effective at smoothening out the experience and bringing it much close to a real PC VR headset.
Of course, the problem with Trinus and all apps like it is that image quality and latency still don’t match using a real PC VR headset. Contrary to popular belief, this isn’t caused by the wireless transmission itself (in fact, Trinus even supports wired over USB)- it’s actually the compression. Neither WiFi nor USB have sufficient bandwidth to transfer the raw image to a VR headset, so compression is used. This introduces artefacts to the image, but it also adds latency because it takes the PC time to encode each frame (encoding is more computationally expensive than decoding if at an acceptable quality level).
The main thing that prevents Trinus from being a true PC VR solution is Daydream’s controller, however. While it has a touchpad, it lacks even a basic trigger, and is rotation-only 3DoF, not 6DoF positional. You can pair two controllers at once and Trinus supports this, but most of SteamVR’s content really needs positional tracked input to be playable. Trinus really only works well as a solution for playing gamepad games.
Imperfections aside, Trinus delivers on the goal of providing you with a basic gamepad-input PC VR experience for a fraction of the cost of a PC VR headset. With it now supporting Daydream, your Mirage Solo can take on a new role entirely. We expect for many it will be a “gateway drug” to buying a dedicated PC VR headset for Christmas.
The post Trinus VR Comes To Daydream, So Now The Mirage Solo Can Act As A PC VR Headset Too appeared first on UploadVR.
via Mint VR