[chimerax-users] VR in ChimeraX and Dell Visor

[Tom Goddard]

Hi Józef,

  I have not tried a Dell Visor VR headset.  The only Windows Mixed Reality headset I have tried is Samsung Odyssey.  It looks like they should be very similar and I would not expect any different problems.  The Samsung Odyssey is better in some ways and worse in other ways than HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.  It’s main advantage is that it does not use base stations, instead using inside-out tracking.  Base stations can be a slight nuisance — with Vive the base stations need power connections and with Oculus it needs USB connections so it involves arranging cables.  It may also give better resolution than Vive and Oculus Rift, I say “may" because although from the specs it has higher resolution, but in actual comparison to Vive Pro (which is the main headset we use) its visual quality / resolution seems poor even though it has the same number of pixels as the Vive Pro.  Maybe it is the lenses, or maybe the display panel itself.  There are several downsides to the Windows Mixed Reality headsets.   With ChimeraX which uses SteamVR you have to use SteamVR and the Windows Mixed Reality runtime — this seems to be poorly implemented, definitely worse than SteamVR support for Oculus, scenes that display at full 90 frames/sec on Vive / Vive Pro and Oculus sometimes don’t on Windows Mixed Reality — it looks like the CPU is the bottleneck.  Also SteamVR and WMR sometimes just don’t cooperate so you start ChimeraX and all you see is the WMR lobby with no evident way to switch to the SteamVR ChimeraX.  The tracking with WMR is also worse although it is acceptable, sometimes a hand controller floats into space if it is out of view of the headset.  The hand controllers are more cumbersome than Oculus RIft, and require changing batteries, unlike the Vive controllers which plug in to recharge.  So I’d say WMR are the worst hand controllers, but not by a lot.  The Samsung Odyssey headset cord is shorter than Vive / Oculus I think limiting room-scale to a smaller space.  Doing room setup with the Samsung Odyssey is more painful because you have to carry the headset around on its short cord instead of the hand controllers used with Vive/Oculus — the cord often is blocked by chairs and such.  The Samsung Odyssey 1 in 10 times will decide it doesn’t recognize the room (maybe lots of chairs or people standing around or lights are down confuse it) and wants you to do room setup again.

  For all these reasons the Samsung Odyssey is my fourth choice after Vive Pro, Vive, Oculus Rift.  But it has its uses, it is the best for a portable VR setup used with a gaming laptop because it has no base stations, and I do use it for that when giving offsite VR demos.

	Tom


> On Jan 24, 2019, at 5:18 AM, Lewandowski, Jozef <J.R.Lewandowski at warwick.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
>  
> Has anyone tested Dell Visor for VR in ChimeraX? If yes are there any issues you have run into? I am assuming that the experience should be similar to what Tom has described for Samsung Odyssey but I would appreciate if anyone had specific feedback on this particular piece of hardware.
>  
> Thanks,
> Józef
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