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nokilli
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 Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2018 1:40 pm Post subject: Gentoo + Android + VR Headset + Bluetooth Keyboard = Viable? |
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I am sick of sitting on a bus or a plane and not being able to use my laptop for work because the seat back in front of me won't let me. No, I don't fly First Class. Do you? If so I hate you, please visit the next topic.
What I want to know is whether I can run emacs using Gentoo on an Android using a VR headset as a monitor and a Bluetooth keyboard. And even if so, is this crazy for some reason?
Gentoo has a Gentoo on Android effort underway here. They even provide a hardware compatibility list. Predictably, Gentoo won't be the limiting factor.
I'm assuming that the Bluetooth keyboard should be no issue either. The Gentoo installation uses Gentoo Prefix via chroot, so all of the Android stuff should still be good and Android of course supports Bluetooth keyboards.
I'm left with the VR headset as the open question. In case it isn't clear, I'm talking about the VR headsets that you pop an smartphone into, not anything like what Oculus or the PS4 provide which are entirely different beasts. Does anyone have experience using these for reading small text? When using a laptop I need to use reading glasses, but apparently, users of reading glasses have no issues with the VR headsets (alas near-sighted people or people who need corrective lens tailored for individual eyes do.) This would actually be a bonus if true as I only need reading glasses for my laptop (and infrequently the smartphone) and I'm always losing them; I doubt I'll lose the VR headset.
I wouldn't want to use my existing smartphone for this because it's an iPhone (please have mercy... it's a long story). So before I buy an Android phone--and I'm guessing I'd want it to be beefy in the specs department so mucho monero is required--I just want to hear what you guys have to say about it.
If this works it would really be revolutionary. Depending on where I'm living/what I'm doing, this could easily give me many days of work time every month. And best of all when I'm travelling and I do have the ability to use the laptop I find I'm able to get a lot more work done because of fewer distractions and the generally sucky experience travel provides these days.
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nokilli
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| Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2018 5:12 pm Post subject: |
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My efforts on the web seem to all reveal people wanting to create virtual monitors, i.e., one virtual monitor is in front of you, turn your head to the right and there's another monitor, etc. Kind of like the virtual workspaces you get in many window managers on Linux.
That would of course be insanely cool but the criticism of this approach (as predicted) is that the resolution is nowhere near what it needs to be to support such a use.
To clarify, this isn't what I want at all. I just want to edit text when I'm sitting in a plane. It doesn't need to be floating or spinning or have flying sharks with laser beams or anything at all like that. It doesn't need to change my view if I tilt my head, in fact that would be undesirable as hell. If a 1928x1080 smartphone ends up yielding 640x480, I'm good; that's an easy 40 lines of text and you could definitely get work done with that.
And people can't get two pages into these conversations without the subject turning to porn. I'd be using this on a bus or an airplane. Seriously, take that shit someplace else. WTF is wrong with people.
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The Doctor
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| Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2018 7:42 pm Post subject: |
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I'd have doubts about the resolution for text as well. You only get half of a very small screen, but that isn't the biggest problem. Biology is probably the limiting factor. Eye fatigue and disorientation is a thing. Using a VR setup eye fatigue happens very quickly and takes a very long time to go away. Your eyes are only inches from the screen and your brain is going to try and assemble a 3D image that doesn't actually exist. 640x480 is an okay screen on a monitor in front of you. Two inches from your eyes may be another story.
Your inner ear is calibrated with respect to your vision. The inner ear has limited detection ability to about one or two degrees per second. That means a sufficiently smooth and slow turn will cause your ear to orientate itself with the turn and away from the true "up." This is called the leans and is uncomfortable to say the least.
In traffic or turbulence you will be bumped around and this effect gets much worse. You are likely to experience tumbling, falling, or rolling illusions. These illusions are very strong and can cause extreme discomfort and motion sickness.
Pilots are well antiquated with this phenomena. It is called "spacial disorientation" or "spacial-d." Gamers have recently become aware of this as well because VR games induce similar problems. You would probably become sick or too disorientated to work in the first half hour trying to use such a set up.
Just to give you an idea of how quickly these illusions can set in, I know an F-15 pilot who was preforming a midair refueling. The tanker had to make a minor course correction followed by a turn. After the turn he felt like they were in a vertical dive. It happens that quickly and it can take hours to get back to normal.
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szatox
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| Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2018 8:20 pm Post subject: |
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It is an interesting idea, unfortunately there are so many new things it's hard to predict the actual results. I think you will not know until you give it a try.
| Quote: | | It doesn't need to change my view if I tilt my head, in fact that would be undesirable as hell |
Actually it could let you fake higher resolution by making the virtual display bigger than your field of view.
You tilt your head to look at different part of that display.
| Quote: | | WTF is wrong with people. |
Exactly that: they are people. Or humans if you prefer.
We are a surprisingly stupid specie, given our achievements so far.
| Quote: | | In traffic or turbulence you will be bumped around and this effect gets much worse. You are likely to experience tumbling, falling, or rolling illusions. These illusions are very strong and can cause extreme discomfort and motion sickness. |
True, but not all people are equally affected. Some people must take the front sit in a car and watch the road to tolerate the journey, others are comfortable reading books on a city bus in a crowded city center.
Fatigue worries me much more. Also, I'm not sure I'd want to be completely cut off from the environment by wearing something like that outside of my safe home. Peripheral vision is good. Makes things you hear harder to ignore when you're focused on your task.
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After the turn he felt like they were in a vertical dive |
Shake it off  |
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The Doctor
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| Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2018 8:45 pm Post subject: |
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| szatox wrote: | | True, but not all people are equally affected. |
This is true, but tolerance will only get you so far. When I want to induce spacial disorientation some people may hang in a little longer but I can always get them there in the end. It never takes more than two or three minutes of eyes closed and some very gentle maneuvers. Most people loose it in about 30 seconds. Actually I usually have them do it to themselves, but sometimes I'll simulate rolls.
On the other hand tolerance for aerobatics can be trained and increases very quickly. But that is will visual reference.
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nokilli
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| Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2018 9:10 pm Post subject: |
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| The Doctor wrote: | | Your eyes are only inches from the screen and your brain is going to try and assemble a 3D image that doesn't actually exist. 640x480 is an okay screen on a monitor in front of you. Two inches from your eyes may be another story. |
This is what is confusing me: I get it that they're splitting the screen into two, one half for each eyeball. And I get it that the lenses in the headset are set up to let each eye only view its assigned half of the screen. We're calling that stereoscopic. But does it have to be? The software that is controlling these two screens is changing the image slightly so that each eyeball sees a slightly different view, to trick the brain into assembling this 3D image, right? But what if the software instead just split the screen and made each image identical?
They created this product to let us see 3D images. Is it oversight on their part to not have a 2D facility because they don't think anyone is interested, or is there something about the optical properties here that simply won't let this work?
And I was assuming that if gamers can allegedly keep these things on their heads for hours at a time even when their brain is tasked with the 3D assembling that then 2D should be a piece of cake; that the fact that the display is so close to the eye shouldn't matter for 2D since it doesn't seem to matter for 3D. If that makes any sense at all.
| The Doctor wrote: | | In traffic or turbulence you will be bumped around and this effect gets much worse. You are likely to experience tumbling, falling, or rolling illusions. These illusions are very strong and can cause extreme discomfort and motion sickness. |
This is only if it's 3D though, right? Say we get the 2D solution I'm talking about to work, assuming it's possible, then motion sickness for most people shouldn't be a thing, right? For instance, I can work on my laptop in turbulence or in traffic and so long as it isn't so bumpy to make it hard to view the screen I'm ok; I've never gotten motion sickness by doing this.
| szatox wrote: | | I think you will not know until you give it a try. |
The good news here is if you already have a compatible phone, the headset part is actually pretty cheap. Anywhere from $10 to $50 are the prices I'm seeing. Google even has this thing where you can make one out of cardboard which is pretty neat. And then of course for actual use you'd need the bluetooth keyboard and you'd probably want to shop for a quiet one so as not to disturb those sitting near you.
The phone itself of course can be expensive. It's an interesting feature matrix. Never cared about weight before but here it really matters. Obviously you want a higher resolution than you might otherwise need. Quad-core or Octo-core would seem to be nice as well (emerges!) Got to make sure it will run Gentoo, and you might as well make sure it's compatible with the VR stuff on the Google Play store. You might need to root the phone so I guess Android version is important? (I haven't been keeping up on that stuff.)
The old phone works fine... as a phone, but it's an iPhone. And all of this NSA stuff made me promise myself that my next phone was going to be a dumb phone (but I guess I can have two.) Also, one thing I did like about the iPhone is that if you don't want the phone part then you could just get the iPod equivalent. I don't know how I'd feel with a powerful transmitter on my face, and I don't think there are Android devices without the phone part. You can take out the SIM card but then does make it worse because it's always in some kind of scanning mode or something?
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The Doctor
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| Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2018 9:49 pm Post subject: |
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| nokilli wrote: | | The Doctor wrote: | | Your eyes are only inches from the screen and your brain is going to try and assemble a 3D image that doesn't actually exist. 640x480 is an okay screen on a monitor in front of you. Two inches from your eyes may be another story. |
This is what is confusing me: I get it that they're splitting the screen into two, one half for each eyeball. And I get it that the lenses in the headset are set up to let each eye only view its assigned half of the screen. We're calling that stereoscopic. But does it have to be? The software that is controlling these two screens is changing the image slightly so that each eyeball sees a slightly different view, to trick the brain into assembling this 3D image, right? But what if the software instead just split the screen and made each image identical? |
Your brain is hardwired to construct the 3D image. If you haven't tried this before I recommend taking a paper towel roll or rolled up piece of paper and holding the tube to one eye and put your hand along the tube somewhere in front of your other eye. At some point you will see a hole in your hand because your brain is struggling to make sense of it.
So telling the software to split the screen is easy. The problem is literally behind your eyes. The technology you are talking about is easy. The human is the weak link.
| nokilli wrote: | | They created this product to let us see 3D images. Is it oversight on their part to not have a 2D facility because they don't think anyone is interested, or is there something about the optical properties here that simply won't let this work? |
Your eye does not have a 2D mode. Practically, simulating a 2D screen some distance from your face is doable. However to be really practical it would need to be in an augmented reality, not virtual reality, mode. Your brain just doesn't know what to do with a static image when it feels movement and this is what leads to motion sickness and disorientation.
Google glass and a few others played with this but they didn't find either a practical implementation or market.
| nokilli wrote: | | And I was assuming that if gamers can allegedly keep these things on their heads for hours at a time even when their brain is tasked with the 3D assembling that then 2D should be a piece of cake; that the fact that the display is so close to the eye shouldn't matter for 2D since it doesn't seem to matter for 3D. If that makes any sense at all. |
Their games are designed for VR. They are still able to "look" around their environment which really helps. Also most games are designed to avoid disorientation. The popular games you find are mostly ones where you the player don't move much relative to your setting. 1st person shooters are available but cause problems for gamers.
Your brain is not designed to compile a 2D image. It expects a 3D one as it gets for your entire life.
| nokilli wrote: | | [The Doctor]In traffic or turbulence you will be bumped around and this effect gets much worse. You are likely to experience tumbling, falling, or rolling illusions. These illusions are very strong and can cause extreme discomfort and motion sickness. |
This is only if it's 3D though, right? Say we get the 2D solution I'm talking about to work, assuming it's possible, then motion sickness for most people shouldn't be a thing, right? For instance, I can work on my laptop in turbulence or in traffic and so long as it isn't so bumpy to make it hard to view the screen I'm ok; I've never gotten motion sickness by doing this. [/quote]No, motion sickness and disorientation comes from a disconnect between what you see and what you feel. A Doom style VR game while sitting stationary or a static text document on a moving vehicle will have the same result. Your eye and ear has conflicting information.
What you really want is Augmented Reality. It would put your text in front of you at a comfortable distance, say 3 feet, while not blinding you to your environment. They are not cheap, but many run android or talk to android devices. A bit more, but you would actually be able to use it for long periods without the side effects. You may even be able to run Gentoo on it.
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nokilli
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2018 9:24 am Post subject: |
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The augmented reality idea is neat but I was also hoping for a distraction-free experience and it sounds like I'm not going to get it.
If I do end up getting a new smartphone, I'll keep this application in mind; an extra $20 on a headset won't kill me and just the excuse to get Gentoo running on it will make the exercise worth it. But I'm thinking you're right, it has too-good-to-be-true written all over it and it sounds like you know what you're talking about re: the biology of it all.
How would you feel about my strapping a USB projector atop my head and projecting the image on the seatback in front of me? lol
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