FreeCAD-VR: Oculus Rift

[jriegel]

I want to announce my little side project (besides Assembly) - FreeCAD-VR.

Yesterday I finished the integration of the Oculus Rift into FreeCAD. The 3D view is now able to open a extra window (onto the extra monitor which the Rift driver brings in the system) and render the scene into it.

FreeCAD-Oculus_Rift.jpg (284.54 KiB) Viewed 22697 times

The menu entry to start the VR-Window is in the View menu. If the Rift window has the focus you can navigate by keys: w,s,d,a and the arrow keys. Since some models are at millimeter scale you are also able to size it up by + and - keys.

My further plans:
* Python interface for view point control and scene management
* Wiki page
* Turn table and mirror bottom
* XBox controller
* maybe integration of my Kinect and Razer Hydra..

I also will announce this on the Oculus developer platform and in Coin3D project (whats left of it). So maybe we will have additional not CAD-adapted traffic

At the moment its only tested on Windows, but should be no problem to port it on Linux!
So if some one of the Linux devs has a Rift, I would be glad we could port it...

At the moment the code is in my branch "jriegel/Rift" on sf.net. To build you need the Oculus dev kit and have to switch on the option FreeCAD_VR in cMake. Later on I will commit into master and make it part of the windows release.

[yorik]

Now I wish I had a rift

[kwahoo]

I posted a link on r/oculus

At the moment its only tested on Windows, but should be no problem to port it on Linux!
So if some one of the Linux devs has a Rift, I would be glad we could port it...

Unfortunately there is no DK2 and SDK 4.x support on Linux yet:(

[jreinhardt]

Now I wish I had a rift

So do I!

I read about the attempts to build poor-mans VR goggles using a smartphone ans some 3D printed parts or even folded up cardboard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Cardboard

I guess these are not compatible to Occulus on the software side. But how difficult and how much work would it be to make this work?

[jriegel]

I think its a good idea to wait till the final version arrives, which has probably even higher resolution. Next year, its not so far of

Meanwhile there are a lot other problems.

The new Direct To Rift mode is not even work under Windows with OpenGl, only DirectX so far. Using the Rift as an additional monitor is a pain in the ass.

So we will see a lot of driver hacking and changes in the next months! I will use this implementation mainly to play with user interaction models in CAD. Also we need more tied control about our triangle budget, fPS lower then 40 are a pain and gets you sick very fast!

CardBoard is tied to the Android platform, and so far I'm not aware of an Android port of FreeCAD

@Yorik
Yes, I saw a lot of applications in your field with the Rift. Maybe its one of the fields (after gaming) where the Rift get a lot of traction in professional work! But I tell you, we all need a MUCH bigger graphic card!!!!

[kwahoo]

But how difficult and how much work would it be to make this work?

It uses a smartphone, so you have 2 options:
a) video streaming from PC, unacceptable bacause of latency (compression+transmission+decompression > 50ms)
b) port FreeCAD (or Coin3D viewer) to Android. It could work, see Samsung Gear VR with Note 4 inside. Note (pun not intended): Android in Note 4 is very customized, recreating these changes in an other smartphone is not easy, not sure if even possible. Relevant Carmack's talk http://youtu.be/VO6T4M4VMuk?t=4m27s

[shoogen]

so far I'm not aware of an Android port of FreeCAD

I think we will see this in the next years. http://tracker.dev.opencascade.org/view.php?id=25146

[kwahoo]

The new Direct To Rift mode is not even work under Windows with OpenGl, only DirectX so far. Using the Rift as an additional monitor is a pain in the ass.

So we will see a lot of driver hacking and changes in the next months!

"OpenGL working in Direct HMD mode using Direct3D interoperability (updated)"

I will use this implementation mainly to play with user interaction models in CAD. Also we need more tied control about our triangle budget, fPS lower then 40 are a pain and gets you sick very fast!

Time-warping?

so far I'm not aware of an Android port of FreeCAD

I think we will see this in the next years. http://tracker.dev.opencascade.org/view.php?id=25146

https://plus.google.com/116274964615566 ... vPPh62X6cF

[ickby]

This is really cool! Hell of a side project

[jriegel]

"OpenGL working in Direct HMD mode using Direct3D interoperability (updated)"

I've come to this too, but I don't want to waste time with workarounds. The Direct Render will come for OpenGl soon (hopfully)...

Time-warping?

Yes thats one of tricks to get a smooth movement, but there is no way you get a good impression without <20ms move to photon. And we talk about rendering twice. And if the consumer rift get a 4k display we need really monster machines for everything serious CAD models. Or the big architectural stuff Yorik do! No way a smart phone can do that in any time in the future. Nice little games with very little triangle count - sure. But CAD? No way....

Who was this guy who said that 640kB are enough memory anyway ?