Real o Virtual's free headset test tool

Pimax 8K Series
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Our ‘Rovians’ friends from Real o Virtual (ROV) have created a free application tool (a Steam VR environment) to analyze headsets, surely very useful for Pimax M1 testers.

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It’s only for PC headsets, totallly free and we encourage you to give it a try and your opinion.

There are several tests:

  • Snellen vision test.
  • Text sizes according to distance test.
  • Lenses and geometries test.
  • Glare test.
  • FOV measurement with 220º horizontal FOV and including vertical FOV.
  • Color test.

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Ah! and we also have a beach ball!

Here you have the official tool file

First, make sure you have Steam VR Beta installed, then you can find the application in SteamVR Workshop here.

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It’s enough to stand in one position and try to read both the texts and the letters Snellen. The geometry is based on the closeness and aberrations of the lenses. The Glare uses a 100% black environment with a 100% white font. And the FOV uses two movable blue poles to determine the degrees in the field of vision.

Article in Spanish.

The application has been made by Oscar González (Knob2001).

Let’s see if you give it a good use @SweViver, @mixedrealityTV, @Pumcy, @DKruohuo, @deletedpimaxrep1 and anyone interested.

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About how to use it:

Horizontal FOV test: Placing yourself where the feet are, just look to the red spot, grab the sticks and move them following the arcs on the floor until they disappear from your sight.

Vertical FOV test: Again, put yourself on the spot, move a little your head until the middle bar disappears, and keep the second, third bar and 0º at the same level (the third should be hidden by the second at all times.) Then just look the value at the very top of the lens and the bottom line.

The other tests are easier: Check the position when you can read the smallest text (11pt), do the same with the 14pt text and finally, find the position at where the 20/20 is the last line readable.

The glare is impossible to measure without taking a picture thru the lenses. Same happens to the Aliasing aberration (the circle). The spots you are going to see are just for you, there is no way to calculate them beside your experience.

Still a work in progress.

Details of the more precise Unreal Engine Standalone version.

http://community.openmr.ai/uploads/default/optimized/2X/3/3f8d56e430de1aeee1ca241a42f30fcea60ea6a2_1_690x427.png

Lastest Standalone version (Beta 0.2b)

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Now THIS is what I have been waiting for! Awesome work man, gonna give it a try tomorrow and I can promise you it will be used in Pimax tests when possible :slight_smile: Thank you very much!

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I suppose all previous hmd’s should be tested in this first so you can the talk about a comparison with new headsets like the Pimax 8K later?

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Very good test, Oscar commented on having a text in English to do the test of font text .

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It’s Oscar González (Knob2001) work.:wink:

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Awesome in depth. @aesopfabled posted your tool in another topic for testers. But you have definitely expanded the description to be very informative on its features. :beers::sunglasses::+1::sparkles:

@Pumcy from Tom’s Hardware. I can imagine will find this tool very useful.

@deletedpimaxrep1 and the team should also look into this tool if they haven’t yet.

Here is aesopfabled’s topic

http://community.openmr.ai/t/sweviver-please-use-this-steamvr-environment-to-test/5710?u=heliosurge

@SweViver have you ever checked out Unity Chan Candy Rockstar? Pressinf spacebar shows all sorts of useful unfo.

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Well this is the official post, then. I have waited for the publication of the article on the web @aesopfabled is too fast, but yes, now I see that he reported it here first.

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But I see that Knob2001 has not set a FOV limit of 220º (total human FOV), let alone 200º; I will try to convince him to change it.

Now you can only know if the Pimax 8K passes or not 180º.

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It could also be used by @DKruohuo - in case some more Videos are planned here

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Great tool ! Much appreciated thanks ! FOV measurement will come really handy testing the various headsets to see if FOV is really as specified in the specs.

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Great tool.
How about an FPS test though?

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I think that Steam VR has a check box to show the FPS in the Headset.

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@SweViver, @mixedrealityTV, @Pumcy, @DKruohuo, @deletedpimaxrep1 and anyone interested:

In the video of the first publication we explain how to access the application.

Soon we will update this Steam VR environment with this changes:

The FOV test will take into account the 220º complete horizontal human field of vision (FOV) also taking into account the vertical FOV.

We introduce new tests, such as the color test.

We hope you will find useful. :wink:

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I have a couple of suggestions for the fov test.
There needs to be some way to snap the test to the user’s head to account for head movement, and leaning in. And the spot you should stand should be marked with footprints to give a better indicatiom of whede to stand.

I would also strongly recomend making it impossible to rotate the paddles. I find it really challenging to keep the paddles straight up and down when moving them towards my periphery.
I think a semi circle slider would work much better than loose paddles.
I would also suggest making the panels on the paddles much taller. I find they cut off below the widest point of my view.

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Another suggestion: put a FOV degree counter directly in front of the player’s view so we can take screenshots that show an FOV value.
Snapping screenshots from the test position doesn’t show the paddles because the screenshot FOV is much narrower than the HMD.

I would love to use a tool like this for my reviews, but in its current state it doesn’t help me a lot.

Also, FYI, this test is still very subjective. Everyone’s face shape is different and the depth of people’s eye sockets have a decent range. One person may see 100-degrees, but another person may see 95-degrees because their eyes are recessed further into their skulls.

I tested my Vive Pro, and my Vive with the 3mm and 6mm VR Covers to see how different the FOV would be and to my surprise not one of them matched the advertised FOV rating.
The Vive with the thick foam was roughly 85-degrees. I can see about 88-degrees with the Vive Pro, and I can see roughly 92-degrees with the Vive with the thin cover. These were all done with the relief set to the minimum distance.
The full depth relief for the Vive Pro allowed me to see just over 80-degrees.

So, given that information, if some of the testers report perceiving narrower than advertised FOV, it’s likely not a misrepresentation by Pimax, but rather a variation in head shape.
HMD makers advertise approximate FOV, not concrete FOV ratings, based on the potential of the hardware configuration.

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Keep in mind that it is our first attempt to create something like that; I do not know if some of the things you mention will be easy to implement in the Steam VR environment.

In any case, I have told Knob2001, which is the one that has prepared this environment.

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I completely understand. Just giving my feedback from a reviewer’s perspective.
There’s a lot of potential here, but a feel like it would work better as a standalone Unity app than a Steam VR environment.

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Hi. It’s Oscar here, the developer of this tool. First of all, thanks for such a great feedback. It’s good to know what works and what doesn’t :slight_smile:

The spirit of this tool came while writing the Vive Pro review for the community. We felt we really needed a common virtual place between all the users and all the headsets out there. Unity or Unreal was the first and obvious option, but sadly, I didn’t have the time to develop the app for all the headsets SDKs at the same time I wrote the review. So… SteamVR was the quickest idea. Yep, it isn’t the best option, I know, but it allows to share the “destination” between users out of the box. It also has all the OpenVR stuff inside, hence all the support for all the PC VR right now (A Vive, an Oculus and a WMR sharing the same room at the same time was too cool to let it pass)

About your ideas. I’m 100% with you. A slider for the horizontal FOV could be great, i.e. But the limitations of this whole idea are still there: as we are not robots, there’s no way to do this in a purely mathematical way. This app is just an approximation of the FOV values, Glare aberrations and a very personal feeling about what it’s readable and what’s not. For me, as a reviewer of all the headsets on the market, it gives me a point of reference, not an exact value.

What you say about the eyes and the physiognomy of the human face, it’s true. That’s why I think this kind of approachment to the problem is good enough to let me compare the experiences.

If you want to try the vertical FOV as I had in mind when I design it: place your eyes on the first black bar until it disappears. That’s the 0 point. Then, look to the 0º degree mark in front of you keeping the last bar hiding behind the middle bar. Doing that we can measure -again, more or less- the angle from the same eyes position.

The Vive Pro gave me around 90-95 vertical FOV with the official’s face plate. So yes, I found that all of the headsets are less than expected. (Rift, Vive, and Pro, so far).

For my reviews, I will write the results with the Spray tool of SteamVR before taking a snapshot. It’s a funny way to tell the people that you can write in the air inside VR. (Or I could add a chalkboard for this purpose)

I truly thank you for the time you put to test the app (or “destination”) and I’ll try to upgrade it as soon as I discover how to do some stuff on that little nightmare that is Hammer (the editor inside SteamVR). For the Standalone headsets and those not compatible with SteamVR, I’ll do a unity app. But I’m still thinking about the awesome social mood of the Destinations workshop and the chance to talk at real time with people who have different headsets, comparing them as if we were outside in the real world.

Regards :slight_smile:

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Welcome to the pimax forums! I have bumped your user level up to lvl 1.

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Great work, @knob2001!

For the horizontal / vertical FOV limit markers, can you intercept keystrokes or controller button presses in SteamVR? If so, that might provide for an easier method to adjust the FOV limit markers. For example: + and - keys to increase/decrease the horizontal FOV limit markers. A user could stand in the right spot and just press + until the markers are at their visibility limit.

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