I’m working on a small project on VRChat.
This project is focuses on showcasing the latest addition to the headset lineup and its creation of more opportunities to digitally communicate with customers.
Would you like to experience Pimax’s forthcoming event via VRChat?
What type of environment / gallery do you think the world should have?
Do you want to have further interaction with those 3D realistic models?
If you are one of the creator, what is a must to render in the world?
As I’m still new to Unity and the VRCSDK, please share any ideas or tips with me.
I’m all ears for help!
Pimax has little penetration into VRChat as far as I can tell. I wrote a guide on running VRChat on the 8KX because nobody else I know on VRChat has had a Pimax, and I had to figure out how to make it work well myself.
I think the most important thing would be showing off the FOV. People coming in with other VR headsets aren’t going to be able to see the FOV of an 8KX, of course. But if there was some place to stand where it shows the full large FOV of the 8KX such that someone with an Index or Quest 2 can turn their head back and forth and go wow… you mean the 8KX can see all of that at once without turning your head?!
I do this kind of demonstration myself for people I talk to in VRChat when they ask about my headset. In my case, I just hold up my hands far to the sides and say “I can see both of my hands right now”. And then they hold up their hands to the edges of their own view, and their hands are close together. Sometimes people will try to sneak over to flank me to see if I really can see them, and of course I can.
Having models to proper scale in world of what an 8KX, 12K, Crystal, etc look like would be useful.
Mirrors!
And actually, you could make some points about mirrors. There’s a sort of stigma about “mirror dwellers” in VRChat. And a lot of people think that mirrors are being used for vanity. But running an 8KX in VRChat made me realize something. Mirrors are used to compensate for lack of FOV in most VR headsets. Especially when you are standing close to other people, narrow FOV constrains you vision too much. There’s too much you’re missing, and mirrors are used to compensate for that.
I found that running wide FOV on the 8KX significantly reduced my need for mirrors in VRChat. It’s not obvious what a big deal this is at first, but it is.
Interesting topic - which information can better be explained in VR than on a 2D monitor - not as a gimmick but with an actual benefit? Not so easy.
For VR headsets the obvious cool thing would of course be if one could try out VR headsets - looking through one tells so much more than just reading about it and seeing pictures.
The challenge is of course that the experience is limited to whatever headset the user actually uses to watch the VR experience - it should be possible to simulate an HMD with worse FoV, clarity or color reproduction on a superior one, but not the other way around…
Of course immersion and “wow moments” could help to keep something in (good) memory. Which could be easier to achieve in VR. But can one make things really easier to understand?
If you find a good way to explain things to people in VR that works much better than a mere 2D visualization I would be highly interested in the results!
I think there’re two easy examples that could demonstrate FoV quite well to most people with VR experience and how it can make a real impact while being to the point and not feel like you’re trying too hard to find something in a bad way.
The first would be to take the scenery from atop a real high location. Think about when you’re standing atop a mountain in somewhere like Skyrim or Zenith, a huge, sprawling, wide open landscape. When you have the huge FoV Pimax does it really gives the feeling you can see everything and a much stronger “wow” factor than when you’re on much more FoV limited HMDs. Huge landscape shots like this are one location wide FoV really excels in to capture the immense and grand scale such views can provide. You could put a large image of a scene like that over a wall, with a marked spot on the floor for where to stand to properly illustrate, measure it with lower FoV(Like Pimax potato or an Index) and mark on the image where the image cuts off on lower FoV HMDs, then have the entire rest of the image which is viewable with the Large FoV Pimax has. That would be enough for people with smaller FoV to be able to look around and get an idea of what it’d be like to see the whole image at once.
Secondly, simulation environments, but especially racing. I got a friend who’s super big on sim racing and the first time he tried my Pimax, and he had experience with multiple VR headsets before, he immediately wanted one for himself because of the FoV. It was world changing because he could actually see his peripheral and things like rear view mirrors without needing to turn his head much. He could see the landscape racing by beside him which gave a much stronger sense of movement and motion which is such a fun thing about sim racing. It’s like being able to have triple screens. If you could convey something like that in the same way then would get the FoV benefit across clearly. Might not be as powerful with still images, so if a video would be possible that’d be even better for the sense of speed. There’s even this great video on youtube which helps show how your FoV impacts the sense of speed.
