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  • My DIY Oculus Rift.

  • To make it, I used thick cardboard for bookbinding that I had at home.

  • The front: The view is split so that you can see each side of the screen individually with one eye.

  • Added a head strap, the lenses and a strap in front to keep the phone in place and painted it black.

  • Setting up the game in Unity3D.

  • What it looks like with the game exported onto my phone and inside the headset. It's really immersive.

  • Screenshot from my phone.

Exploring virtual reality

Why wait for the Oculus Rift to come out when you can make something comparable yourself? I stumbled upon the OpenDive, a VR headset which uses your smartphone as the screen.

Since I had just tried out the Oculus Rift, I was happy to find a DIY alternative and built it.
If you have a 3D printer, you can print it. Or if you don't have one at your disposal like me, you can also make it from cardboard or wood. I customized this tutorial so that the parts are right for my phone.

It's really easy to get started making games for your DIY VR headset: The people at Dive have a nice plugin for Unity3D.
So at the moment, I'm making a game for my new gadget. So far, it's just a world to walk around in. Next is figuring out the game mechanics and how to control the game beyond just walking around. Either using speech to control the game or make my own physical controller that connects via bluetooth.

Category free time project

Year 2014, work in progress