How to use VR helmet and glasses | Articles | Gadgets, gifts and accessories

VR hel­mets and gog­gles have their own con­nec­tion and set­up fea­tures, and they are not always obvi­ous. We will cov­er how to deal with the main mod­els, what to install and how to choose a space for the game.

Helmets vs goggles

Vir­tu­al real­i­ty devices are divid­ed into two types: hel­mets and gog­gles. The VR hel­met is designed for PC and con­soles and requires addi­tion­al acces­sories. They can either be includ­ed in the kit or sold sep­a­rate­ly. Hel­mets allow you to play heavy mul­ti-giga­byte games.

VR glass­es work with smart­phones. Games will be lighter and graph­ics sim­pler. Impres­sions are also not so excit­ing.

Pho­to: oculus.com

Accord­ing to 2019 data, PS VR, HTC Vive, Valve Index and Ocu­lus Rift hel­mets became the best-sell­ing hel­mets in the world.

Vive and Rift work with com­put­ers, as does the Valve Index, but the lat­ter is not only firm­ly tied to Steam, but also not avail­able for pur­chase in Rus­sia.

PS VR is designed exclu­sive­ly for the PlaySta­tion 4, with sup­port on the announced PS 5. It has been around for three years, but is still rel­e­vant to this day.

The Ocu­lus Quest is a stand­alone wire­less head­set that works both stand­alone and on a PC. The down­side is that you need a Face­book account to use it.

Is the computer ready for VR

The first thing to con­sid­er before con­nect­ing a VR head­set is the com­put­er con­fig­u­ra­tion. Vir­tu­al real­i­ty is very demand­ing on resources, espe­cial­ly graph­ics.

The min­i­mum require­ments are:

• Video card: NVIDIA GTX 1070
• Proces­sor: Intel i7-6700
• RAM: 16GB+ RAM
• Video out­put: HDMI 1.3 com­pli­ant
• USB: USB 3.0 (for mod­els with base sta­tions), 1x USB 2.0
• Oper­at­ing sys­tem: Win­dows 8 SP1 64 bit

Recommended Requirements

• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080
• Proces­sor: Intel i7-7700
• RAM: 32GB+ RAM
• Video out­put: HDMI 1.3 com­pli­ant
• USB: USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0
• Oper­at­ing sys­tem: Win­dows 10 64 bit

There are also rec­om­mend­ed require­ments for lap­tops:

• Video card: GeForce RTX 2080 Max‑Q
• Proces­sor: 8th Gen Intel Core i7
• 3x USB 3.0 ports, 1x USB 2.0, 1x HDMI
• Mem­o­ry: 32GB+ RAM

Special requirements for HTC Vive

Those who are plan­ning to pur­chase an HTC Vive hel­met will have to take into account sev­er­al fea­tures. Opti­mus tech­nol­o­gy on lap­tops, which uses the onboard graph­ics card for light tasks and uses the ded­i­cat­ed graph­ics card for demand­ing ones, is not com­pat­i­ble with the Vive. The Asus ROG G752 lap­top adver­tised as VR-ready does­n’t rec­og­nize Vive head­sets. This is a bug of such lap­tops. In order for them to work togeth­er, you need a mini dis­play port and an HDMI adapter that sup­ports 4K at 60Hz.

Addi­tion­al­ly, you need to take into account that HTC Vive Pro are con­nect­ed via Dis­play­Port, not HDMI, so first make sure that the appro­pri­ate input is avail­able on your PC.

Pho­to: htc.com

HTC VIVE Pro

Each hel­met in the HTC mod­el line requires its own set­tings. The com­pa­ny made sure that the soft­ware instal­la­tion process was as sim­ple as pos­si­ble. The Vive web­site has a sep­a­rate page for cus­tomiz­ing the hel­met and acces­sories. To get start­ed, you will need to down­load the VIVE app, after which, already in it, you will need to select a spe­cif­ic device.

Next, you need to per­form the fol­low­ing steps:

• Choose a place to install base sta­tions. Sta­tions help the hel­met and con­trollers track the play­er’s loca­tion. They need to be fixed on the wall, on racks or clothes­pins, in oppo­site cor­ners at an opti­mal height of 2 meters. The view­ing angle of the base sta­tions should cov­er the entire play­ing area. Con­sid­er­ing that the angle is 120°, it is bet­ter to place the sta­tions at a dis­tance of about 5 meters. And be sure to make sure that the base sta­tions see each oth­er with­out obsta­cles or con­nect them with a wire.
• Read the instruc­tions and down­load soft­ware for Vive and Steam from the offi­cial web­site.
• The SteamVR app itself will show you how much you can move around the room: step left and right, back and forth, or just stand.
• Done, Vive hel­mets require no addi­tion­al cal­i­bra­tion, and con­trollers come pre-charged. It is rec­om­mend­ed to play with your back to the PC so that the wires do not inter­fere.

Vive Wireless Adapter

The adapter con­nects to the hel­met, receiv­ing data from the PC via a radio chan­nel. It con­sists of a PCIe WiGig board and a spe­cial mod­ule. They need to be installed on the com­put­er and hel­met.

PCIe WiGig requires care­ful han­dling as it con­tains frag­ile parts. Instal­la­tion is per­formed on a PC that is turned off from the out­let. If the com­put­er was work­ing before, it needs to be allowed to cool down. Instal­la­tion is prefer­ably done with a ground­ed anti-sta­t­ic wrist strap.

Hold­ing the board by the edges, you need to insert it into the PCI slot on the moth­er­board, then put on the cov­er of the sys­tem unit and con­nect the PC to the net­work.

After the board is installed, the wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion mod­ule cable is con­nect­ed to it. It is insert­ed into the hole on the board, then you need to turn the con­nec­tor clock­wise. A spe­cial clip allows you to fix the com­mu­ni­ca­tion mod­ule, most often it is placed on a com­put­er mon­i­tor. The height must be at least 125 cm, and the dis­tance from the play­ing area must be at least 150 cm.

Before putting on the HTC Vive Pro hel­met, you need to remove the pro­tec­tive film from the eye­pieces and loosen the head­phone mount by turn­ing the knob coun­ter­clock­wise. The hel­met is pressed against the eyes so that there are no gaps left, and after that the mount is shift­ed and adjust­ed in size with the same reg­u­la­tors. Head­phones need to be posi­tioned as you like, then press and fix. The cable should pass through the retain­er and hang exact­ly along the back.

The hel­met can be worn with glass­es, the main thing is to make sure that the glass­es do not scratch the lens, and vice ver­sa.

Pho­to: htc.com

HTC Vive Cosmos

HTC Vive Cos­mos is put on in almost the same way: first you need to com­plete­ly loosen the fix­a­tion strap by turn­ing the dial coun­ter­clock­wise, you need to remove the pro­tec­tive film from it. The belt must be pulled up, and then press the eye­pieces to the eyes until the image becomes clear. Then pull the strap down until it clicks, but make sure the cable is not caught between the strap and your head. Eye­pieces should be point­ed straight ahead.

Oculus

The lat­est hel­met from Ocu­lus — Quest 2 is turned on using a mobile appli­ca­tion that can be down­loaded from the com­pa­ny’s web­site. Through the appli­ca­tion, the hel­met can be con­nect­ed to a Wi-Fi net­work.

The Ocu­lus Rift and Quest con­nect to a PC using an Ocu­lus Link cable or its USB 3 equiv­a­lent. The hel­met requires the same safe­ty reg­u­la­tions as HTC.

What to play: Star Wars Squadrons, Beat Saber, Half-Life Alyx, Star Trek Bridge Crew, Skyrim VR.

Pho­to: oculus.com

PlayStation VR

Since PS VR was orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed as a kit, its instal­la­tion does not cause any par­tic­u­lar dif­fi­cul­ties.

First you need to turn off the TV and the PS4. Then you have to pull out the HDMI cable from the set-top box and plug it into a sim­i­lar port on the proces­sor unit.

The PlaySta­tion cam­era plugs into the AUX port on PS4. PS VR HDMI cable plugs into the PS4 HDMI port at one end and into the same con­nec­tor on the proces­sor unit with the oth­er end. The cable must be at least ver­sion 1.4 if you are not using the one includ­ed in the kit. The proces­sor unit con­nects to the PS4 using a micro USB cable, and the pow­er cable con­nects it to the net­work.

The last step is to con­nect the hel­met to the proces­sor unit, after which you can turn on the TV and set-top box and the hel­met itself.

The cam­era should be at a height of 1.4 meters and 2 meters from the place where you will be dur­ing the game.

Since the PS VR head­set does not have built-in head­phones, you will have to use exter­nal ones.

What to play: Beat Saber, Blood & Truth, Iron Man VR, PlaySta­tion VR worlds, Skyrim VR.

VR glasses

Vir­tu­al real­i­ty glass­es are designed to work with a smart­phone. All mod­els have screen size lim­i­ta­tions, so it’s impor­tant to make sure the glass­es are com­pat­i­ble with your phone. But they do not need a com­plex con­nec­tion. Down­load the appli­ca­tion specif­i­cal­ly for glass­es or with vr game, adjust the glass­es to size and start play­ing. The glass­es are com­pat­i­ble with both Android and iOS.

What to play: Minecraft, Zom­bie Shoot­er VR, Minos Starfight­er VR, NFS No Lim­its VR, Skyrim VR.