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Comment by terramex | Hacker News Reader

If you have a VR headset, I recommend playing around with showing different colors to either eye. You can get some really nice iridescent effects, very hard to achieve in real life and impossible on flat screen (well, you can cheat a bit by doing a cross-eye 3D image). Be sure to try both complementary and analogous colours and put iridescent objects into ordinarily looking environment, if you simply change colour balance on one eye camera the effect will be too unpleasant.

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Oh man, I've wanted to do something like this for a while, but I didn't know the software to do it had already been written, and also I don't have a VR headset.

So you can have it render an object which shows different colors to different eyes, while rendering the rest of the scene normally?

What software supports this?

I used old version of Unity (5.4? maybe even older) and tested it on both Google Cardboard and Oculus CV1. It used to have separate cameras for left and right eye. Unity has a system of layers and every camera has a bitmask that defines which layers are rendered by it. So I simply left environment on default layer rendered by both cameras, put one copy of an object on 'Left' layer and another copy with different material on 'Right' layer. Worked really nice for "vampire" eyes (specifically irises) rendering.

Few years ago they switched to single pass stereo rendering to avoid rendering whole scene twice. In theory this legacy option to use two cameras is still there, but quick googling says that it has some issues on modern Oculus SDK's and new Unity render pipelines but workarounds are possible.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/right-eye-black-for-urp-on-q...

https://forums.oculusvr.com/community/discussion/90660/unity...

https://answers.unity.com/questions/1534621/vr-how-to-render...

That's exactly my problem as well. I have GearVR headset which fits seversal Samsung smartphones and it's really nice to play around (and it's cheap), but the only piece of software written for WebVR is Three.js module, which doesn't allow different scene presentation to each eye.

But maybe I'll get back to work on my hack. Some suggestions are here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53775620/webvr-update-sc...

I used Unity's layers system (more on that in sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24367460).

I have zero experience with WebVR, but solution you linked seems sensible.

> If you have a VR headset, I recommend playing around with showing different colors to either eye.

Do you have any idea how to do this? I was trying to hack Three.js to enable binocular presentation (I have only Gear VR headset for my Samsung smartphone), but I wasn't able to do it. And as far as I'm concerned it's the only library providing WebWR functionality.

what VR setup would you recommend for someone without any? I've got a ps4. I don't want to overspend on deprecated / imminently-obsolete gear, but would love to experience it at home. is there a sweet spot beyond "toy" level but short of $$$$?

If you are fine with Facebook then Oculus Quest is the sweet spot at the moment. It does not have photorealistic rendering like PC-based VR but it is self-contained, does not need a PC but can be connected to a PC to play PCVR titles, has solid library on its own and being wireless is huge advantage. There are strong rumours that they will announce new Quest model on September 16th at base price of 299$ - but do not quote me on that.

I'd avoid PSVR, it is obsolete in 2020.

For Occulus, you have to be fine being forced to log-in with your Facebook account to use it and giving FB a direct access to cameras + mics (+ a total access to anything on your PC with the Rift)

Given their total lack of ethics, I don't think Facebook deserves our $$$. But it's true that the Oculus price is attractive (as with everything where we pay with our privacy)

what about the valve index? Oculus' facebook connection makes it flat out not in consideration for me

The index is great, honestly. The knuckle controllers are fantastic (though there's some issues with the surface mounted joysticks not having great longevity), the HMD is fantastic, and the support seems pretty top notch (bad controllers being RMI'd).

The biggest thing seems to be the long lead times between ordering and arrival.

It is top of the line, but definitely in "$$$$" category. Personally, I've grown to dislike wired VR and cannot go back to it even though it has many advantages.

I've been eyeing ;) the HP Reverb 2 (G2 generation 2) which has one of the highest resolutions per eye of any headset.

I have Oculus CV1 and might upgrade to the Reverb this holiday season for the resolution.

I'd recommend finding something used cheap on ebay. If you decide that you like VR and actually use it you can always upgrade to something better. Mine only ever saw minimal use and I never bothered to set up the sensors in my current place the last time I moved.

You might just grab a used PSVR; it is somewhat obsolete technically, but you can’t beat the price.

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