Oculus emulator for development purposes

Yeah, I think they have something like this? It'd definitely be useful for developing as I find it annoying to put the HMD on / off when developing.

"molton" wrote:
Hello, I'm sure I won't be able to afford an Oculus Rift any time in the next several years, would it be possible to get an Oculus Emulator that makes the system think the rift is connected and see the output in a window for development purposes?

Yes. If you install the runtime, and open the Rift Configuration Utility, go into the Tools menu, then into Service, Configure... you can tell the runtime to pretend that a Rift is connected.

Of course you won't get any head tracking functionality, because there's nothing to track, but you can make sure you code works, at least for a mirrored screen view.

"blazespinnaker2" wrote:
Yeah, I think they have something like this? It'd definitely be useful for developing as I find it annoying to put the HMD on / off when developing.

He's asking to develop without an HMD at all. What prevents you from just developing without putting the HMD on?

There should be something in the API. Pretend move head up, Pretend move whole head to the left. Rotate and so on.

You could hotkey that to the keyboard to test a lot of things. Or even play a "animation".

Ofc you could make controls out of that, basically controlling the camera the same way, but I get the emulation point. It's hard to code against something you don't have.

"TheAsimovInitiative" wrote:
There should be something in the API. Pretend move head up, Pretend move whole head to the left. Rotate and so on.

You could hotkey that to the keyboard to test a lot of things. Or even play a "animation".

Ofc you could make controls out of that, basically controlling the camera the same way, but I get the emulation point. It's hard to code against something you don't have.

I suspect that the reason there's no API for that is because it wouldn't add anything to the SDK. You fetch the head pose to render and you provide the head pose you rendered back along with the textures.

You could just as easily write code to get the head pose from somewhere else, say a 4x4 matrix bound that you can control with a joystick.

ovrPosef getRenderPose() {
  if (debugMode) {
    ... get a pose from some application controlled variable ...
  } else {
    ... get the actual pose from the headset ...
  }
}

So yeah, they could add that, but so could you, locally, and since it's not work everyone would use, spending time working on it is time not working on something else.

Also, the SDK doesn't interact with mouse and keyboard input, so you'd end up having to do 90% of the wiring anyway, and call functions in the SDK to just modify a pose.

I do not know in the latest SDK if this is an option, but at least in previous SDK you could create the handle to the HMD like this:

m_vHMD = ovrHmd_CreateDebug(ovrHmd_DK2);

and this way you can develop your app without Oculus and thefore without real tracking data but with a way to integrate/test the distorted image to a normal window in your monitor.

"ApoloStudios" wrote:
I do not know in the latest SDK if this is an option, but at least in previous SDK you could create the handle to the HMD like this:

m_vHMD = ovrHmd_CreateDebug(ovrHmd_DK2);

That function no longer exists in the SDK. If you look at the docs on migrating from the version where it last appeared, it specifically says that you should use the RiftConfigUtil to create a 'debug' device like I outlined in my earlier response. This makes more sense since you don't really want to have to recompile your application or follow a different code path to work against a 'debug' device, so it should be managed at the Runtime/Service layer.

"molton" wrote:
Hello, I'm sure I won't be able to afford an Oculus Rift any time in the next several years, would it be possible to get an Oculus Emulator that makes the system think the rift is connected and see the output in a window for development purposes?

Molton, say it ain't so, what happened to your DK2? I still haven't tried your being a bird demo, sorry man. I said I would! I'll have to remember to try it soon. I thought you had a DK2?

Considering you've had lots of experience, I'm sure you'd be able to use the mouselook script attached to a normal Unity camera to do some testing with head tracking no? You won't get translation or anything, but it would be a start. The DK2 will be compatible with 1.0 SDK, are you not able to use your DK2 anymore?

"dignifiedweb" wrote:

Molton, say it ain't so, what happened to your DK2? I still haven't tried your being a bird demo, sorry man. I said I would! I'll have to remember to try it soon. I thought you had a DK2?

Considering you've had lots of experience, I'm sure you'd be able to use the mouselook script attached to a normal Unity camera to do some testing with head tracking no? You won't get translation or anything, but it would be a start. The DK2 will be compatible with 1.0 SDK, are you not able to use your DK2 anymore?

I had to sell my DK2 in order to pay the rent unfortunately, then I got hit with some real big bullshit, I got barely enough money to pay the bills while working full-time so Being a Bird is not dead, but very extremely set back. I wish i could get the damn money I invested in that control VR scam back, that would cover the costs for a consumer version rift, but for now a rift emulation would suffice just to make sure everything is working somewhat

I'll see if I can get any of that working on the latest sdk, thanks for the responses

"molton" wrote:
I had to sell my DK2 in order to pay the rent unfortunately, then I got hit with some real big bullshit, I got barely enough money to pay the bills while working full-time so Being a Bird is not dead, but very extremely set back. I wish i could get the damn money I invested in that control VR scam back, that would cover the costs for a consumer version rift, but for now a rift emulation would suffice just to make sure everything is working somewhat

I'll see if I can get any of that working on the latest sdk, thanks for the responses

Hey,

Sorry to hear about your troubles. I tried your being a bird demo about 5 days ago. I really liked it! I like the neck stretches! I haven't been following the Control VR Kickstarter too closely. After looking into it now, it reminds me a lot of Sixense, maybe worse though. That really is tough, everyone who backed that project must be really disappointed. I remember how awesome the videos were for that, they were really convincing. You're definitely a talented guy though, don't get discouraged, you'll find a way to try things out. What about something like google cardboard just until you can afford it? It's not as good, but at least it could help you test scale and stuff. Hope it works out for you!