We Made an INVISIBLE VR Gaming Setup!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
2,211 words · ~11 min read
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so what we're looking at here is a pretty typical room scale vr setup uh
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you got your light stands you got your cables running everywhere extension
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cords all that kind of stuff and honestly it's
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fine as long as you're the type of self-aware nerd here let's look at what
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else we got here got a computer that is comfortable running HDMI cables
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and Ethernet cables all along their floors but
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let's say your girlfriend comes over your grandma or you want to have company
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over the first thing they're going to say is what is all this junk
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so today we are going to be creating a stealthy
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vr setup sponsored by oculus
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so step one for getting a vr setup less intrusive looking is getting rid of the
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support pillars which usually means getting your cameras mounted on either
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the top part of the wall or a ceiling where they'll look kind of like
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you know a security camera or a piece of tape or nothing and they'll draw less
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attention but the problem is cable management even with our
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computer right next to this camera right here
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we have no extra length left in order to do any cable management
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and usb 3 is extremely sensitive to
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increases in length and the signal degradation that goes along with that so
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because these cameras are actually pretty high bandwidth devices we're
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going to need thank you alex some of these these are
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3 active extension cables which act as a
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signal repeater rather than just you know extra length of copper wire so
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that we can maintain the signal integrity for that camera
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it's not open and look it's the worst kind it's the kind that splinters apart into 100
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pieces when you try to so position wise have we decided on this
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for our three camera setup yeah all three cameras are perfectly working as
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is and there's tape on the ceiling as you can see for the positions when we
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actually mount them up there okay so there's a
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couple of advantages to having three rather than two cameras for an oculus vr
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setup because you can triangulate the position of the touch controllers and
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the headset you actually get aside from the ability to turn around and maintain
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your tracking you actually get more accurate tracking for room scale gaming
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and i mean as much as we want to build a stealth setup we also want to build a no
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compromises gaming setup so we just need to mount some cameras in
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yeah yeah okay let's do it well we need a
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pc in the ceiling also why because then it's totally stealth you don't have
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wires going up and you want to hide the monitor yeah the monitor's gonna behind
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a mirror so you can't see it at all i mean okay cool so we have the benefit of
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doing this project in an office which means we've got a drop ceiling so come
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check this out simply by lifting up and then there's ducting over there okay
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there's a lot of crap up here actually but by just lifting up these tiles
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we get access to about looks like about 18 inches of space up
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here where we could actually put
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i don't know if it's to code but but we can put the computer and monitor and
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everything else associated with it up here i mean i guess it's like shouldn't
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be a cooling issue up here or anything so for our system we're going to be
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using this MSI g25 it's got a core i7 8700 six core it's got a gtx 1070 most
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importantly it's got easy plug for vr and it's got lots of usb 3 ports because
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when you're running extra cameras you need lots of usb 3 ports preferably on a
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couple of different controllers oh oh no way
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no there's a power outlet up there oh
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awesome see check it out oh wow yeah no
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this is what i'm talking about like it's actual
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actually like proper in everything this is crazy do you know how much it would
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cost us at this point to get something like that put in like now after the fact
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like hundreds and hundreds of dollars because we'd have to run it from the transformer which is the exact opposite
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corner of this building okay cool let's do it i mean we don't even need a long
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extension cord anymore it's like 15 feet with power taken care of we needed
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networking so what we could do is this is terminated in a female
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connector is we could just jack it yeah
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all right oh the whole thing okay okay yeah thanks you take it i got it
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you know okay this would have to be pretty superhero mode for me to actually
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get it all the way over there but i'm gonna try
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it did not sound successful or
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was it now what let's get
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usb and HDMI over to here where the display is going
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to be the display needs to go all the way over here yeah why can't the display
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go over here because Yvonne thinks that a mirror would look bad on that wall
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hi i'm busy
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putting a usb and an HDMI cable all the way from over here to over there which
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is apparently your mandate why can't we just do that wall
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because it has all these bumps and stuff in it how are you gonna mount the mirror
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to it i don't know i hadn't gotten that far
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i'm thinking all right all right all right let's just get the let's just get the wire run
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okay that is an unsafe practice i'm pretty
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sure
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it's half broken and you're on the top run which you're not supposed to
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okay it's a good thing i don't need to be here very long yeah that looks really
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bad alex you're not helping right now no bro's before hoes
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which i can say cause her last name is ho
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with the computer up in the ceiling and working i left alex to get the sensors
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off the floor using adhesive camera mounts next up floor height HDMI and usb ports
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for our headset after checking for studs we killed the power to the library and
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then got to cutting a hole in the drywall not to be defeated by the in-wall
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insulation we decided to jam a meter stick with cable's tape to the end down
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the wall until it reached the correct height now how are we supposed to get
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this down there oh you know what we might still be able to do it but lower
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would have definitely been better we can always make it bigger i know you can
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always make a hole bigger i can't tell if i'm just jamming down
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insulation or if i'm actually wait no i think this is feeding
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in no i think i'm just jamming it down oh
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our straight meter stick couldn't fit between the insulation and drywall but
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with some canadian engineering we solved that problem okay you need a sock um
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it's right there oh it's behind my butt and then wait a minute
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no this isn't a drywall saw i'm not totally sure no i think we have a
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drywall saw this isn't it or we do but i couldn't find it okay so yeah now i can
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mostly feel what's going on here i think um no i can't really
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i need a bigger hole i was kind of thinking that you'd expand down yeah i
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could do that too there's just not enough width
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for my ARM i assumed that was the next step
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it would be about a meter down from me tumor me and try going down sideways
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that seems to be a problem you know we're definitely hitting something here
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and is what we're hitting soft miss you alex it's all the way in i'm pulling
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back out okay so let's double check our length here
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after doing a trial run of our jamma ruler down the wall concept we were
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ready for the real thing okay we wanna um taper the end here for a smooth entry
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wait okay this is a lot thicker than
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what we put down there last time so the trick last time was kind of
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wiggling it back and forth until i could find the right opening oh
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ow oh damn that
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ah it's the first time i've been elbow deep
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in my wall this hole required a bit more finesse
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than the last one since you'll actually be able to see it so we marked it off
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with tape and carefully cut thanks to my small hands they're
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basically a superpower grabbing the cable was easy oh awesome bam that was
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easier than expected oh nice and surprisingly enough the
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whole thing worked now at this point the screen was still
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sticking out like a sore thumb so we went to the hardware store and got a
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mirror to cannibalize max just reminded me that picture frames exist and
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probably would have worked a lot better for this then we returned the mirror and
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got a picture frame the front of the display was removed
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then the acrylic two-way mirror was cut to size with some extra love from the
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belt sander and then placed in our picture frame with double-sided tape
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everything was held together with some scrap wood and a lot of glue then left
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to dry overnight while the glue was drying there was time to fix the big
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hole in the wall we were able to get the proper cover for HDMI but usb ended up
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getting taken care of with tuck tape the incline not to trust it it was anything
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but duct tape now just a couple finishing touches were left all right
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adding some wireless peripherals bringing in the mirror hiding the wires
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and wow this is a little crooked but uh
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that's actually a lot crooked but that that's okay minor details you can sort
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of like jiggle it around and it'll go back yeah
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uh-huh okay that looks good though
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look at that everything else
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completely hidden away and this is the mirror display yeah
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so the idea is that this just kind of or
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yeah it's attached with wires yep those cables are those cables are actually
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okay those cables are reasonably well managed we could probably stand a little
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bit of improvement here but you can't you can't really see them back here
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there's a lot of glare it's it's a mirror it's very mirrory
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okay tell me max you're more qualified than me
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would this kind of set up be more likely to get girlfriend approval
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than what we had before yeah cool so hey mission accomplished then
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we've solved the two main problems with deploying vr in the home number one
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unsightly wires there is basically nothing to be seen for our
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sensors or for our headset whenever we aren't
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actively using it thanks to this wall plate and
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honestly about an hour to two hours of running cables
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and number two convenience we've got somewhere we can
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store the whole setup and be up and running in the time that you are about
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to watch check this out d cable manager 5 with my
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blindfold on here bam
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get my touch controllers walk over
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and plug in i am in vr
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and then when i'm done put the whole thing away
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completely stealthy even if we have any issues with the
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setup all we got to do is use our subtle two-way mirror to kind
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of recommend whatever it is that's going on
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and we're back up and running so thanks to oculus for sponsoring this video
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oculus is actually celebrating the second birthday of the rift with a
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week-long promotional deal retailers globally will be offering a 50 wallet
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with the purchase of the rift and they'll be offering major discounts on
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rift content through the oculus store so you can check out all the details at the
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link in the video description so thanks for watching guys if you
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