For sure most of you know Riftcat VRidge. It is a popular solution that lets you use your mobile or standalone VR headset as a tethered headset connected to your PC, so that you can use it to play games on Steam. Well, with version 2.3, it has added some amazing new features and I want you to discover them with me.
What is VRidge?
In case you don’t know what VRidge is and you are too lazy to read my first article about it, I will explain it briefly to you here. It is simple: imagine that you have little money and can’t afford to buy a full VR rig, but you can only afford to buy a Samsung Gear VR or an Oculus Go, for instance. Anyway, your VR friends are playing some amazing content on Steam and you would really want to play those same games as well with the VR headset that you own. Well, Riftcat VRidge makes that possible.
The magic is possible in some simple steps: you install an app on your mobile or standalone headset that acts as a receiver. Then, you install a companion application on the PC, that mostly acts as a transmitter. You launch both apps, and they will connect through Wi-fi (the PC and the HMD should stay on the same Wi-Fi network of course).
At this point, you can launch SteamVR on your PC, and thanks to some driver magic, your SteamVR installation will perceive the mobile headset as a headset connected to your PC. And when you will run a game on Steam, the PC will perform all the rendering, and then will send the frame to render to the mobile headset via Wi-fi. The headset will transmit to the PC its pose in space, so that the PC will know how to update the point of view of the user when rendering the VR scene. This way, you can use your mobile headset as a tethered one.
Of course, you may see that there are some limitations, like the introductions of Wi-fi latency or the fact that most mobile headsets have no positional tracking and just one 3 DOF controller (or none at all) when Steam VR games usually require the user to interact with the VR objects with both hands. Anyway, it remains an interesting solutions for cheap VR setups, especially if paired with other products (e.g. Nolo Kit to offer positional tracking for the mobile headset). And the latest features try also to tackle the various problems in a creative way. Let’s explore them.
Full 6 DOF standalone headsets support
This has been the feature that has delighted me the most. I have been able to play Steam games using my Vive Focus + 6 DOF controllers devkit. I mean, I have finally been able to use both my hands in VR without cables, without limitations, but with the computational power of the PC! It has been great! Look at this video of me while drawing elements using Google Blocks running on my PC. As you can see, for me it has been as using Blocks on the PC!
The feature works with the Focus and also with the Mirage Solo. I guess that it will work with Oculus Quest too and this will mean that thanks to Riftcat, you will be able to use the Quest to play Oculus Store’s games, but also PC VR games like Beat Saber!
Now that I have made you excited, I guess you would like to know how it does perform well. And the answer is: not bad at all. The problems that you may encounter are three:
- The tracking of the controllers on a standalone headset with inside-out tracking will never be as good as the one of Steam VR 2. So, sometimes you may see the controllers jitter a bit or not being tracked when behind you;
- Since Riftcat works through streaming data, this means that you will have a slightly added latency to controllers tracking. It is really little, but it is there;
- If you don’t have a really good 5Ghz Wi-fi network, sometimes you will see visual artifacts due to the streaming of the frames from PC to the headset.
If you have a really good Wi-fi network (one exclusive to the streaming would be optimal), the slight delay of the controllers shouldn’t be an issue, unless you are playing a really super-fast game.
I have been positively surprised by the possibility of using my Vive Focus as a tethered headset and I think that this feature will be useful for many people in the future.
VRidge controller
Of course, you can use Riftcat VRidge also with 3 DOF headsets like the Oculus Go. In that case, inside Steam VR, you will have only one 3 DOF controller, with which you will be able to do some things (like teleporting in the VR world or summoning the menus), but that, of course, will feel really limiting.
To try to mitigate the problem, Riftcat has been a bit creative and has invented an app called VRidge Controller, that lets you use your phone as an additional controller for your Riftcat setup.
This means that when you have your Go connected to SteamVR through VRidge, if you install and launch the VRidge Controller app on your phone, you will start seeing your phone as an additional 3 DOF controller inside Steam VR.
The app will show you on your phone’s screen some buttons that will let you emulate the pressure of the buttons of a Vive wand: you can press the system menu, the buttons, move your finger on the touchpad, etc… It has also some customization settings and you can for instance decide if the phone should emulate the left or right controller.
Again, you can enjoy a video of me using it inside SteamVR home here:
The app is available for 5€ on Google Play… but… is it worth it? Well, it depends. Let me be honest with you (as always): Steam games usually are meant to be played with 6 DOF controllers. Having two 3 DOF controllers is surely better than having only one, but a lot of problems remain. Furthermore, you should get used to the interface on the screen of your phone (in the video above, I continuously check what part of the screen I should press to simulate the buttons that I want to press). And holding a phone in the hand is not that comfortable.
But it is true that we are talking about a solution for cheap setups and I can imagine that in certain contexts, it could work. Maybe some people could get a taste of Beat Saber thanks to it, something that with only one controller was impossible. Consider it as a Frankenstein solution to have two controllers with the Go. Or even better: consider it as a solution to have a virtual controller when you are using Steam with a Cardboard that has otherwise no controllers.
The implementation is good and the solution worked for me well. Regarding the latency of tracking, the above considerations still hold: very good speed, but a bit of latency remain.
Mouse, Keyboard and much more
If you thought that the phone controller was a bit too Frankenstein-ish for you, well, actually I have a news for you…
Because yes, with the new version 2.3 of VRidge, you can even use your mouse and keyboard, or even your Xbox controller to pilot your VR game! This way you can satisfy your retro-gaming soul. Using the keyboard means for instance that you can use WASD to move in the virtual world and you can use the SPACE key to jump. If you don’t believe me, have a look at this video:
You may ask me why this should be necessary and actually, the answer is quite simple: to overcome the limitations of the VR platform you are using. As you can see from the above video, thanks to my keyboard I am actually able to move freely inside SteamVR Home, even if I am actually using a headset (the Oculus Go) that lacks positional tracking. And thanks to the mouse, I can also have some (limited) features on an additional controller that is on screen. So, I can comfortably sit in front of my PC and play some SteamVR games with the Go, moving with the keyboard and interacting with my Oculus Go controller.
All these features may seem a little weird, but I can see some interesting applications for them, especially for people that use Cardboards or the Oculus Go and want to give a try to SteamVR games. Of course, they can’t substitute the experience of having a full 6 DOF headset, but they can make some people try some nice VR experience on Steam even if they don’t have a Vive or a Rift. Consider it as creative ways to make people with a mobile headset to try the most of VR.
In my opinion, the more we will go on, the more these Frankenstein modes will be less useful because people will abandon mobile headsets and will always go more towards full 6 DOF standalone headsets. So, in some years, only the first proposed scenario (Vive focus) will be reasonable. But until that moment, these features will have a purpose and will let more people enjoy VR.
I hope you enjoyed this journey inside Riftcat VRidge. I really wish the best to this company, because they are trying really their best to make all people with a cheap headset to play SteamVR games. If you are interested in this product, you can check it out on Riftcat website.
But before you go there, please share this article with your friends to make me a little happier 🙂
(Header image by Riftcat)