Vive: Developing without a headset - Emulator?

[Willtree8]

Hi, have been developing a little game in unity with VR but I don't have a headset. Is there any sort of VR 'emulator' that I can use to test my project? I know my program will run but I don't know how it will behave in actual VR. If anyone knows of any program that will allow me to 'look around' and use controller buttons with just buttons on-screen without actually owning a headset that would be great. Thanks.

[Ṭoyoka]

The short answer is; there isn't really a way to emulate a VR environment without having a headset. The best you can do is work on your game in first-person and later implement VR when you want to/need to/can. If you really need to test your game in VR, you want to try it with Google VR/Cardboard[developers.google.com], the cheapest alternative to testing the game in VR. This, of course, requires a suitable Android or iOS device.

[Black Blade]

I had the same thing my self when i started, no way to do it as much as i am aware, not really

How ever, what you can do for now is look for someone with a headset, and ask them to test it for you, i am sure you will find more then one that will be glad to help to test it out if that can help, even that its not the best way, and best to just own a headset

[chris.modzelewski]

When developing our SDK, we found that there were tons of situations in which we wanted to test our VR development efforts but couldn't connect a headset easily (we were traveling, we were at home, all of the headsets we had were otherwise occupied, etc.). So we ended up writing an emulator tool for ourselves to use that:

1. Checks if there's an HMD connected (supports Vive and Oculus Rift).

2. Takes keyboard, mouse, gamepad, Oculus Remote, Vive Wand, and (theoretically but untested) Oculus Touch input and if there's no HMD connected adjusts the camera based on that input (basically converting the game into an FPS-style game, using the VR camera).

3. Depending on your configuration, it can also simulate position-tracked controllers (like the Vive Wands or Oculus Touch) using either primitives or any prefab.

It's not quite a perfect solution (nothing fancy for incline locomotion support, etc.) but it has really accelerated our own development since it makes running "quick tests" easier and less of a hassle than putting on headsets all the time.

Since some folks were asking us to, we've also released the tool into a free public beta - you can download it for yourself and check out the documentation at: http://developers.immerseum.io

As we get past the early days of the beta test, we'll also be submitting it to the Unity Asset Store. But for now, you're welcome to give it a try!

Hope this helps!

Chris

[aaron.leiby]

There is also a null driver that ships with SteamVR. You have to enable in your settings.

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamVR/steamvr.vrsettings

[[ARG] Flikr]

Originally posted by chris.modzelewski:

Hope this helps!

Chris

This helps a lot! I'm in a similar situation to the OP, where I need to be able to run a scene in Unity without any hardware, and this gets the job done. I'll need to repeat anything I do to the emulated hands to the actual steamvr tracked objects, but for the most part this is perfect. Thank you.

[InfuCoder]

Thanks for the emulator!

[ArCorvus]

Originally posted by aaron.leiby:

There is also a null driver that ships with SteamVR. You have to enable in your settings.

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamVR/steamvr.vrsettings

Is there any solution to change Pitch / Yaw of "device" in null driver?

[eric.schleicher]

Is this still a thing? This would be very useful for as i travel over the next few weeks... unfortunately it looks like the download link now produces a 404 :(

Would love to give it a whirl if there is an updated url.

[Willtree8]

Originally posted by eric.schleicher:

Is this still a thing? This would be very useful for as i travel over the next few weeks... unfortunately it looks like the download link now produces a 404 :(

Would love to give it a whirl if there is an updated url.

http://developers.immerseum.io seems to still work for me. Might just of been down temporarily. :)

EDIT: oh. The download link is down, my mistake. Will contact them to see if they know about it.

EDIT 2: There is a download link from their latest news article that works.

[eric.schleicher]

Thanks, was able to get it.

[eric.schleicher]

Originally posted by aaron.leiby:

There is also a null driver that ships with SteamVR. You have to enable in your settings.

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamVR/steamvr.vrsettings

I've just done this is and gotten it to work. On some level, this is great, because I can get SteamVR into a Ready State without an HMD present, But now the Vive tracker will not enumerate in the SteamVR window. The ligth on the tracker is however green and indicating a good connection. I even was able to unpair and re-pair the tracker.

Can provide logs. works fine without HMD (requireHmd:false/ null driver disables) but with the null driver enabled the tracker won't show up and basically nothing happens in the logs indicating the device is present.

this is the ONLY entry in the log when the tracker is turned on

Fri May 19 2017 15:24:17.369 - lighthouse: 05197563E4: Successfully fetched gyro/accelerometer range modes from the device. GyroRangeMode:3 AccelRangeMode:2

[a___k___s]

Originally posted by aaron.leiby:

There is also a null driver that ships with SteamVR. You have to enable in your settings.

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamVR/steamvr.vrsettings

and emulation of tracking is available?

[Genesis]

Originally posted by aaron.leiby:

There is also a null driver that ships with SteamVR. You have to enable in your settings.

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamVR/steamvr.vrsettings

Just wanted to post a reply to say thank you for this information!

Without having any VR headset at my disposal, I was able to fix an issue with the Steam skin I'm using. An icon was overlapping the separator in non-VR mode and I wanted to make sure I was not breaking anything in VR mode.