We couldn't afford an Oculus so we built one

Build your own VR headset for $100 💸

Why Relativ? 📖

My name is Maxime Coutté. I’m 16 years old and I live in a small village in France where I’m the only teenager. With my best friends, Jonas Ceccon and Gabriel Combe, and my math teacher Jerome Dieudonne (we call him Sensei) we built our own VR headset for $100.

I started programming when I was 13, thanks to Sensei when he created a robotics club. On the first day we were 12 students, the next week we were 3 - yep, you guessed it, the other two were Gabriel and Jonas. I fell in love with VR because of an anime called SAO, but the problem was that the Oculus Rift was way too expensive for me. I talked about this with Gabriel and we both agreed that we should build our own VR headset. That got us into the math and physics behind VR (quaternions, proper acceleration, antiderivatives…). Then we bought the cheapest components we could and we reinvented VR. Now using FastVR and Relativ you can build your VR headset too.

Meet the team ❤️

Gabriel: I work on optics for FastVR, 3D conception with Maxime and cheap tracking for the next big update.

Maxime: I created WRMHL and with Gabriel we created FastVR. I'm also behind the code for the hardware.

Jonas: I convinced a Chinese factory to sell us premium components at low prices and I'm working on a Master Guide for Relativ.

Sensei: I'm the theoretician of the team. I teach them math and I help them to solve algorithm issues.

Open-Source it FTW

Thanks to this project I’ve had the incredible fortune to meet amazing people, including the chief architect at Oculus, Atman Binstock. He gave me a precious piece of advice: "open source it". I deleted all the code I had, and started rewriting it all from scratch, better. And I convinced my two friends and our math teacher to open source the project

Getting Started ⚡️

Relativ is based on WRMHL and FastVR.

What you'll need

What components ?

First you will need the following components:

• Arduino Due, $34 for the official one or $10 for a Chinese clone
• GY-521 MPU-6050, $1
• 5.5 inch 2560*1440 2K LCD Screen HDMI to MIPI, up to 100€ on AliExpress (recommended) ⚠️ Price may vary a lot
• Fresnel lens Focal Length 80mm, $3 (recommended)

How to Install?

You can either install it using Git or direct Download. Or from the command line:

# Clone this repository
$ git clone https://github.com/relativty/Relativ

Copy all folders in Relativ/src/libraries and past them in your Arduino Libraries folder: Documents\Arduino\libraries. You're now ready to build the headset!

Building the hardware

Now what you need to do is 3D-print the hardware; if needed you can change any models with provided Source Files. You will need to print the following:

• Relativ_headset_structure.STL x1
• box_Arduino_DUE.stl x1
• box_lens_1.STL x2 ⚠️
• box_lens_2.STL x2 ⚠️
• box_mpu6050.STL x1
• box_screen_adaptor.STL x1
• box_screen_controller.STL x1
• box_screen_spherical.STL x1 OR box_screen.STL x1 ⚠️
• support_lens.STL x1

Building the software

Make sure you have all the libraries needed installed and upload the following program to the Arduino:

Path: Relativ/src/main/main.ino

Play some demos

You can now play with your headset by downloading some cool demos by clicking here. Or build your own game in a minute using the Relativty sdk, learn more by clicking here .

I would love to hear about what you’ve experienced building the headset or help if you have any questions. Ping me at [email protected] or @maximecoutte.

😍🤙 You can now chat with me and the Fellowship https://discord.gg/W9VKbjU

<> with ❤️, [email protected]