Show HN: I Built a Museum Exhibit
knhash.inThats awesome thanks for sharing.
How did you settle on VR for the headset?
>After briefly thinking about an implementation with an LCD screen behind an eye piece cutout, connected to an SBC like Raspberry Pi which in turn would be wired up a rotary dial, we ditched the idea in favor of using a VR headset. Basically all of the above in one unit.
Seems like overkill compared to HDMI FPV Goggles? Something like these? "Bigeyes H3 Portable 2.5K Equivalent Screen Video Glasses with HDMI Input". It doesnt seem like you were using the VR elements of the goggles, and they caused some issues with their extra smarts.
True, but the extra smarts were more of an inconvenience rather than a big issue. The standalone part was useful - we needed to keep the number of parts (therefore the points of failure) low. For instance Unity made it super easy to build simple video loop and not having to worry too much about the FPV settings of a display and the built in battery worked to keep it portable.
FPV goggles has smaller FOV than VR headsets. They use more expensive and more miniaturized microdisplays[1]. That is fine with FPV application, but not necessarily so for this purpose.
Whether if the Meta Quest specifically was the right choice for them in this context, that I don't know.
1: Which is fascinating in its own regard! It's a Technology Connections sort of a fascinating branch of technology.
This is a fascinating and unique take on ways in which to spark a child's imagination (and even my 40 year old imagination). I've always pondered at what it must be like to view the world from the perspective of an underwater creature -- fascinating dive (no pun intended) into another consciousness's perspective and will be super valuable for our future generations and their handling of the animal kingdom. Well done!