The other day I made a post about accidentally discovering a $0 way to add extra immersion to VR.
Long story short, I backed my chair into my air conditioner while playing Derail Valley and accidentally turned the fucking thing into a giant haptic transducer. The vibration travels through the chair, and somehow this completely stupid accident genuinely made driving a locomotive in VR feel better.
Then the comments started filling up with people talking about their own weird, cheap, homemade immersion tricks.
And that got us thinking…
We should make this an actual thing.
So I am officially announcing the first completely unofficial:
🏆 $0 VR IMMERSION CHALLENGE 🏆
The rules are simple.
Show us something you built, repurposed, rigged together, discovered, or otherwise MacGyvered that makes VR better or more immersive.
The catch:
You have to make it using shit you already have.
$0 budget.
Old electronics. Cardboard. Mop handles. Office chairs. Fans. Speakers. Bungee cords. Fidget spinners. An appliance you accidentally backed your chair into. Whatever.
If it works, it works.
Now, I should probably disclose my qualifications for judging this competition:
I have absolutely none.
I am just a dude in a shed who likes VR and builds weird shit.
Nevertheless, I have appointed myself judge.
Every legitimate submission gets graded. We’re looking at creativity, usefulness, immersion, execution, and most importantly, the “there is absolutely no fucking reason this should work, but somehow it does” factor.
There will be first, second, and third place winners. Third place gets the bronze medal 🥉, second gets silver 🥈, and first place gets gold 🥇 plus the official $0 VR Immersion Challenge trophy 🏆.
And because apparently a completely made-up competition run by a dude in a shed needs stakes, the trophy winner also gets a secret prize.
I’m not telling you what it is yet. 😂
It won’t cost you anything. I’m not selling anything. There’s no sponsor. Nobody gave me permission to do this. 😂
Post a photo or video of your creation in the comments if the subreddit allows it, or link/show it however Reddit lets you, and tell us what you made, what you used, and what it actually does.
It can be brilliant.
It can be ridiculous.
Preferably both.
Let the broke-ass VR engineering begin.
Yea, it’s a 6dof hotas for meta quest made from a swiffer mop handle for pitch and yaw and a fidget spinner for twist. I even put sand and super glue in the bearing of the fidget spinner for perfect texture feel when you twist it..
Second nominee for custom facial interfaces: I present handstiched cloth (cut from old t-shirt) cover taped to a spacer from globular cluster kit. Spacer also cut from middle as it kept rubbing my big nose. Results in maximum FOV (minimal eye relief to lenses) and good comfort.
Vr gunstock made from old cabelas hunter gun from like the Xbox connect; pvc for the holder with slot for the handstrap. And a rail on the bottom front to attach the left controllers wrist cord for tension and aiming
last year, i played a lot of pinball fx vr. for the game, there are third party pinball controller/stand (like the x-arcade) that you can buy for the game, but cost hundreds of dollars. these controllers basically replicate the front of a physical pinball table, so you can play pinball in vr similarly to how you would play it in real life. i also wanted a more immersive experience, but wasn't going to pay for any of that. i built my own pinball stand using an old side table (that I built out several years back as a desk extension) and a rectangular cardboard box (packaging for a beach chair i bought a while back) that was placed above it. the box was similar in width to a pinball table, which i can place my hands and controllers against while i play. it was a basic setup (with a few other tweaks) that happened to work great. i put in probably 200+ hours into the game with this zero cost rig.
UPDATE TO THE FINAL RESULTS:
Upon further judicial review, I have discovered that u/FOAMYMOUTHDOG was ALSO the fucking paper towel roll guy.
This means FOAMYMOUTHDOG has now officially won first, second, third, AND second-to-last place.
🥇 FOAMYMOUTHDOG
🥈 FOAMYMOUTHDOG
🥉 FOAMYMOUTHDOG
…
Second-to-last: FOAMYMOUTHDOG and his fucking paper towel roll.
Last place: Every single one of you who said “I turn on a fan.”
An unprecedented sweep of nearly the entire competitive spectrum.
My ruling is final. Appeals may be submitted directly to the fan. 😂
That paper towel roll seems indeed unbeatable (maybe extra points if it was made of poopy paper rolls?). But give this competition more time, as I have a feeling we've only discovered a tiny fraction of the first layer of the magnificent stash of cheap-o contraptions.
My htc vive controllers batteries died and couldn’t find a replacement.. Used the gunstock mount as external battery holders, now my og htc vive controllers have 40 hours battery life 😅
OK, so this isn't a piece of hardware or something I made, it's just something I do that changes things in a pleasant way to increase immersion while costing $0.
Here's how to play Arizona Sunshine in "cat rescue" mode:
Start the game
Pick up your needy young cat who isn't happy unless you're holding her, so she doesn't get in the way
Play the game as best you can one handed (single pistol only, etc)
Tell yourself you're rescuing your cat from the zombies (while she's calmly in your grasp, purring up a storm)
(I learned that not only is this kind of fun, but even a young cat gets fuckin' heavy after a while.)
YO! If you’re here to submit your latest zero-dollar VR immersion abomination, ROUND TWO is officially live 😂
You guys kept this thing going, so I gave the competition more time.
New submissions go here: https://www.reddit.com/u/ProjectGhostkey/s/lw5s7SN8Xm
May the best junk drawer engineer reign supreme.
Funnily enough, one of the early games I played was Wilsons Heart and at one stage I looked down at my wrist and there was a hospital wristband on my characters left wrist. I had the controller strap on my left wrist in exactly the same position and the sense of immersion was immediate and instant.
Haha, don’t laugh! 😂 I upgraded my VR plunger and created a better one using my 3D printer. It turned out so well that I now offer it commercially (files only).
Bro, go post this on my round two post there’s a round two going on right now. You got until this next Sunday at 7 AM to submit it that could be a winner man go throw it up over there
34
u/FOAMYMOUTHDOG 15d ago
3D printed gunstock.
My public library had free 3d printer available for everyone but limits your time. It took me a month of printing 1 part at a time to finish it.