Are there ways to use VR headset for realtime assistance?
Are there ways to use VR headset for realtime assistance?
I'm having hard time to help my parents troubleshoot their equipment remotely, when they try to observe the objects both with their eyes and manipulate phone camera for our video chat simultaneously. You can get sick of camera shaking, and they are getting tired too. I thought maybe if they had a VR headset and could stream their view directly to the chat, it could be helpful. Maybe I could even somehow point at things in their view to tell, for example, which cable to check. I do not own a headset, and I couldnt find info of such tools via simple/AI search (maybe wrong keywords). Maybe you know of such domestic solutions?
I think you'll just be adding more problematic devices to troubleshoot...
1 billion percent
If you are a little techie you could attach a camera to a hat, and a laser mounted to a motor to point at stuff with. Run it all through a PC and stream it to yourself
don't even need a motor just a streaming camera mounted to the forehead and a laser pointer. yeah I think money is to a hat would be the simplest set up
I think it is technically possible - with the Valve Index you can read the camera input like a webcam, and I'm sure theres some way to do it with the Quests (although probably not easily). That said, as others have noted, between the bulkyness of the headset, the lower quality of the cameras, the risk of losing tracking, and the natural shakyness of people's heads, it likely wouldn't be an improvement. Try watching VR footage from someone who doesn't stream/video it regularly and you can get an idea of how hard the footage can be to follow, even before the lower camera quality.
I think the biggest issue is that people dont like to look at the object through phone when it is much clearer here in reality. So looking for themselves and looking to show it to assistant naturally split into two separate processes. While looking "for yourself" the phone is randomly dangling in the hand, making the stream sea/sickening.
So I thought, VR headsets have a good see-through mode, which could also be streamed. It also could easily display a pointer from remote. Thus both processes would merge into one, and you could directly comment on what is on focus.
There's nothing VR would give you that streaming video like FaceTime gives you. A smartphone is better because they can point it at things they couldn't reach if they had a headset on.
Just video call and have them point with one hand while holding their phone with the other.
I'm guessing you haven't tried to do it. I can spend twenty minutes trying to read something my father-in-law needs help with over video chat. From his "and how do I turn the back camera on?", to my "no back a bit and left. The other left", and the classic "you turned off your video, let me call you back" because it's faster than guiding him on how to turn it on while he swears that he didn't press anything.
I've done it a few times. It's not the best but vr would be far worse.
Do you think "how do I turn video back on?" would be easier in VR? You have obviously never used VR.
Maybe ask in !virtualreality@lemmy.world? It seems to be the largest community
Is it possible to have them share their screen instead of using a phone camera? Unless it's hardware stuff, I guess
But I know for sure on Teams you can use your own pointer on their screen during screen share to point at what you mean and to motion towards stuff.
For computer problems we use remote desktop. But for dealing with the printer, tv, phones, car, or checking the router we need to have video chat.