Saturday, April 16, 2016

Lenovo VIBE K4 Note, ANTVR PhoneGlass, and Google Cardboard

So, Lenovo Philippines decided to sell their Lenovo VIBE K4 Note with free VR glass.  Yes, you read that right -- a FREE Virtual Reality glass for every new Lenovo VIBE K4 Note.

To tell you the truth, I didn't bother with the phone's specs.  I just wanted to have my own VR glass!  So, yeah, this is not a post about a phone review.  Though, I'm generally okay with the phone given the price of US$220~ (some store sells it for US$230) that it already comes with VR glass.  So, there's that.

Now onto the VR glass.

Nothing fancy, really.  It's just a plastic version of Google Cardboard with head strap.  Which, for someone like me who really needs to experience this VR thing that's been trending for quite awhile now, it's my kind of poor man's Occulus Rift. I say, hell yeah! I finally have an Occulus Rift! -- a cheap one of course but to hell with CEOs saying VR for the mass market will take a longer while.

So how does it work?

Like Google Cardboard, you will have to put the phone in front of the glass, clipped into place -- which is kind of a lousy engineering if you ask me.  Placing the phone into place by having it clipped comes the risk of the phone falling off if not properly clipped -- I mean, it took me awhile to actually safely clip the phone.  I was thinking, it would have been better if you just slide it on the side of the VR glass and have some locking mechanism to lock it into place -- maybe, slide it on then clip for locking.  I hope Lenovo would be reading this and tap ANTVR to revise the glass with my inputs.

Demo, anyone?

Sadly, the phone does not have videos or apps ready for demo purposes.  So I had to search Google Playstore only to find apps that are compatible only to Google Cardboard.

Good thing though that VR Roller Coaster app has the same configuration that fits Lenovo's ANTVR.

So, these are the steps that configured Lenovo's ANTVR for VR apps that were designed for Google Cardboard:
1. Install Google Cardboard
2. Install VR Roller Coaster
3. Run VR Roller Coaster, select any of the 2 sample rides, then click configure.
4. Then focus the phone to the image below, which I got from the internet by simply googling: 'qr code "vr roller coaster"'
VR Roller Coaster configuration
I know it's rather small but VIBE K4 Note can actually scan it and configure VR Roller Coaster's view that will fit Lenovo's ANTVR glass.

(This post was written at 3AM, just after a few hours of tinkering with ANTVR; if something is not clear, put it in the comments below :) -- if everything works, please do let me know as well by commenting)

~creek23