Inside Out Positional Head Tracking (standalone 6DoF) for GearVR/Cardboard/Daydream using ARCore v1.6.0

ARCore v1.6.0 enabled Inside Out Positional Tracking (six degrees of freedom) for all ARCore capable devices.

Introducing Remarks:

WARNING YOU MIGHT GET SICK: The current versions use interpolation and smoothing functions to cover up imprecise tracking. This leads to relative high latency in response to head motion. This is bad for people who get sick from motion sickness quickly. If you know that you are susceptible to motion sickness, these apps might not be for you jet.
Fast movements, featureless, extrem sunny and poorly lit areas can affect the quality of tracking severely. When the app starts up it takes 3-5 seconds for ARCore to detect a plain at this stage it is best to move just a little.
Your phone might get hot very quickly. Make sure to end the game after using. The Cardboard version seems to stay on even if the phone gets very hot while the GearVR version turns itself off automatically. Therefore, cardboard users should make sure to manually end the app after use.
The goal of this project is to bring high quality (6DoF) positional tracking to GearVR, Daydream and Cardboard using ARCore/ARKit software. The HTC Vive Focus and the Daydream powered Lenovo Mirage Solo offer this functionality already but are very pricy and not available everywhere yet. Because they use dedicated hardware, they can offer better performance and quality tracking.
Before installing one of the apps (.apk files) make sure you have installed Google ARCore from the Play Store on your device. Check if your device supports ARCore on this page.
This project was part of my bachelor thesis. The thesis describes the challanges of bringing mobile VR to smartphones in detail and describes some experiments done to test the performance and other factors. It can be found here.
GearVR and Daydream support is officially over what's left for us is the open source Google Cardboard SDK which is said to recive updates in the future and run on the latest versions of the Unity engine. This open source Cardboard SDK is similar to the Daydream SDK which was quite good. How good the Carboard SDK is in delivering responsive VR I don't know yet since I haven't tested and compared it to the old and phasing out Daydream SDK. But since the Chardboard SDK is the only mobile phone VR solution left, we have no other choice to use it for all future projects. One unfortunate fact is that the carboard SDK doesn’t support a controller input. I hope the VR performance regarding latency and performance is on pair with what we are used to from Daydream VR, because I consider the Daydream and Gear VR solutions the lowest acceptable quality for VR. If the Chardboard SDK shows higher latency because it misses key features that where developed for Daydream developing any project with it would be doomed to be a bad experience making users sick.

Software Description:

|Projects and Apps (.apk)|Description|Recommended Devices|VR Headset| |---|---|---|---| | | | | | |WhiteIsland.apk|Simple environment. Using nativeARCore for tracking. Noticeable latency due to the used smoothing function. Use the controller touchpad to fly forward in viewing direction and the trigger button to enable/disable visualization of real-world boundaries.|All ARcore + GearVR compatible devices|GearVR| | | | | | |BoxyRoomCardboard.apk|App should run on every smartphone with ARCore support. Daydream users need to uncover the camera e.g. as explained here and might need to turn of NFC to avoid Daydream from starting on top of the Cardboard app.|All ARCore compatible devices|Cardboard| | | | | | |VikingVillageGearVR.apk|Interesting because of the high-quality environment which was captured with the Seurat tool. This tool allows for the capture of a (small) area of a high-quality environment which allows for a limited free movement only in this captured area.|All ARCore + GearVR compatible devices|GearVR| | | | | | |VikingVillageCardboard.apk|Interesting because of the high-quality environment which was captured with the Seurat tool. This tool allows for the capture of a (small) area of a high-quality environments which allows for a limited free movement only in this captured area.|All ARCore compatible devices|Cardboard| | | | | | |VikingVillageForOculusGO.apk|The Oculus GO has no camera so there is no head tracking possible, but because the high-quality environment scene captured with the Seurat tool could be interesting for Go users as well, I added controller support so that flying through the scene by pressing the touchpad is possible.|OculusGo|OculusGo| | | | | | |VuforiaTracking(Experimental)|This app uses Vuforia which has an ARCore integration for tracking. But the performance of the ARCore integration is very poor compared to native ARCore. Therfore this project will be discontinued.|All GearVR capable devices (low tracking quality)|GearVR| | | | | | |NativeARCoreTracking(Experimental)| Is not up to date and will be removed soon. Please use WhiteIsland instead. |All ARCore + GearVR capable devices|GearVR| | | | | | MovingMarkerTracking.apk|Uses Vuforia Vusion which combines ARCore and Vuforias marker tracking. This combination allows for 6DOF marker tracking in a limited area in front of the camera. The marker can be found here. Simply open the marker on your pc screen or print it on paper and look at it through the camera when the app is running. Since ARCore 1.9 now supports moving marker tracking this project will likely be replaced soon since Vuforia Marker tracking has many issues.|All GearVR capable devices (low tracking quality)|GearVR|

Installation

On Cardboard

Works with all phones who support ARCore. Just download the BoxyRoomCardboard.apk or the VikingVillageCardboard.apk (Seurat) and install.

<a href="https://youtu.be/EFglp19C8tg"><img src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/12700187/54432048-5e6d5c00-4728-11e9-82b8-994b5ab7114b.png" width="100%"></a> Video showing BoxyRoomCardboard.apk in action.

You need to restart the app when misalignment between the headset and the head movement is observed. The misaligning is a bug which was solved for the GearVR version but is still present in the Cardboard/Daydream versions.

Cardboard VR apps lag the time warp functionalities that we can use in GearVR and Daydream apps. The Cardboard headset is not very good either if you can use a GearVR or Daydream headset to get a noticeably improved experience.

On GearVR (apps need to be signed first):

Installing on GearVR requires the app to be signed first. But since the current GearVR version is better than the Daydream/Cardboard version the few extra steps to sign the apk file are worth it for you.

Signing the .apk file:

First. Download the WhiteIsland.apk. or the VikingVillage.apk.

Second. Sign the apk using the free Injector for GearVR app. Just safe the .apk file on your phone, use the Injector app to sign it and install. Make sure the app you want to sign and install is not already installed on your phone because in my case this prevents the app from installing again.

If the Injector app doesn't work for you try this alternative: Find out your device ID here. With the .apk file and the device ID you can sign the apk yourself. How you can sign the apk is explained in this Youtube video. I recommend the option where you download the addosig.bat program to sign the apk. You can either follow the link under the Youtube page or download the Add OSIG.zip file containing the addosig.bat program directly from this repository.

<a href="https://youtu.be/HLbtWRxVu04"><img src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/12700187/54431979-26feaf80-4728-11e9-9045-6ac215b8c5bc.png" width="100%"></a> Video showing WhiteIsland.apk 6DoF GearVR version. <a href="https://youtu.be/WX626Dbj1Cc"><img src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/12700187/54431833-b8b9ed00-4727-11e9-9c3c-911e16503dd6.png" width="100%"></a> Video showing VikingVillage (Seurat) 6DoF GearVR version.

Click the touchpad on the side of the headset once to recenter the view when you notice misalignment.

On Daydream and iPhone

Daydream users: You can either use one of the Cardboard apks or even better switch the Cardboard project over to Daydream inside the Unity project yourself. Use for example the "BoxyRoomChardboard" project and under build settings, XR settings replace Cardboard wi

ARCoreInsideOutTrackingGearVr

Install / Use

README