Vive Pro Fresnel Lens to Gear VR Lens Mod + Side by Side 

TonyZ very helpful! Planing on doing this mod soon.

good tip. Gotta make use of that ifixit somehow

@@uravggamer4620 how did it go? :3

Which design did you use for your vive pro? Do you have a link?

No, just in case you want to use glasses within the vive you will have problems. The adapters 'stand out' a bit

bugger... I need to get some lenses like these with my correction... Oh god, how much that will be???

You can grab different adapters wich will add you perosnal correction still using the standard gear vr lenses. Check it on Thingyverse - pretty neat what they've done there

Ya I always cringe when I see people working with lenses and stuff with their bare hands. Getting everything oily and dirty.

Thanks!

Thanks! Glad it helped.

I advice everyone to stay away from this seller. I had a really bad interaction with them! Beware!

@Vivin I actually had a good experience with this seller. The lens were extremely good too! Maybe you bought it from the wrong person? :( I also bought the lens adapter’s as a backup on eBay. The person on eBay i (I think) is the brother. Instead of giving people advice everyone to stay away from this seller like he’s scandalous, i would advice people to buy from him for his good quality lenses ;)

Yup, and on top of all that I was called a racist for no reason. I will tell you Brian it was the weirdest e-commerce interaction I have ever experienced. Moving on.. I will just grab a gear vr and adapters separately from someone else.

No Blank Nostalgia, you just got lucky. Both the etsy and ebay sellers are a nightmare to deal with.

Thanks for the great comment!

You're very welcome, thank you for calling that mini-book, "Great", lol. So, it's been one week since I completed the mod, and I've been using my Vive extensively ever since I completed it. I learned how to play ViveCraft with Natural Locomotion, I played some Skyrim VR, I've played 3d movie after 3d movie, some in 360 and some just SBS 3d. Today I went back to Google Earth VR and found that I could trick it into high speed flight at low altitude if I maneuvered just right, so I spent all morning blasting over the US at something like Mach 6 at just 500 feet up, wowwwww. Hold your controller at your side and aim it around while you turn your head to circle strafe big cities... it's like flying a UFO. "Have you ever flown a flying saucer? Afterwards sex seems trite." But, I digress. I've been all kinds of places doing all kinds of things since i modded my Vive, and I LOVE IT. What everyone says is true - nearly the whole field of view becomes a sweet spot and the only time you adjust your headset is for better comfort in fit. No longer do you ever need to adjust it for better quality of view. I do notice a slight warp to the image, a bit like looking through cheap window glass, if I pan back and forth and really look for it... but I don't really look for it so I easily forget that it's there. The extreme edge of the field of view has a ring of distortion, but so what... it's at the periphery and it was MILES worse with the original lenses. Every so often I notice a small touch of lens reflection type glare, but it's really subtle and easily overlooked. NOTHING like the massive streaky God Ray glare festival of the original lenses. Generally, the view is beautiful. Yeah, I still see the screendoor effect. Well, that's why it cost $500 for the whole setup and not $3000 or more. One thing - the lenses sit a bit closer to the eye, so now and then I need to clean smudges off them from my eyelashes and the occasional nose bump. Also, when I did the mod, I got a couple of tiny specks of dust in there. I figured I might make it even worse if I went on a cleaning mission, and that I'd get used to it anyway. I was right, I simply overlook it now and it doesn't bother me at all. NO problems with loose lenses or anything mechanical like that. It's stable as a rock. My final thoughts: WHY didn't HTC do it this way in the first place? The image quality is so vastly superior with the convex lenses that I just don't get what they were thinking by using the Fresnels. Maybe it had to do with a larger market for those that need to use eyeglasses, but that's the only reason I can think of. Field of view loss and distortion are so minimal that I can't see blaming it on that. At the least, HTC should make available a set of their own handpicked convex lenses for those wanting the option, something with an optimal match to the hardware as opposed to something designed for the competition, lol. I'd be all over it, as long as they actually went for the best quality instead of slumming it like they did with the Fresnels. In a couple of words: Do it. Be careful, don't break your Vive, but definitely give it a try if you're up to the work. This is one time when an exceedingly easy mod has a huge payoff. I love it.

@@NightRunner417 how about the motion sickness/nausea?

@@bonojennett Ohhhhh that is such a complicated issue. I'm very, very sensitive to such things, so what I do with the Vive has to be just exactly right or I'm done really fast, like ten mins tops. A couple of good examples are 3d movies and virtual worlds. In the case of movies, I tend to call anything with viewpoint motion, a "vomit comet", especially if there's shake involved at all. Any viewpoint motion has to either trick you into thinking you're looking out a window so your local environment is still and the _outside_ environment is moving, or it has to be realllly slow. Any sudden shift will definitely get to me, and could even make me stumble sideways and fall if it were timed just right and violent enough. i find for such things, better to just sit down. Thankfully, that's easy with a Vive. You can sit in or out of your play area and it won't care as long as the lasers can still track your position. The best movies are those where the environment is still as a rock and only the people, objects, animals, whatever are moving. Then it's really, really cool. Almost like being there and NO nausea. In the case of actual virtual worlds, most often the environment is still and the illusion of you moving through it is flawless, or at least in the case of worlds where you walk around. It's... dare I say... perfect, or close enough to it. Stuff like Duck Season (AMAZING implementation of VR, you have to try it) or Skyrim VR, Hotdogs and Hand Grenades, etc, are all really great, loads of fun... just a little confining and tedious if your play area is small. A great example of not-so-great VR experience in the nausea regard is oddly enough, Google Earth VR. No experience I know of makes you feel so godlike, so all powerful as that thing, but the motion, be it dragging the map or flying over it, is practically guaranteed to make you feel sick within ten mins or so. It's easy to forgive it for that because like I said, OMG wow is it ever cool... but it will get to you. The worst experience I've had beyond badly shot movies was Vivecraft with mods. It's an amazing experience, turning around to find a 5' tall creeper right up your ass, or mining in chasms, or climing mountains to look out at the vastness of it all, but something went terribly wrong when I did it with my FTB Infinity worlds, lol. I noticed stuttering right away, which should have been my first clue to NOT do what I was doing, but I went ahead anyway and started making a base. Eventually I got rattled, then sick, then REALLY sick all of a sudden, and had to take the headset off and go hunch over the toilet. I didn't vomit but whewwwww was I close. All that next day, I had horrible vertigo that kept me in bed most of the day. Awful does not describe it... it was truly debilitating. It passed but it took hours and hours, and I haven't done Vivecraft since, lol. Nothing else before or since has done that to me, but I'm a lot easier on it now since that. All in all, this is a rock solid system with excellent tracking and should treat you very well as long as you don't do crazy things that you know might get you sick. Oh and now after I've written a book about it all, NOW i realize you may have meant "Did it get worse or better after the lens mod?" My answer? I see no change whatsoever. I like it WAY WAY better with the Gear VR lenses. I find it sharper, definitely wider, less distortion overall, just plain superior in a substantial way... but I really don't think it affects the nausea issues much at all. I think they are so much to do with content that little else enters into it.

@@NightRunner417 you're doing a great job answering my questions! Haha. I have a Vive and find I get less sick when I play in my cool garage. I was just wondering if you'd noticed an increase in nausea over time compared to the original vive lenses. So, my next question is, do you know if it matters of you use a 2015 Gear VR lens vs. the recommended 2016/2017 lenses from this video? I'm just looking on Amazon and trying to save some dollars. Haha.

Excellent Groden! Please do! and thanks again for the work you've done on this. Cant wait for your barrel distortion file! How much of an improvement are you seeing with your version it over the V2 version posted on reddit in your thread?

It's quite a lot better imo. V2 was great for the regular vive, but not so much for the pro.

do you actually make these for sale?

Swenly No, but you can order them printed from thingiverse

You should make these adapters, for the Samsung Odyssey. Only a handful of ppl have Rift Pro but 10 times more have the Odyssey! ;")

actually if you go on HTC vive forum, the engineer says not so good things about mod. make pupil swim, exhaust eye much faster and goes against logic because of distortion created, after all you are swapping for toy lenses totally not designed for it. they say there is actually a software mod to correct the distortion in computer, I forgot the name. other down side dust will come inside lense.

Ian Kennedy contacts

Do you know what your prescription is or at least whether you are near or far sighted? Did you make the insert thicker or thinner?

@@JohnThinks I'm near sighted and had to move it closer to the screens. You can test distance roughly by holding the lens in your hand, and moving it in and out while looking through it.

Focal length should be an available adjustment on these headsets. It sucks that it isn't, but at least we can do it on this headset.

whaaaaaaaaaat I was sitting here thinking I was doomed never to enjoy VR on a day I wore glasses! Awesome news!

yes this is called "barrel effect" there is a fix you can do that involves editing a file in Steam VR, instructions can be found on reddit.

@@DanielRichards644 Would have been nice if the fix is added as a link, as it's needed to get the better 'distortion'.

It's 3D printed. The adapter that the Gear Lens go into? www.thingiverse.com/thing:2837804

A late response to your late response. It does reduce the field of view just a tiny bit on the Vive, but I just made a discovery... print the adapters with clear/translucent resin and it will actually make the field of view feel better than the original. The light bleed through with the clear resin adapters simulates your blurry peripheral vision and seems to reduce eyestrain as an added bonus.

@@nastyheadwound4857 Hi and thanks for your detailed response - this sounds like a great idea - have you tried this and where have you purchased these from as I don’t have a 3D printer? Also you could combine this with a reduced face pad as well to get an even bigger fov as well perhaps? There is another possibility to increase the fov further but in a kind of pseudo way as it’s not a real increase is that when I use a reduced face pad sometimes I notice the sides of the screen inside and also am guessing you might see the sides of the screen with the translucent adaptors you mention so I was thinking to open the vive up and get some mirror or reflective tape ( kind of like foil sticky tape - can buy it for little money like eBay ) and stick it to the sides perpendicular or at right angles to where the the screen borders with the sides inside the device so as to reflect part of the display off what is happening on the screen even though the image is inverted it kind of gives a pseudo increase in fov as even though it’s not an extension of the display it kind of feels like it is as the mirror effect of the tape makes it feel like the screen is bigger if you understand what I mean- great for first person driving and space exploration games and the likes but not so good for like platform games . I haven’t tried this with the vive yet but I did with the psvr and it was quite impressive but it was almost hell to open up the unit with all the screws etc to get through . I would ultimately like a pimax but you need a really beefy pc and even used the pimax is around £350 mark so expense and people complain about distortion and it running slowly and buggy software . The valve index fov isn’t much better than the vive as even though listed at 130 people don’t feel they get this increase . It also doesn’t seem like we are going to get a headset if any significant increase in fov in the near future even the upcoming coming psvr 2 will be only 110 so if nothing happens in the next 3 years or so might have to suffer the pimax but it will be a lot cheaper to buy by then . Such a shame as fov is such a big thing in vr.

probably depends on the nature of the eye strain; if it was due to your eyes having issues focusing due to blurriness; it could help. Also be sure to check your IPD measurement and setting on the Vive.

Ya that is the whole point of Fresnel lenses. They magnify. These GearVR lenses don't, so the world will appear "smaller" with less immersion.

You either have the wrong GearVR lenses; or someone made a mistake on your print. I think its probably the wrong GEARVR lenses; as it has to be specific models of GEARVR to fit.

I'm not sure if they are different lenses or if the adapter you received is out of spec, but this is designed for the 2016 Gear VR model; the one you noted appears to be a 2015 model.

Yes i believe correct mode is sm r323. You got 2015 model which has smaller lens. Sorry

I just odered the V3.2 stl - at the checkout you get a list of what materials to make it from, I didn't know what material to choose, in the end, i went for nylon ( it was the cheapest :)

I would go with ABS or nylon. You'll tell us if there is a smell...

Vive Pro already improves on screen door over original vive; but If anything screen door effect considered alone might seem worse than original lenses, because the image is sharper; (blurring can mask the screen door effect)

I'm so tempted to do this! I'm going to mess with the OG Vive first and see what I'm getting myself into. The Fresnel lenses do annoy me a fair bit

just V3.3 is enough if you dont want to use adjustables. I just now printed them and they came out great.

I don't think it will improve clarity right in the middle of your lens / vision, but the periphery of your view will be clearer.

The best way to improve distance clarity is to provide a better image from your game for supersampling.

peniS

ilent

look for the lens that ISN'T perfectly round. You need one with the small flat edge in the corner

yes sir, as far as the hardware goes. When you get to the software calibration, the calibration file you use might be different

Try Zeiss lens ( from Zeiss VR One Plus). Best lens ever

lighter and cheaper to produce

No, I would stay away from the 2015 (R322) model, someone else was having trouble with it below.

thanks, i think i found an alternative. a generic set thats 7$ on ebay with 40-42mm lenses! the set is sold under a few brands, including a retail brand of 'gems', or online as 'shinecon 5G99' and they appear to have the same FOV and focal distance as the gearVR 2016. amusingly, they're too good for the device they come in. i can see a lot of the surrounding enclosure through the lenses, well past the limits of the largest compatible phone. i might try to swap these out, if i can find a printable housing to match them.

Or over engineered.

You have 3 months to build a product. GO! (Not much thought)

Yes, exact same.

The tutorial says that when you open up the lighthouse config command prompt window and enter "downloadconfig 1" it will save your config that you had for the default Fresnel lenses. That will be your backup in case you ever want to go back to normal

Yes, be sure to put them in separate baggies and mark left and right.

Index..... if you have the cash

@shreddaddy1 I was just looking into the Reverb G2 lol You think Vive Pro with lens mod is still better than G2?

@shreddaddy1 dang... Thanks for the info!! I'm doing a new PC build w/ 5800X and 6800XT... So that's why I haven't opened my Valve yet. New build is almost done and I want to enjoy VR the best I can.

Is that the default profile picture from 2015?

@@yepisme455 Yep is me Its to honor my long lost childhood RU-vid account with the same profile picture Jk I'm just too lazy to change it :3

i want to know too

@@NathanEllis Nope it doesnt

Yes but image clarity is definitely an upgrade.

Must be the black 323 model

I just got some via etsy. Dude wtf. Why are these not factory...

this i also want to know!

someone has done a video on it and does work, but i didnt buy one, i still run an OG vive and index

any news?

OMG it's Nathie! (starstruck...) ... uh, I mean,. HI! ;")

Want to know too

@@yepisme455 dont bother. I tried the Pro and Pro 2 - Index is better than both of them.

@@ratcat7668 Sheesh I’m so confused rn. In reddit and in a lot of forums people keep contradicting themselves and I can’t choose a headset to upgrade to (I have a Quest 2)

@@ratcat7668 I just want good FOV and immersion

@@ratcat7668 And something that makes Full Body Tracking easier

Maybe they are putting the cheapest and are hoping for opticians to take the relay (so people with correction be lenses for their view... also in a family that wouldn't work :). You're right, particularly on the Pro (when on top they said in the marketing they had better optics at one point).

Probably to cover up the Screendoor Effect and also cheaper

1. They are made by their competitor. 2. They simply didn't do as good of a job designing the lenses and they also likely felt that the fresnel lens approach they took addressed some kind of perceived requirement (motion, etc). I think this mod, and the feedback on it, demonstrates otherwise and HTC would be well served by improving their lens design. They get significantly better reviews if they did.

www.edmundoptics.com/resources/application.../advantages-of-fresnel-lenses/ The reason.................

_You wouldn't shoot a guy with glasses, would you?_

Wesley Terry Is it possible you could make me some please, i hope to get a 3d printer in the near future but new baby on the way slowed things down a bit lol.

You can swap at will.

It won't work. The image will look far away.

If you don't wear glasses then move the screen as close as it will go to your face and the FOV is back again