This section is for beginners who haven't worked with VR headsets and Leap Motion yet. A (VR) headset is a head-mounted display in which we can either put a smartphone or that has an inbuilt display that can be connected to HDMI or some other display port. A VR headset can create a virtual 3D environment by mimicking human vision, that is, stereo vision. Human vision works like this: we have two eyes and get two separate and slightly different images in each eye. The brain then combines these two images and generates a 3D image of the surroundings. Similarly, VR headsets have two lenses and a display. The display can be inbuilt or a smartphone. This screen will show a separate view of the left and right image, and when we put the smartphone or inbuilt display into the headset, it will focus and reshape using two lenses and will simulate 3D stereoscopic vision. In effect, we can explore a 3D world inside this headset. Rather than just visualizing the world, we can also control the event in the 3D world and hear sound too. Cool, right?
Here is the internal structure of a Google Cardboard VR headset:
There is a variety of models of VR headsets available in addition to the high-end models such as Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and so on. The following is one of the VR headsets, which we will use in this chapter. It works based on the same principle of Google Cardboard, but instead of cardboard, it uses a plastic body:
You can test the VR feature by downloading Android VR applications from Google Play Store.
The next device we are using in this project is the Leap Motion controller (https://www.leapmotion.com/). The Leap Motion controller is basically an input device like a PC mouse in which we can control everything using hand gestures. The Leap can accurately track the hands of a user and map the position and orientation of each finger joint accurately. It has two IR cameras and several IR projectors facing upward. The user can position their hand above the device and move their hand. The position and orientation of hands and fingers can be accurately retrieved from their SDK.
Here is the Leap Motion controller and how we can interact with it:
