TheRetroArcade
Veteran
Posts: 1,957
Joined: Feb 2026
Joined: Feb 2026
Gordon Gekko would approve...
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Here's a challenge. Get rid of the screen door effect from VR headsets without resorting to uber high-res display panels. Solution? Use CRTs. Yes, really. At least, that's one of the main benefits an enterprising YouTuber, dooglehead, discovered when he cooked up a homebrew VR headset using actual CRTs.
Now, at this stage you're probably imagining something utterly comical, perhaps a couple of small TVs somehow attached precariously to someone's head. And as dooglehead himself says, back in the 1980s, there were indeed VR headsets made from TV-style CRTs and suspended from the ceiling on cables.
He says he would have liked to take that hardware for a spin, but it all ran off custom workstations. So even if he could find the "headsets", driving them with modern games would be basically impossible. So, yup, you guessed it, he's going to have to build something himself.
At this point, I was thinking Sony Watchman. If you've seen Oliver Stone's Wall Street or you're simply old enough, you'll know what a Watchman is. Actually, you may have seen similar tech in intercom systems.
With these kinds of CRTs, instead of firing an electron gun directly at the rear of a phosphor screen and viewing it from the front, the screen is placed at a very shallow angle to the gun and you view the phosphor screen directly, effectively at a perpendicular angle to the gun. That allows the whole construction to be relatively slim. Perfect for a "pocket TV" in the 1980s.
It turns out this type of CRT is still being made, but their 4-inch screen sizes are a little too big to be ideal for this application. So, sure enough, dooglehead bagged a couple of 1990s spec Sony Watchman units with 2.7-inch CRTs.
Each CRT is 640 by 480 resolution, interlaced, and black and white rather than colour. As a stepping off point, dooglehead used an open source VR headset project from Github. These are usually based on small LCDs that can be directly connected to a PC.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
So, he had to use an FPGA to convert the digital video output to analogue for the CRTs. Next up was an essentially off-the-shelf infrared laser lighthouse head-tracking system.
Dooglehead then designed a custom PCB integrating the FPGA, head-tracking input, power supply for the CRT (which is just one USB output, such is the low draw of the CRTs), and then the HDMI input.
The whole shebang is housed in a makeshift cardboard chassis. Remarkably, it weighs just 544 g, similar to existing...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them.
Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts.
From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon.
Hardware nerds unite, sign up to our free tech newsletter for a weekly digest of the hottest new tech, the latest gadgets on the test bench, and much more.
Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo's new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play.
Subscribe for a weekly digest of the movie and TV news that matters, direct to your inbox. From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we've got you covered.
Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month!
Here's a challenge. Get rid of the screen door effect from VR headsets without resorting to uber high-res display panels. Solution? Use CRTs. Yes, really. At least, that's one of the main benefits an enterprising YouTuber, dooglehead, discovered when he cooked up a homebrew VR headset using actual CRTs.
Now, at this stage you're probably imagining something utterly comical, perhaps a couple of small TVs somehow attached precariously to someone's head. And as dooglehead himself says, back in the 1980s, there were indeed VR headsets made from TV-style CRTs and suspended from the ceiling on cables.
He says he would have liked to take that hardware for a spin, but it all ran off custom workstations. So even if he could find the "headsets", driving them with modern games would be basically impossible. So, yup, you guessed it, he's going to have to build something himself.
At this point, I was thinking Sony Watchman. If you've seen Oliver Stone's Wall Street or you're simply old enough, you'll know what a Watchman is. Actually, you may have seen similar tech in intercom systems.
With these kinds of CRTs, instead of firing an electron gun directly at the rear of a phosphor screen and viewing it from the front, the screen is placed at a very shallow angle to the gun and you view the phosphor screen directly, effectively at a perpendicular angle to the gun. That allows the whole construction to be relatively slim. Perfect for a "pocket TV" in the 1980s.
It turns out this type of CRT is still being made, but their 4-inch screen sizes are a little too big to be ideal for this application. So, sure enough, dooglehead bagged a couple of 1990s spec Sony Watchman units with 2.7-inch CRTs.
Each CRT is 640 by 480 resolution, interlaced, and black and white rather than colour. As a stepping off point, dooglehead used an open source VR headset project from Github. These are usually based on small LCDs that can be directly connected to a PC.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
So, he had to use an FPGA to convert the digital video output to analogue for the CRTs. Next up was an essentially off-the-shelf infrared laser lighthouse head-tracking system.
Dooglehead then designed a custom PCB integrating the FPGA, head-tracking input, power supply for the CRT (which is just one USB output, such is the low draw of the CRTs), and then the HDMI input.
The whole shebang is housed in a makeshift cardboard chassis. Remarkably, it weighs just 544 g, similar to existing...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?