It’s not Google Cardboard, it is much worse. A modder deliberately made a VR headset from cardboard, bottles, and a healthy dose of glue.
A few years ago, many people would have had their first taste of Virtual Reality via Google Cardboard. This simple Google app converted any compatible smartphone into a rudimentary VR screen, with the assistance of a simple headset shroud made of cardboard.
One Modder named Zweetband decided that Google had received far too much in the way of credit for popularising VR, and set out to make the simplest and cheapest VR headset possible, using only materials that he found lying around.
The result was what Zweetband declared to be “The Worst Headset Ever Built.” This jerry-rigged device was constructed within a single day and didn’t cost its creator anything to produce. Its construction utilized basic brown cardboard, plastic water bottles, matchsticks, a smartphone and PC running VRidge, and a lot of hot glue. A Meta Quest 3, or Pimax headset, this is not.
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To create the device, Zweetband crafted the basic headset shape out of cardboard, then created a pair of Biconvenx lenses by using plastic water bottles which were held in place by small sticks and blobs of hot glue. Similar to the aforementioned Google Cardboard, a smartphone was used as the display screen. A PC running the VRidge software casting to the phone provided the actual VR experience.
On his project, Zweetband said the following: “Everything has a blue tint, a legally blind man could see better than I do thanks to all the distortion, and I cannot do much because I didn’t make a controller. But it works!”
Despite looking objectively terrible, it is still an impressive achievement for something made in a single day for zero cost. And as commenter Tauheedul noted, it could make a good project for children.
