Many mobile VR headsets don’t have buttons. If you have an Android phone, you can get a little remote for a couple of bucks on Amazon. If you have an iPhone, you’re out of luck.

However, most VR apps these days don’t use a button, instead having a look-to-activate functionality. For example, some apps have you navigate by looking down at your feet to start and stop walking, or stare at a particular sign or hotspot to activate some other functions. Many of the most popular apps, including YouTube, don’t have any interactivity at all — you load up the video, switch to VR view, then put the phone in your headset to watch it.

Hi Maria, thank you for the explanation! Much appreciated.

You’re always going to have some amount of the “ski goggle” or “scuba mask” effect. To mimize it, look for a headset with a large field of view.

Is your headset this one: http://myretrak.com/vr/product_main.aspx?item_id=5

If so, it’s a clone of the older Shinecon headset, with one of the smaller fields of view around. This general category of headsets has fields of view of 80 to 90 degrees or so. Other headsets — including ones even in the same price range — have fields of view of up to 120 degrees.

The reason some people prefer to buy headsets with smaller fields of view is that they have a low-resolution video screen on their phone. With a low-res display, a wide field of view means that you can see individual pixels, this is called the “screen door effect” and that’s not particularly great for immersion, either. With a high-res display, you’ll get less of the screen door effect, and can use a headset with a wider field of view.

You might also have the incorrect settings on your phone, so that the picture is smaller than it should be. Use the Sites in VR app to play with the settings to get a better display, that uses the entire screen on the phone, instead of just giving you two small ovals.

Good luck!

That worked. Thank you so much 🙂

This one here? http://www.denver-electronics.com/denver-vrc-22/

That’s a VR Box 2. The codes are on this page: https://www.hypergridbusiness.com/faq/vr-headset-qr-codes/

I can’t find the headset. Can you send me a link to it, or post its picture? Thanks!

To set up the headset, download the Google Cardboard app from the app store, click on the settings menu (three dots at the top right) and select your viewer.

Then pull up the viewer’s QR code on the screen.

The Levin looks a lot like a rebranded VR Kix, so this QR Code should work:

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3105843ae870f3e3130d61eeab67242fbad568bdfd2d4765532da40fd5adcb34.png

My full list of QR Codes is here: https://www.hypergridbusiness.com/faq/vr-headset-qr-codes/

You do all this BEFORE you put the headset on. So you don’t need any magnets or buttons for this step.

Now that you have your headset set up, you can pull up YouTube and watch any video in VR by starting the video, clicking on the little cardboard icon to switch to side-by-side VR view, then place the phone inside the headset. Then just take the phone out when you’re done, or you want to switch videos. (I know, there’s no VR interface yet — it’s coming!)

If you want to play other apps, some will have a look-to-activate interface. You get a little dot or cross-hairs and you move your head until you line it up with a sign or a lever or a door or whatever and then stare at the same spot until it triggers the interaction (starts the game, opens the door, etc…) Most museum and virtual tour apps, for example, are look-to-activate.

Finally, if you’re playing an interactive game that requires a button, and if you have an Android phone, get a Bluetooth controller. Here is the one I have:

https://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2016/02/review-of-ipega-nice-android-vr-controller/

I haven’t found any controllers yet that work with the iPhone.

The other thing you can do is either buy a headset with a button (there are several) or an open-sided headset: https://www.hypergridbusiness.com/?s=open-sided

I plan to do a story on all the headsets with buttons soon, but the main ones are the Mattel View-Master, all the Cardboard V2 headsets, Dscvr, Powis, BoboVR Z4 (though the button sometimes has issues — they’re working on fixing it).