[Xiaomi Mi 5 Questions & Answers] Federico.parra:
A very cool project

Perhaps I should start giving more background here for catching more people's interest.

So first: going to geekbuying (.com), you can get the new Mi VR headset (white, with controller) shipped everywhere for about 70 dollars. You might say "That's more expensive / equally expensive than the Google Daydream View". Yes. But it is about 10 times better, too.

For starters: the Mi VR headset is more or less a copy of the design of the Playstation VR headset. Everything in it cries high quality, and you can use it (personal experience) for long sessions of 20+ minutes without feeling any fatigue or discomfort. It's pretty awesome.

Second: it has a controller just like the Daydream View, but it's a little better thought through (in Daydream View you need to press a button for 2 seconds for the VR experience to center; in the Mi VR it does that with double click which is easier; also, the Mi VR controller has a magnetometer, I'm not sure the Daydream controller has it, and I suspect it can be used to calculate distance from the phone and thus have some sense of movement, which in theory could offer one more degree of freedom - I might be wrong and this might be also available in the Daydream controller, I haven't checked).

But the aspect where the Mi VR headset excels is in its inclusion of native sensors in the headset that have a much higher refresh rate than those typically found in phones. In theory, they provide a much more fluid movement experience in VR.

All that said, the product has officially only launched in China. When you buy it from Geekbuying or similar sites, you will get a box wherein everything is in Chinese, including the manual etc.

As far as I can tell, the Mi VR app, not to be confused with the Mi VR PLAY app, is sort of the epicenter for the use of the headset/controller as they can only be paired through that app. In fact the controller cannot even pair directly through Bluetooth without the app.

The app is not in Google Play Store, it can be downloaded from the Mi Store but it refuses to work on LineageOS and I think it might also don't work in MIUI global ROM (not sure of that). It is made to work on MIUI China Rom.

Last but not least: apps like vRidge and Trinus allow to stream SteamVR games from your computer to your telephone to use it in headsets (it transmits sensor data back to the computer), by simulating a Rift headset.

I've tried this on the Mi5 phone with the Mi VR headset and it is AMAZING (you need to have a direct connection using the phone as hotspot for reducing delay).

And there are a few programmers that have made the Daydream Controller Emulator app on a phone as an emulator of HTC Vibe controllers in SteamVR.

So...we are close to be able to use the actual hardware controllers (Daydream controller, possibly Mi VR controller) and the headsets to play VR games designed originally for Rift or HTC Vibe and have an acceptable experience of them at a fraction of the investment.

To recapitulate, the roadmap to be able to fully enjoy the Mi VR with a Mi phone (like Mi5) is:

1) to somehow make the Mi VR app work with LineageOS (this might simply entail obtaining a proper build.prop file for the China rom, or perhaps is more complex than that and it might entail obtaining some files from the China ROM to be included in the LineageOS system)

2) to manage to build a driver for Windows for the Mi VR controller, so that it can interact with things like SteamVR

3) to manage to somehow make Daydream app recognize the Mi VR controller

4) maybe: to manage to make Daydream app recognize / use the headset's sensors (as opposed to the phone's). Same for vRidge/Trinus

Let me know if anyone would like to collaborate on this.

best!

Federico