Make Your Own Cardboard VR Goggles

This is something I happened to come across from back in the bad days of the pandemic. In this writeup Volkswagen (the car company) issued instructions for how to make your own virtual reality VR goggles from cardboard.

It just so happens that they think they’ve provided us with suitable immersive video to watch too if you so choose. So, when you’re done making this project, you can use the new goggles to watch Volkswagen build it ID.3 electric vehicle. Yeah!

^{Collage of all the steps involved in building the VR goggles.}

Here is what you need.

VR headset cardboard template
Shoe box or pizza box
Printer
Scissors
Syringe or plastic straw
Plastic water bottle
Xacto knife
Glue gun or epoxy
Rubber band
Smartphone

Instructions

In this tutorial, we will first make the homemade lens for the DIY VR headset. Later you will have to make the cardboard enclosure using the printable templates provided here. The lens used in these VR headsets helps to reduce the least distance of distinct vision and allows us to see the screen of our smartphone clearly from a few centimeters away.

^{Diagram of a lens made from an old soda bottle.}

1. Lenses.

Find a water or plastic bottle with a good curvature and cut a 25mm diameter circle out using scissors. Make and cut at least 4 of these—you’ll need 2 pcs together to create a single biconvex lens.
Seal all the circumference sides of the shape with glue and insert your straw. (Make sure not to get it on the lens itself, just the circumference).
Wait for the glue to dry and add water to the end of the straw to fill up your lens. After the lens is full, cut the straw and glue the ends together to form a full seal.
Repeat this process for the second lens.

^{Collage of the steps required to make the VR goggles lenses.}

2. Cardboard

Download the headset template.
Print the template out.
Glue the template to your pizza or shoe box.
Using the Xacto Knife, cut the template out.

^{The pattern to cut out for the goggles.}

3. Assembly

Place the pair of lenses you made earlier onto the eye slot of the assembled VR headset. You can use the slots on the cardboard enclosure to place it firmly on the VR headset.
Place your phone into the phone area and close the back.

^{Assembling the headset. *Not my actual hands.}

WATCH THE VW ID.3 GET BUILT RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES!

Or better yet take your new VR goggles and go play some DCS World, or IL-2 Sturmovik, or iRacing, or you get the picture.

Does VR make you motion sick? Me too. Here’s a less nauseating way to see around yourself while gaming. Run triple monitors without the hassle.

You can combine your trips with a $10 way to do head tracking with nothing more than a smartphone.

Make Your Own Cardboard VR Goggles

ByDav_Daddy

Table of Contents

Here is what you need.