Testing VR headset cameras for capturing written content

Virtual reality (VR) has become an important tool for providing immersive and collaborative teleprensence experiences. The technology has the possibility of bringing people in different geographical places together in an immersive way and makes sharing knowledge, ideas and experience easier. An important evolution in the immersive experience is the introduction of items from the real world into the virtual environment and the creation of a mixed reality experience. We present a pilot study in the use of the built-in head mounted display (HMD) cameras, for capturing parts of the environment and presenting them in VR. Particular emphasis is put on capturing physical written content on flat surfaces and visualizing it in VR for sharing with other users. We test the HTC Vive and Valve Index cameras and compare them to two external solutions by applying optical character recognition (OCR) on captured and rectified images from them. We demonstrate that the Valve Index camera has the potential to be used for capturing readable text for use in shared VR.