steamvr tracking – Page 2 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

November 27, 2019

Impressions Of

During the UploadVR Holiday Showcase today we just revealed that we now have a review unit of the upcoming Vive Cosmos SteamVR Tracking Addon, launching in Q1 2020.

We’ll be bringing you our full impressions of this addon next week!

If you own a Vive Cosmos and want more robust tracking, or support for Valve’s Index controllers (without manually aligning tracking systems) this could be what you’re looking for.

vive cosmos external steamvr tracking mod

There’s no word on the exact price yet, but HTC tells us it will be less than $200. Keep in mind you’ll also need to purchase two or more SteamVR Tracking base stations ($150 each from Valve).

It does then seem that the combination of Vive Cosmos, SteamVR tracking addon, SteamVR base stations, and Index controllers would actually significantly exceed the price of the Valve Index full bundle. So, why buy one?

The answer, for some, could be that Vive Cosmos is the only new headset which offers a wireless option. If you’re bothered by the cable in PC VR, or used to the wireless freedom of Oculus Quest, such a combination could be what you’re looking for. Of course, that would be even more expensive, as the wireless adapter costs a total of $350 extra.

Inside-Out vs SteamVR Tracking

The original Vive used the SteamVR “Lighthouse” tracking system. In this system, external base stations placed at the top corners of the room send out a timed infrared signal which the headset and controllers use to determine their position in the room. SteamVR tracking is highly accurate and, since the base stations are positioned in the top corners, robust.

Cosmos uses inside-out tracking instead. This means buyers no longer need to set up base stations, however there are some tracking limitations.

The headset features total of six onboard cameras instead, more than we’ve seen in any other headset. HTC claims this provides a 310 degree controller tracking range. When we went hands on with Cosmos we found that while tracking mostly worked well, it sometimes took multiple seconds to re-establish when a controller goes completely out of view.

For more detailed information on this topic, see How VR Positional Tracking Systems Work.

The post Impressions Of <$200 Vive Cosmos Lighthouse Tracking Coming Next Week appeared first on UploadVR.

November 21, 2019

Pre-Purchase Half Life: Alyx Listed At $59.99, Free For Valve Index Owners

PC VR headset owners can now pre-purchase Half-Life: Alyx on Steam, though the highly anticipated game will be free to owners of the Valve Index VR headset or controllers when it releases in March 2020.

The upcoming “full-length” VR game is set between the events of Half-Life and Half-Life 2 and compatible with all PC-based headsets.

“Alyx Vance and her father Eli secretly mount the resistance to the brutal occupation of Earth by a mysterious alien race known as The Combine,” a press release from Valve explains. “As Alyx, players take the fight to the Combine to save the future of humanity.”

Valve partnered with Pistol Whip developer Cloudhead Games to ship a brief introduction to the Valve Index Controllers earlier this year called Aperture Hand Lab, and in 2016 Valve released a free collection of experiments called The Lab. This is the first full-length VR game from Valve and it was developed alongside the company’s impressive Index VR headset and controllers. While the game won’t arrive till next year, the announcement comes just in time to influence buying decisions heading into the Black Friday shopping season.

Valve designed Half-Life: Alyx “from the ground up for Virtual Reality and features all of the hallmarks of a classic Half-Life game: world exploration, puzzle solving, visceral combat, and an intricately woven story that connects it all with the characters iconic to the Half-Life universe.”

While the game works with all PC VR headsets with tracked controllers — like Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Windows Mixed Reality — there are some optional interactions that are only possible with the Valve Index Controllers, which strap to the hands and don’t need to be held.

“Everyone at Valve is excited to be returning to the world of Half-Life,” Valve founder Gabe Newell said in a prepared statement. “VR has energized us. We’ve invested a lot of ourselves in the technology. But we’re also game developers at heart, and to be devoting ourselves to a VR game this ambitious is just as exciting. For that to come in the form of Half-Life feels like the culmination of a lot things we care a lot about: truly great games, cutting edge technology, and open platforms. We can’t wait for people to experience this.”

Update: Valve says that “Owners of Valve Index controllers also get Half-Life: Alyx for free.”

The post Pre-Purchase Half Life: Alyx Listed At $59.99, Free For Valve Index Owners appeared first on UploadVR.

February 10, 2019

Valve Updated SteamVR Tracking Because ‘Beat Saber’ Players Were Too Fast

In an interesting case of software pushing the limits of hardware, Valve recently updated SteamVR Tracking code to account for the speed of high-level Beat Saber players.

At first glance it might not be apparent, but Beat Saber is an excellent challenge for a VR controller tracking system. You might think that a fast-paced VR shooter or sword fighting game would be the game that would be pushing SteamVR Tracking to its limits, but Beat Saber is actually far more demanding.

In a recent update to SteamVR Beta (which will soon roll out to the SteamVR main branch), the following sentence appeared in the patchnotes:

Increase limits of what we thought was humanly possible for controller motion based on tracking data from Beat Saber experts.

Though it seemed like it might have been just a joke, Valve developer Ben Jackson offered up some detail in the comments:

The tracking system has internal sanity checks to identify when things go wrong. For example, if our math says you are behind your only basestation, clearly we made a mistake, because we wouldn’t be getting any signal from behind the basestation. One of these checks relates to how fast we thought it was physically possible for someone to turn their wrist. It turns out that a properly motivated human using a light enough controller could go faster (3600 degrees/sec!) than we thought.

Essentially, Valve built a number of assumptions into the SteamVR Tracking code so that it can identify clearly erroneous data (like a controller signaling that it is moving way faster than should be possible). However, it seems that one of those assumptions was actually too low for the speed of some high-level Beat Saber players, and Valve has now adjusted the code accordingly.

The main reason why Beat Saber manages to push the limits of VR controller tracking so effectively is not just because of the top speed of a player’s hands, but because of the drastic changes in acceleration when players are whipping their hands back and forth to cut distant notes on time.

Most VR controller tracking systems use two tracking methods and combine them together. The first system is an IMU inside each controller which senses rotation and translation, and can do so with low low latency and high frequency. The issue however is that IMU’s are prone to ‘drift’, so they can’t be relied upon alone for tracking. That’s where the other tracking method comes in: in the case of SteamVR Tracking, that’s the external ‘basestations’ which are used to establish the absolute position and rotation of the tracked object and to correct for drift from the IMU. However, the basestations update slowly compared to how fast the IMUs are (in the ballpark of 100Hz vs. 1,000Hz), and until that next positional correction comes in, all the tracking is up to the IMU.

In many cases, the moments of tracking between position corrections is aided by prediction, which uses prior motion to project where the tracked object is heading next. When moving slowly or drawing predictable arcs through the air, this works well. But Beat Saber is something of a worse-case scenario for that prediction because there’s no way for the tracking system to predict when the player is about to suddenly and completely reverse the direction of their controller (which happens constantly in the game, especially at higher levels).

Despite the challenge, SteamVR Tracking has held up extremely well to Beat Saber’s tracking needs except, it seems, in some edge cases which have now been patched. It’s frankly pretty amazing that the system manages to work as well as it does for the game; Valve ought to be pretty happy that they chose to aim for such a high tracking performance threshold from the outset.

The post Valve Updated SteamVR Tracking Because ‘Beat Saber’ Players Were Too Fast appeared first on Road to VR.

August 3, 2018

HTC Experiments With 16 Base Stations Linked for Connected Multi-room Tracking

HTC has been experimenting with some new features in a recent SteamVR beta update which allows up to 16 SteamVR Tracking 2.0 base stations to be linked together to form a continuous tracking volume.

When the original Vive first in 2016, it supported up to two base stations and a tracking volume of roughly 11.5 × 11.5 ft (3.5 × 3.5 m). A newer version of SteamVR Tracking tech (2.0) that debuted alongside the Vive Pro brought new sensors and base stations, enabling support for up to four base stations and a tracking volume up to 33 × 33 ft (10 × 10 m).

Now Valve is pushing things further; a recent beta update to SteamVR introduced new tools and capabilities, allowing up to 16 SteamVR Tracking 2.0 base stations to be linked together to form a single tracked volume. Following the update, HTC did some experimentation with the new capability, linking a series of base stations together to create a tracked area across several rooms creating an arbitrarily shaped tracking volume with a total area of 67.5 m².

Here’s a video of the test environment that people asked for. Three separate tracked spaces, with two 2.0 BS each, all in a shared virtual space. (Seems to work even behind closed door) Trackers placed within the shared space to show common coordinate system between spaces. pic.twitter.com/efqJKajky6

— Alvin Wang Graylin (@AGraylin) July 11, 2018

In the video the company posted above, you can see how the user steps from one room to another, leaving line of sight of some base stations while moving into line of sight of others, while the system appears to seamlessly manage the tracking transition among base stations. In this case the setup was using six base stations across three tracked areas, though HTC’s Vive China president, Alvin Wang Graylin, said the group had hooked up 16 base stations at one point.

Graylin suggested that the new capability could make SteamVR Tracking 2.0 a strong candidate for VR attractions (like The Void), which often use expensive professional motion capture systems for tracking players across large spaces.

A Valve engineer who works closely on SteamVR Tracking, Alan Yates, chimed in on Twitter to put the brakes on a bit saying, “This release [of SteamVR beta] is mainly about beta support for the radio-based channel configuration tools,” calling HTC’s demonstration of the feature “a bit premature.” So it may be some time yet before the system would be ready for VR attractions.

The post HTC Experiments With 16 Base Stations Linked for Connected Multi-room Tracking appeared first on Road to VR.

July 6, 2018

This Homebrewed Mini SteamVR Tracker Only Cost $3 in Parts

Dr. Masahiko Inami, a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, recently tweeted a picture of an incredibly small, homebrewed SteamVR tracker that has us reeling at the implications for ever-smaller tracked objects in VR.

Measuring about the size of a single AirPod earphone, Dr. Inami says the SteamVR-compatible sensor unit only cost ¥300 in parts, or around $2.70 USD to make.

すごい、vive trackerの自作レシーバー。部品代300円だって! pic.twitter.com/teyDMbgNz5

— 稲見昌彦 Masahiko Inami (@drinami) July 3, 2018

The mini-tracker seems to lack a battery, which would noticeably increase the size. As an engineering feat though, it shows just how small things can get when dealing with SteamVR tracking sensors—the lightweight, low power, low-cost ASIC sensors that can be used to receive lasers emitted from SteamVR tacking basestations.

Valve provides royalty free access to its sensors, and can be purchased from a number of part suppliers on their own.

SteamVR supports up to 32 sensors for a single object; as you would imagine, the higher the sensors on a single object, the greater 360 coverage you’ll have. HTC’s own Vive Tracker contains 23 sensors for 360 degree coverage, all of which are in unique positions to better track the object in VR. The mini-tracker’s three sensors are likely a bare minimum for basic tracking, and we wouldn’t expect something that small to be nearly as robust as the consumer Vive Tracker mentioned above.

While somewhat impractical, it’s certainly a cool way to illustrate just how little you might need to create your own mini-tracker at home.

For users looking to jump into SteamVR hardware hacking, a company called Virtual Builds is offering a full SteamVR tracker kit, which includes everything you need to create your own SteamVR 1.0 tracker.

The post This Homebrewed Mini SteamVR Tracker Only Cost $3 in Parts appeared first on Road to VR.

April 26, 2018

Virtual Builds is Offering SteamVR Tracking Development Kits & Expertise

Virtual Builds, a company spinning out of ASIC engineering firm Noisefigure Research, is a new entrant now selling SteamVR Tracking development hardware. With a full DIY kit starting at $200, Virtual Builds aims to make SteamVR Tracking more accessible for VR hardware companies and individual developers makers alike.

With goal of making SteamVR Tracking a license-free and openly accessible tracking system for VR and more, Valve allows other companies to manufacture compatible hardware and provide engineering support to customers that need it. Triad Semiconductor was among the first to offer a SteamVR Tracking HDK for sale, and now Virtual Builds is offering their own development kit

Starting at $200, the Virtual Builds ‘Pebble Kit’ is said to include everything one needs to construct a basic object compatible with SteamVR Tracking. The kit can be used as a starting point for hardware developers to prototype and design VR products that integrate the tracking technology, or for hacker/makers who want to experiment with the tracking technology for other uses. The video below shows the process of putting together the Pebble Kit’s various sensors, ribbons, and boards into a fully functional tracked object supporting SteamVR Tracking 1.0 and 2.0.

Virtual Builds’ CEO, Jerry L., told me that the company also offers its engineering expertise to clients looking to design and productize devices integrating SteamVR Tracking, which could be anything from a VR headset or VR controller, to very different products like tracked keyboards, peripherals, or robotics. The company claims to offer guidance at all levels of development, all the way from sensor placement and debugging to large scale production needs.

“Our hardware is not just prototyping or development only,” Jerry L. told me. “You can order from us for your entire development and production goals. Our team of engineers
will set up the necessary commercial manufacturing chain depending our your desired quantities and product.”

A sampling of Virtual Builds’ SteamVR Tracking wares. | Image courtesy Virtual Builds

The presence of Virtual Builds as another developer and vendor of SteamVR Tracking hardware is a good sign for the adoption of the tracking technology. Not only does it mean that companies sourcing the tracking hardware have more options to choose from, but it’s also likely that Virtual Builds will compete with others like Triad Semiconductor, leading both companies to improve their offerings and drive costs down.

The post Virtual Builds is Offering SteamVR Tracking Development Kits & Expertise appeared first on Road to VR.

April 24, 2018

Pimax Unveils New Knuckles-style Controller, Supports SteamVR 2.0 Tracking

Pimax, the company behind the wide field of view “8K” VR headset, today unveiled a new controller design intended to ship alongside their upcoming VR hardware. Much like Valve’s still unreleased ‘Knuckles’ controllers, the new Pimax controller is designed to strap to your hand for an ‘open-palm’ experience.

Pimax boasts a number of changes from their penultimate prototype; the more compact Knuckles-style design straps securely to the back of your hand, letting you essentially forget the act of actively holding the controller so you can interact in VR more naturally. Like Knuckles, it now integrates capacitive sensors on five major areas of the controller to offer basic five-finger tracking. The company is also promising compatibility for both SteamVR 1.0 and 2.0 tracking standards.

Pimax says each button is ergonomically designed to “fall under the right finger, which will make the controller feels like an extension of your body.” The company still plans on offering both thumbstick and trackpad style controllers.

“When developing the new Pimax 8K controller, we listened closely to the needs of our global community to develop an innovative new controller that enables a more comfortable and immersive VR experience. As we continue to innovate, we look forward to collaborating closely with our community,” said company founder and chairman Robin Weng in a press release.

The new controller was designed for the new Pimax “8K” prototype, and followed what Pimax says was an intensive development process.

The unveiling of the controllers comes hot on the heels of some less flattering news; Pimax’s long-awaited “8K” headset is still seeing delays, this time related to a lens design issue which will push the pre-production models out to a supposed May launch and leaving the consumer version still up in the air launch-wise.

Thanks to some pretty substantial outside funding, Pimax has some room to get things right though. The company has garnered a record-breaking $4.2M from their Kickstarter campaign, and since taken on nearly $15 million in Series A funding, giving them more runway to further refine their hardware.

Check out our hands-on with Pimax “8K” from CES this year for a better idea of what the headset has to offer.

The post Pimax Unveils New Knuckles-style Controller, Supports SteamVR 2.0 Tracking appeared first on Road to VR.

April 23, 2018

Vive Pro Bundle With 2.0 Base Stations & Controllers Now Available at $1400

HTC today started selling the long-awaited Vive Pro headset and SteamVR 2.0 base station hardware bundle, making it the first instance of the 2.0 tracking hardware coming to market. The new hardware bundle, which includes the Vive Pro headset, two 2.0 SteamVR tracking base stations and two of the ‘pro blue’ controllers, costs $1400 USD.

Update (04/23/18 – 2PM ET): HTC Vive Pro Bundle availability is now hitting Western markets. You can find it on Amazon for $1400. The listing currently says the bundle will ship “within 3 to 5 weeks.”

The headline has been altered to reflect this. You can read the original article below, which details the bundle’s availability in Japan which HTC announced earlier today.

Original article: According to an official HTC press release (Japanese), the suggested retail price is ¥162,880 yen (~$1500), an amount that the company specifically says doesn’t include local taxes

The new hardware bundle includes the Vive Pro headset, two 2.0 SteamVR tracking base stations and two of the ‘pro blue’ controllers. Residents of Japan can purchase the headset direct from HTC, in stores, and through online vendors such as Yodobashi, one of the leading electronics retailers in Japan. Currently Yodobashi lists the package at ￥175,910 (~1620), an ammount that does includes local Japanese taxes.

SteamVR 2.0 base stations are what Valve desciribed at its unveiling as “smaller, more reliable, and offer improved performance,” including a larger tracking volume at 10 × 10 meters. The 2.0 base stations aren’t compatible with existing HTC Vives since they use a different method for sync timing.

HTC says they’re planning to sell the 2.0 base station separately as well, although there’s no specific pricing available yet.

The company launched HTC Vive Pro without base stations and controllers earlier this month for $800. Things got a little awkward though when the company then announced it would be shipping a 1.0 base station and controller bundle for an extra $300—a move that was likely related to the backlash the company received when they first announced Vive Pro’s steep price tag.

The headset is commonly thought of as a 1.5 version of the Vive Headset, and not a proper second generation offering despite its support for SteamVR 2.0 tracking. With its dual 1400 x 1600 OLED displays (total resolution 2800 x 1600), the headset boasts 615 ppi and a 78 percent increase resolution over the original Vive. Check out our review of Vive Pro if you want a deep dive.

It’s uncertain when other markets will get the 2.0 tracking bundle. Japan has a thriving out-of-home VR arcade market, which could be the reason the company launched the bundle there first, although this is simply conjecture at this point. What’s interesting to note is the pre-tax price of the bundle is almost exactly $1500 at the time of this writing, which clearly lends credence to the global price being $1500 as well. (see update above)

– – — – –

We’ll keep our eyes peeled for global availability and update as soon as they launch in Western markets.

The post Vive Pro Bundle With 2.0 Base Stations & Controllers Now Available at $1400 appeared first on Road to VR.

October 10, 2017

SteamVR Tracking 2.0 Will Support ~33×33 Foot Playspaces With 4 Base Stations

Valve plans to manufacture and sell new SteamVR Tracking 2.0 base stations in 2018. The new base stations will bring a number of improvements over the current tracking beacons, including the ability to support more than two base stations for a huge tracking volume.

Valve’s Joe Ludwig announced via the SteamVR Tracking HDK board today an update on the company’s progress in developing new SteamVR Tracking base stations which will be compatible with SteamVR Tracking headsets built with the TS4231 sensor. The update asks SteamVR Tracking licensees to submit their expected demand for 2.0 base stations month-by-month through 2018 so that Valve can gauge how to ramp up production.

At launch, the 2.0 base stations will only work with the current base station limit of two, but in early 2018 Valve says they’ll expand the system to work with up to four base stations which “should cover a single room play space of roughly 10 × 10 meters [33 × 33 feet].” Ludwig writes that the company is investigating functionality to support even more than four 2.0 base stations, but isn’t committing to a roadmap at this time.

The 2.0 base stations won’t be compatible with existing HTC Vives since they use a different method for sync timing, but newer headsets and tracked devices in the works will benefit from the 2.0 base stations which will be “smaller, quieter, lower power, more reliable, and less expensive than their 1.0 counterparts,” and offer better performance, according to Valve. An update from June talks more about details of forward/backward compatibility roadmap between base stations and sensors.

Valve expects 2.0 base stations to being shipping to licensees in early 2018, but notes that supply will likely be limited initially. OEMs will order the 2.0 base stations in bulk (at $60/unit + shipping) from Valve and repackage them as part of their products. HTC currently sells replacement 1.0 base stations for $135/unit + shipping, which could give us some indication of the cost savings from the new base stations.

Though the bulk units sold to OEMs won’t include any mounting solution, Ludwig writes that Valve is “creating a custom wall/ceiling mounting solution,” which they’ll talk more about in 2018. It isn’t clear if Valve plans to sell 2.0 base stations directly to consumers, though so far it looks like the company plans to work only with OEMs.

The post SteamVR Tracking 2.0 Will Support ~33×33 Foot Playspaces With 4 Base Stations appeared first on Road to VR.

September 20, 2017

‘Driver4VR’ Emulates Vive Trackers With Kinect for Cheap VR Body Tracking

A new SteamVR mod from the developer behind WalkinVR now allows body tracking by emulating Vive Trackers via Kinect’s motion sensing data, enabling an inexpensive solution for full body motion tracking in VR. The driver, available at the official Driver4VR site, works for both Rift and Vive when running SteamVR; this could be particularly interesting for Rift users, as Oculus currently offer no ‘Vive Tracker’ equivalent.

Since the launch of the Vive Tracker earlier this year, impressive full-body motion capture has been demonstrated through the use of three Tracker units, in combination with the two tracked controllers and headset. But at $99 each, this is another expensive upgrade for VR gamers; only a small selection of VR titles have enabled full-body functionality, such as Tornufallo, The Path of Greatest Resistance and Climbey.

Driver4VR’s emulation of three Trackers using a single Kinect makes for a much more affordable solution for both Vive and Rift users. Microsoft’s hardware is easily the most widely spread and inexpensive full-body tracker on the market (now priced at just $45, plus $40 for the PC adapter), and has proven to be an invaluable tool for many developers experimenting with VR.

This is the second project from Grzegorz Bednarski, the developer behind the WalkinVR driver for people with physical disabilities. As shown in the setup video above, the Driver4VR installation is simple, with calibration steps to align the virtual trackers to Kinect data. While there are apparently no problems with Oculus’ ‘constellation’ tracking, the Kinect’s infrared projector can interfere with the Vive’s tracking—particularly the newer ‘Kinect 2.0’ model for Xbox One. Some users are finding success with both models, but the developer recommends Vive users use the original Kinect (rather unfortunate as Kinect 2.0 is more accurate).

For now, Driver4VR has some limitations, as it only works effectively when facing directly towards the Kinect sensor, and the accuracy is significantly lower than using real Vive Trackers. Bednarski has plans to improve the tracking quality, and is testing the feasibility of using wearable LED bands to increase the precision, as well as using two Kinects for 360 tracking.

The post ‘Driver4VR’ Emulates Vive Trackers With Kinect for Cheap VR Body Tracking appeared first on Road to VR.