vive trackers full body vr vrchat
Today I host another amazing article by the VR ergonomics expert Rob Cole, which has already written on this blog amazing posts, like the series about the ergonomics of the Valve Index or the viral article about the amazing Caliper VR controllers he worked on by himself.
A few weeks ago, he wrote here a detailed article on the Vive Trackers, and now he is completing it with this new article, which is a long and detailed story of his experimentations with the Trackers and their use cases, and especially their big potential for full-body VR. It’s going to be a very interesting post, so read it until the end!
Disclaimer: HTC provided three of their Vive Tracker 3.0 units for my use in these articles.
As described in my first HTC Vive Tracker article earlier this year:
“Vive Tracker is a wireless, battery-powered SteamVR tracked accessory that provides highly accurate, low latency 6 Degrees of Freedom (6DoF) motion tracking within a roomscale environment.”
(Image by Rob Cole)
Or in HTC’s own words:
“Track movement and bring objects from the real world into the virtual universe”.
Whilst the first part of this article looked at the history of the HTC Vive Tracker and its three different versions, the second part will focus on some practical experiments with the latest HTC Vive Tracker 3.0
First though, a quick dive into the more technical side of the HTC Vive Tracker 3.0 for those who are interested in how these things work.
The HTC Vive Tracker 3.0 is a SteamVR-compatible device, using Valve’s second-generation (2.0) base station tracking technology. To understand the overall concept, the first generation of 1.0 base station tracking was described in this way by Valve
“How It Works: The SteamVR Tracking Basestations sweep the room with multiple sync pulses and laser lines, reaching out to about 5 meters. By keeping careful track of the timings between pulses and sweeps, the SteamVR Tracking system uses simple trigonometry to find the location of each sensor to within a fraction of a millimeter. By combining multiple sensors, 2 basestations, as well as adding a high-speed IMU (inertial measurement unit), SteamVR also calculates the tracked object’s orientation, velocity, and angular velocity, all at an update rate of 1000Hz.”
(Image provided by Rob Cole)
In April 2018 HTC introduced the Vive Pro headset, Pro controllers, and Vive Tracker 2.0 each fitted with next-generation optical sensors and updated electronics. Second-generation base station (2.0) tracking had evolved by eliminating one rotor and encoding the beam. This technical difference is well described by Redditor /u/Crozone: