4 ms·

Seems the wrong way around for a lot of applications, I want the objects to be the dumb emitters and have a central base station that has a low-latency, synchro

Seems the wrong way around for a lot of applications, I want the objects to be the dumb emitters and have a central base station that has a low-latency, synchronized (!) state of their positions. Otherwise all the effort on low-latency seems wasted on a device that has no low-latency path to getting the information out.

sbierwagen 10y ago
The tracked objects almost always have buttons on them that the user presses to interact with the world.
carlosdp 10y ago
I disagree. That's the model the Rift uses, but that means that as you add devices, the extra computation of position lies on the PC (or mobile device, or w/e). With this Lighthouse system, the positional computation is distributed amongst each device and they report their computed position, so it scales way better as you add devices.
- bhhaskin 10y ago
  I think it is definitely for scaling. Also you can add any number of devices that are independent of each other. Like for instance using two Vives in the same room, but use the same base stations.
yodon 10y ago
Edit: I misread your proposal - I thought you wanted more intelligence in the peripherals. It sounds like you're actually proposing putting the light source on the tracked device. I suspect Valve made the decisions they did in part looking towards a wireless future where sensors can operate far longer on batteries than light sources can.<end edit> UNC Chappel Hill developed a system like you describe a number of years ago [0]. The position-evaluation software they developed was amazingly cool but the size of the tracker (a bit larger than a golf ball) and the cost of the tracker were both far higher than the cost of the SteamVR sensors, while the cost of their "light houses" was much less than the cost of Valve's lighthouses. The UNC system works great in the case where you want to track a small number of high value devices in an extremely large office-building style environment but it scales much less well if you want to track a large number of inexpensive peripherals in a room sized environment. The approach you describe is great for many applications, but packing the complexity into one or two reusable base stations as both Valve and Oculus have done scales much better for a consumer market that is in part interested in additional "inexpensive" aftermarket peripherals. [0] https://www.cs.unc.edu/~welch/media/pdf/scaat.pdf https://www.cs.unc.edu/~welch/media/pdf/scaat.pdf
cma 10y ago
The headset is wired to the PC. That is its low latency path. Latency is less critical for the hands and they have still done a good job with getting it down. This will allow things like backpack PCs (4 major companies already have them on the way, tailored for VR) and tracked mobile phone holders to have the low latency path. You could connect such things with cameras that did on board processing and wireless sent the position, but that would fall on the high latency path. Also you have it a bit backwards, optical tracking is high latency and low refresh, all the low latency stuff is done with IMUS on both Rift and Vive and then combined with optical via Kalman filtering.
wolrah 10y ago
If you like podcasts, the man primarily responsible for the Lighthouse system covers exactly this topic on this show: http://embedded.fm/episodes/162 http://embedded.fm/episodes/162 I don't remember where in the episode, but if you're interested in these sorts of things it's a good listen overall. He posts a lot on Reddit, Twitter, and elsewhere and seems very willing to talk about every aspect of the system.

sbierwagen 10y ago

The tracked objects almost always have buttons on them that the user presses to interact with the world.

carlosdp 10y ago

I disagree. That's the model the Rift uses, but that means that as you add devices, the extra computation of position lies on the PC (or mobile device, or w/e). With this Lighthouse system, the positional computation is distributed amongst each device and they report their computed position, so it scales way better as you add devices.

bhhaskin 10y ago
I think it is definitely for scaling. Also you can add any number of devices that are independent of each other. Like for instance using two Vives in the same room, but use the same base stations.

yodon 10y ago

Edit: I misread your proposal - I thought you wanted more intelligence in the peripherals. It sounds like you're actually proposing putting the light source on the tracked device. I suspect Valve made the decisions they did in part looking towards a wireless future where sensors can operate far longer on batteries than light sources can.<end edit> UNC Chappel Hill developed a system like you describe a number of years ago [0]. The position-evaluation software they developed was amazingly cool but the size of the tracker (a bit larger than a golf ball) and the cost of the tracker were both far higher than the cost of the SteamVR sensors, while the cost of their "light houses" was much less than the cost of Valve's lighthouses. The UNC system works great in the case where you want to track a small number of high value devices in an extremely large office-building style environment but it scales much less well if you want to track a large number of inexpensive peripherals in a room sized environment. The approach you describe is great for many applications, but packing the complexity into one or two reusable base stations as both Valve and Oculus have done scales much better for a consumer market that is in part interested in additional "inexpensive" aftermarket peripherals. [0] https://www.cs.unc.edu/~welch/media/pdf/scaat.pdf https://www.cs.unc.edu/~welch/media/pdf/scaat.pdf

cma 10y ago

The headset is wired to the PC. That is its low latency path. Latency is less critical for the hands and they have still done a good job with getting it down. This will allow things like backpack PCs (4 major companies already have them on the way, tailored for VR) and tracked mobile phone holders to have the low latency path. You could connect such things with cameras that did on board processing and wireless sent the position, but that would fall on the high latency path. Also you have it a bit backwards, optical tracking is high latency and low refresh, all the low latency stuff is done with IMUS on both Rift and Vive and then combined with optical via Kalman filtering.

wolrah 10y ago

If you like podcasts, the man primarily responsible for the Lighthouse system covers exactly this topic on this show: http://embedded.fm/episodes/162 http://embedded.fm/episodes/162 I don't remember where in the episode, but if you're interested in these sorts of things it's a good listen overall. He posts a lot on Reddit, Twitter, and elsewhere and seems very willing to talk about every aspect of the system.