Will Oculus Use The Valve Positional Tracking Lasers?

[scottycam]

With the recent announcement of Valve/HTC Re Vive everyone seems to be saying Oculus has lost or something to that effect. I still think that Oculus will have the best VR HMD as they likely have big things in the making but are not ready to announce, with all these other competitors coming now Oculus seem to have shifted their original concept of being transparent. They now need to start hiding things from their competitors and be much more careful with what they announce, which means less information for us on what they are doing but I also think this is what they need to do.

Having said that I think the valve laser tracking system is superior to the Rift IR Camera tracking in many ways. The ability to have multiple VR HMDs in the same room using the same lasers is much better, plus the same tech tracks all the controllers/props used.

Plus the large decrease in CPU power required to track position is huge and increases performance and I would assume greatly reduces the problem of judder on all (including lower end) PC's. Using the laser timing method to calculate movement is simple math and easy on the CPU, the current camera/vision is not really.

And lastly this also increases the space you can track without any "out of camera" spots. It will have some issues with rooms that are cluttered but if you are going to be in a room like that anyway I'm sure you wont be walking around and could position the laser "light houses" to work for you. The ability to track the walls to phase into your game if you get too close is also awesome.

Valve said they will be licensing this out to anyone that wants to use it and they would like to see it on other HMDs as they think it is a better solution.

Do you think Oculus should license this method of tracking from Valve or create their own version of it? or do you think they should stick to camera tracking?

[RedRizla]

Camera tracking so far has resulted in sickness for me. Nobody's sure if it's the same in CB because Oculus never seem to say a lot about CB. My crystal ball says I'll still feel sick with camera tracking, but it's just a guess with no info to go on.

[pixel67]

You would think Oculus would jump all over this. Its light years better than the current optical solution and is already proven to work so not much effort required to implement.

[MrMonkeybat]

Only Palmer knows.

Unless they have something truly awesome up there sleeves which seems unlikely, its not worth them using there own tracking tech for CV1. Lighthouse effectively makes Crescent Bays tracking obsolete IMHO, as well as STEM.

[scottycam]

"mrmonkeybat" wrote:
Only Palmer knows.

Unless they have something truly awesome up there sleeves which seems unlikely, its not worth them using there own tracking tech for CV1. Lighthouse effectively makes Crescent Bays tracking obsolete IMHO, as well as STEM.

Agreed but I don't think there is anything better at the moment. I know they acquired "13th lab" who have used tech capable of performing tracking based on the surrounding environment without the need for external lasers. However this was vision/image based and even it if was currently at a state as accurate as valves laser system it would take quite a bit of CPU power to get the same level of tracking. Until CPU usage is not an important factor I don't think it will work, even when it does I still feel the simple math of valves system will be a faster (lower response time) way of tracking.

[1k0nX]

Valve said they will be licensing this out to anyone that wants to use it and they would like to see it on other HMDs as they think it is a better solution.

This is what I've been thinking. The Vive's tracking system is clearly the biggest difference between the two right now, so either Oculus comes up with a better system or they can use Valve's laser tech. Either way, we consumers win.

[VizionVR]

"1k0nX" wrote:
This is what I've been thinking. The Vive's tracking system is clearly the biggest difference between the two right now, so either Oculus comes up with a better system or they can use Valve's laser tech. Either way, we consumers win.

DingDingDing! We have a winner!

[Semicidal]

I would be happy with this. Keep my Dk2 and use lighthouse tech + the valve controllers.

[Welby]

Don't forget the price.. we don't know how much expensive this laser bases can be and oculus don't want release an expensive headset..

maybe the camera solution is the best for a cheap system.

[Gizmotweak]

Valve showed their laser tracking and their controllers.

Oculus should take a serious look at both of those things as they are currently lacking in both areas, then tell Darth Zuckerberg to buy valve.

Problem solved.