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Famif's avatar
Famif
Honored Guest
5 years ago

Full Body Tracking on the horizon?

With the successful explosion of the Quest and Quest 2 and the remaining Rift S moving out of the warehouse, thousands upon thousands of people are now able to dive into VR at an affordable cost. I for one look forward to the arrival of my Quest 2, however, there is one concern of mine. One single concern.

Full Body Tracking. Compatible or not through software, any or all base stations from other manufacturers are sold out. The only thing I can find is used. I know I am clever enough to figure out how to cross-engineer competitor devices to work with Quest 2, but I don't want to do that. I don't even want to bother risking buying a used unit of base stations and them either not working or spending hours or day solving software compatibility issues.

My question on the new VR Powerhouse that is Facebook, are there plans in the near future to release both hardware and software support for full-body tracking? I for one would drop another $100-$200 on a full tracking system that works with both the Oculus store AND SteamVR. I do not care how you do it, or even if you tell us to just install any 2 webcams in our room, but as long as the system is competitive and easy to set up in my work area or on my person, I'm all in.
full body
tracking

2 Replies

  • Strongit's avatar
    Strongit
    Heroic Explorer
    5 years ago
    Integrated body tracking with the quest's inside out tracking is tricky.  Theoretically since it's an android device it may be possible to attach an additional camera to the bottom of the device (The 835 chipset the quest 1 uses can only support up to 4 cameras so that's out but the XR2 on the quest 2 can do 7 so it's possible there) and extra sensors on the feet and hips but you have to deal with extra factors like obfuscation from clothing and the body.  There may be a way to do it with some clever motion tracking and some assumptions that the sensors will mostly be oriented directly below the headset itself.

    Then there's how to integrate it into existing headsets.  You could try via bluetooth but the bandwidth is already being used by the controllers and adding extra peripherals would chew into that and add latency pretty quick.  Wifi direct is an option but I'm not sure if the headsets are configured for MIMO wireless support (multi-in, multi-out for simultaneous connections) to allow for an internet connection and extra peripherals.

    To add to that there aren't many games that support it to begin with (5 as far as I'm aware) so it's unlikely oculus will invest in the tech required until it becomes much more mainstream.

    All that said I'd like to see it added to the headsets with as little fuss to set up as the quest is now, however unlikely it may be.