A rant, a rant, my kingdom for a rant!

On the positive side, just be thankful Link doesn't use a BNC connector. Otherwise the whole computer may have ended up on the floor. I've seen someone trip on coax network cable with BNCs on each end. 🙂

I also almost had a laptop go airborn when my boss at the time was trying my DK2 headset and got startled (by the Tuscany demo fireplace) and kicked back in their office chair. The DK2 has a rather short cable, the laptop luckily ended up hanging off the table edge but didn't fall.

Anyway, for lighthouse... I assume it's not going to work well. Lighthouse is a sweeping laser dot. The Quest's cameras aren't going to be in sync with it, so they will just see a dot at random, nothing consistent to track movement. They need stationary objects. Plus every time the laser sweeps over the Quest's lenses it will blind it.

On the other hand, a Kinect 360 might work. It shines out a fixed pattern of IR dots. Since they are consistent, the Quest's cameras can probably track using them.

Or buy an IR illuminator from Amazon for $9.99.

Oh, not wanting to use the lighthouses for tracking. I was thinking of using them for illumination, so I don't have to have 3 lamps and/or overhead lights on regardless of time of day. I remembered it working fine with the Quest 1, but wasn't entirely sure. So I was testing it out again after blacking out my window via hanging a bed spread across it.

EDIT: When the soc worker showed up, I took down the blanket and turned on the lights cause he's apparently blind enough that without 2 lamps, an overhead light, and the blinds opened he "can't see anything". I don't believe that, cause if he was that blind he wouldn't have a drivers license.

I guess Lighthouse 1 does have the flash pulse to start the timing cycle, so there's a bit of IR light besides the dot, but sync is going to be an issue again (it's not continuous, just a very short pulse at 60Hz or so IIRC). Lighthouse 2 got rid of that, it's just the dot (with encoded angle data in the laser dot).

It's like trying to find your way in the dark using a laser pointer while a strobe light sometimes goes off, instead of a flashlight.

But it's free to try since you already have the stuff, so why not give it a go? 🙂

With both Lighthouse 1.0 trackers set up in opposite corners of the room, I recall it worked pretty well for Quest 1. Granted, I tried it at the time because I am not a fan of the vive wand controllers, and my Vive Cosmos's lenses have really visible rings. Kind of distracting. So I'd figured "why not give it a shot?"

I'm pleased to note that yes, the 1.0 Steam Trackers do work nicely for providing the Quest 2 with enough illumination for reliable tracking. Still rather annoyed with Bumblefoot McGee for destroying my Link cable. But his boss did decide that since he broke it on company time, they would pay to replace it. Not the official Link Cable, not that I expected that due to it's price. Remains to be seen if the replacement will be 16 feet long or USB-C But as long as it's USB 3.0, I have 3.0 to USB-C adapters.