Why not put the camera on the oculus itself?

It's been discussed already. Long story short: NO.

Aha, sorry. Do you have a link to the thread?

"raidho36" wrote:
It's been discussed already. Long story short: NO.

BTW, what has been discussed already?

Couldn't give you exact link, but discussions of this exact topic are quite numerous.

Exactly there were discussions about practical considerations, such as weight, power, additional hardware, room items obstructing the light, daylight overbrighting, etc.

"frankzappa" wrote:

"raidho36" wrote:
It's been discussed already. Long story short: NO.

BTW, what has been discussed already?

My understanding is having the camera on the Rift means you need to place markers around the room sort of like you see in the Valve Steam Days photos of their prototype demo. That limits your customers to those with clear wall space to post up sheets of markers. With a outside camera pointed at the player, you're limited to a smaller volume of movement (2 cubic meters), but offer much more versatility to all of your customers.

My guess will be the out of the box tracking will be the external camera at the sitting player. Other options can be offered by either 3rd parties or maybe even Oculus itself. Those just won't be the default options and the cost falls to the individual player that wants expanded ability to move around and do full 360 turning.

Well, dedicating to seated position gaming experiences is reasonable. Standing upright while wearing the Rift imposes some serious amount of danger, since you're instantly losing your entire spatial awareness reserve. You will have zero clue where is forward, where is north, where is your furniture and where are people around you. This alone can get you some nasty bumps against "invisible" obstacles that can potentially lead to wrecking the obstacle, the Rift, or both, and can cause health damage, but combined with VR experiences it yields even more such danger. You don't want to break your Rift (and your face) because you tripped over a chair, or because you slammed your head into the wall (or housemate's face) full-tight while trying to dodge virtual fireball.

So the goal is to have the oculus remain as 1-piece-wonderwork and still have the ability to lean.

If I understand how the motiontrackingsensor works correctly, then shouldn't you be able to achieve precise positional tracking with a second sensor in the oculus but on the other end of it? Software should be able to detect the real motion from the difference of the data the 2 sensors deliver. That way, you don't need the camera.

Because the camera would have no point of reference unless you put markers on the room. The camera doesn't have any equilibrium to understand if its moving or if the room is moving.

So, they just make the camera stationary and put markers in the rift instead.

I suppose the Rift itself has 6 degrees of freedom tracking. But the thing is, it drifts. The onboard tracking that doesn't drift is very expensive so it's out of question. The off-board tracking that doesn't drift is either magnetic or optical. Magnetic has loads of serious issues, so does the optical, but the latter is simplier and more reliable in most cases, and much cheaper also.

Well the new thing here is not the camera on the oculus. That has been discussed. My question is really the device that would send out IR dots. Why wouldn't that work? Somthing that sends IR lasers all over the room. People here are assuming you would have to place IR leds all over the room.