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Body Tracking

EntityDG
Honored Guest
As most people know, HTC Vive is ahead and already allows players to use their full body instead of head and hands to interact with the games vive provides and give the players a bigger sense of an immerse gameplay. As an Oculus user, I really love the feel of the controllers better over the Vive's but I feel like I'm really missing out on the ability of using full body tracking for games in VR. I would switch to Vive for their full body tracking, however the price ranger to do something like that would be about $800. My problem with investing that much money is the fact of not knowing if Oculus will ever come out with a full body tracking system of if they will remain with just the hands and headset. I'm open to hearing anyone's thoughts and ideas about Vive and their tracking system as well as whether or not Oculus will be willing to come out with full body tracking or not.
16 REPLIES 16

KenSniper
Adventurer
You can get full body tracking with the Kinect, that's what I am using atm when going into VRChat, using a simple Kinect 360 and the driver Kinect2VR, Kinect from the Xbox 1 is definitely better but i need it for simple things

EntityDG
Honored Guest
I know but it's not as good as an alternative than the Vive. I currently use a Kinect 360, due to the massive complaints of the kinect one, and I have a bunch of troubles with tracking because for one: I have a 360 tracking setup with all four censors in each corner of my room but I HAVE to face the kinect for proper tracking. There's also the face that two of my censors will not turn on when my kinect is in use and one of the censors that are disabled is one I need for when I'm looking at my kinect. There's not much to the immersive side of the delay in tracking as well as the lack of tracking since the skeleton isn't able to keep up if you like crossed your legs or anything like that and my avatar is broken when using the kinect too(Not saying it would if I used the vive because it's probably just not full body ready on VRChat and I'm not sure how to do it through CATS). I mean for now it's not too bad of an alternative, but I would so love Oculus if they ended up coming out with a real alternative to full body tracking.

Anonymous
Not applicable
Of course, Body Tracking is the next level of immersion, and I'm pretty sure everyone is waiting for it ^^.
Honestly, the quality of Body Tracking may be good with Vive Trackers, buy really, like you said, it's way too expensive. You need several Vive Trackers for a decent Body Tracking, and each Tracker costs 100$, make the count... I personnally don't call that a good solution. I liked the idea, but the Vive Trackers are just a rip-off. Pretty much like everything related to the Vive these days (except for the Knukcles, those look terrific 🙂 ).

Kinect is definitely a nice and cheap alternative. But like you said, Body tracking works only if you're facing the camera.
I always wondered : wouldn't there be a way to use two Kinect sensors? For example one in front of us, the second one behind us, and by combining their information, the tracking would be much more accurate and would work with Roomscale configuration. Do you know if such experimentations are possible? Because that would be a proper Body Tracking solution (effective and cheap).

As for Oculus, who knows what they planned... Personnally, Body Tracking is not what I'm most waiting for. For now I would rather have them focus on performance. Once the current Rift can run with no problem, only then I would consider an add-on like Full Body Tracking. That said I do keep an eye on third-party experimentation for Full Body Tracking. I tried using Kinect in Unity with my Rift, it worked properly but Kinect has its own limitations...

Goetre
Explorer

KenSniper said:

You can get full body tracking with the Kinect, that's what I am using atm when going into VRChat, using a simple Kinect 360 and the driver Kinect2VR, Kinect from the Xbox 1 is definitely better but i need it for simple things


How easy is this to set up? I decided to go with oculus knowing body tracking wasn't a thing I wasn't overly fussed. But since being in things like VRchat and seeing people use full body track I've wanted to try it. The last time I read a guide on how to do it, it seemed overly complicated. 

Anonymous
Not applicable
@KenSniper : Wait, we can actually use Kinect VR in VRChat? How? Please tell us! Show us the way 🙂 .
EDIT : Actually I found it.

https://github.com/sharkyh20/KinectToVR

Is that this project?
If so, it seems @Goetre and I mixed up Kinect VR and KinectToVR ^^.

EntityDG
Honored Guest
I wasn't too sure about using two kinects just because of the fact of that they are older and were only meant to have one plugged into each system, that and I'm guessing my USB ports are already maxed since I've got everyone filled and a 4 port, 3.0 hub which is also fully used as well(probably explains why my two backwall censors won't work).
EDIT: And as for performance, the only thing I'm hoping they will come out with is better resolution so I'm not straining my eyes to see far things more than I already am because it's pretty blurry with the resolution it is currently at. But of course they will with time.

falken76
Expert Consultant

EntityDG said:

As most people know, HTC Vive is ahead and already allows players to use their full body instead of head and hands to interact with the games vive provides and give the players a bigger sense of an immerse gameplay. As an Oculus user, I really love the feel of the controllers better over the Vive's but I feel like I'm really missing out on the ability of using full body tracking for games in VR. I would switch to Vive for their full body tracking, however the price ranger to do something like that would be about $800. My problem with investing that much money is the fact of not knowing if Oculus will ever come out with a full body tracking system of if they will remain with just the hands and headset. I'm open to hearing anyone's thoughts and ideas about Vive and their tracking system as well as whether or not Oculus will be willing to come out with full body tracking or not.


What games even use this?  This is one of those instances where if you even had the money to make the switch you'd just be upset with your decision once you found the complete and total lack of software that makes use of this body tracking.

falken76
Expert Consultant

EntityDG said:

I wasn't too sure about using two kinects just because of the fact of that they are older and were only meant to have one plugged into each system, that and I'm guessing my USB ports are already maxed since I've got everyone filled and a 4 port, 3.0 hub which is also fully used as well(probably explains why my two backwall censors won't work).
EDIT: And as for performance, the only thing I'm hoping they will come out with is better resolution so I'm not straining my eyes to see far things more than I already am because it's pretty blurry with the resolution it is currently at. But of course they will with time.


That's an easy fix provided you have the free slot.  Just buy another USB controller to spread the load over more controllers, your sensors will start working again.  Hopefully you have a desktop and not a laptop though....

Anonymous
Not applicable
Two Kinects + VR headset and sensors, it will be power-consuming indeed ^^. Like falken76 said, there is a way to add a USB controller (I've never done it myself, but it doesn't sound too hard to do). That said, I'm definitely going to look up to 2-Kinects configuration. If there is a way to make it work in VR games, that could be awesome!