Maximum play space (8m)

[DAN-di-WARhol]

Looking for some advice.

I'm planning on maximising play space. Converting double garage into an office (self employed) and I thought I would also use this as a VR space. Move the furniture back and have a huge gaming space. 6m x 6m.

That's around 8m diagonal from tracker to tracker.

Anyone had experience of large play spaces? Does this work?

[The Maddog]

Depends on the headset for play space but the Index can support it.

With two Lighthouse 2.0 units (the ones included with the Index) you can track a 5m by 5m play area....which is big in it's own right. If you add 2 more lighthouse units you can expand it up to 10m x 10m (with a lighthouse unit in each corner)...which is what a lot of arcades do.

https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/index/base-stations

This only works with the Index, Vive Pro, Vive Pro Eye and Lighthouse 2.0 units though so...wont work with the OG Vive or Lighthouse 1.0 units.

[DAN-di-WARhol]

Fab. Thanks. Anyone with any experience of this?

[Damsteri]

SteamVR 2.0 allows those nice big play areas with four light houses (done that), but SteamVR 1.0 tracking is quite capable too.

Play area of size 5x5 meters is possible with 1.0 lighthouses on perfect conditions. I did some scientific research couple of years ago with 1.0 lighthouse setup. I used 6x6 meter area in that research. I used only 4x4 meter play area for the reseach while having additional 1 meter safety zone on each sides.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2015874182
And how well my tracking worked in that large area? I collected movement data from six sensors (HMD, controllers, waist, feet) 90 times per second for almost 4 hours total (in short sessions) and I had only one hickup. I'm missing data from one of the six sensors for the duration of 5.4 seconds. And that happened at the start of a test run, when data was not even important. I got 99.993 % of all data points I was trying to collect (if the missed whole frames are not counted).

My lighthouses were on 2.5 meter stands (can be seen in the right hand corner of the image). The room was perfect, all walls were black, no reflections. I didn't even need the syncing cable. The distance between lighthouses was around 8 meters. Steam was nagging me about the distance quite often, but it worked without any problems.

The main problem in area that big is the length of the headset's cable... I used a wireless headset. The 5x5 meter limit comes from the SteamVR, you can't setup a larger play area with SteamVR 1.0 lighthouses.

[michael-rauschenbach]

Could anyone please post the content of c:\Program Files\Steam\config\chaperone_info.vrchap and \config\lighthouse\lighthousedb.json please? I have a Oculus Rift DK1 which doesn't have a lighthouse so I can't get past the room setup. For Elite Dangerous the orientation tracking is all I need. I understand that I will have to modify the above files to match the simulated lighthouse ID of my OSVR server but I was unable to find what the file content would look like in general. Thanks for your help.

[DAN-di-WARhol]

Thanks Damsteri, that's really useful. If I chose to go with 4 sensors, could I use two at version 1.0 (already own) with two at 2.0? Would they work together?

[BOLL]

They run in different modes so they cannot be mixed. The v2 completely lack the sync blaster and can actually operate without line of sight to the other base stations, v1 can only work in a 2-station setup and then only with other v1 stations with the sync flash.

[Damsteri]

BOLL is correct, they can't be mixed... that way. You can find the v1 / v2 compatibility table here: https://www.vive.com/us/support/vive-pro-hmd/faq/which-vive-hardware-are-compatible-with-base-stations.html

I'm currently having Vive Pro on one room with two v2 base stations and and OG Vive with two v1 base stations on the next room. OG Vive can be used only in the room that has the v1 base stations, while the Vive Pro can be used on both rooms when used with different computers.

Actually SteamVR on my Vive Pro computer (v2 room) recognizes the v1 base stations on the next room through the wall and is able to power manage them with bluetooth (not good). It makes the v1 base stations' power management impossible on the OG Vive computer that uses them as the next room computer always steals them. I have to use manual power management for v1 base stations.

There has been some posts about beta testing a feature where a player could move between different play areas, but that probably won't work with mixed v1/v2 set when if ever it comes available.

I think that four v2 base stations are overkill for you, unless you want to use every meter of the area (going beyond 5x5m), or plan to have multiple persons standing (with or without headsets) on the play area. I was working while ago with a 5x5 m v2 setup that had a base station on each of the corners and two simultaneous Vive Pro users sharing the same play area (it's possible if you have a game/app that has made to support it). Four base stations allowed occlusion free operation with two users and other watchers that were on the play area.

[DAN-di-WARhol]

fab. thanks

[professor dodge]

Originally posted by michael-rauschenbach:

Could anyone please post the content of c:\Program Files\Steam\config\chaperone_info.vrchap and \config\lighthouse\lighthousedb.json please? I have a Oculus Rift DK1 which doesn't have a lighthouse so I can't get past the room setup. For Elite Dangerous the orientation tracking is all I need. I understand that I will have to modify the above files to match the simulated lighthouse ID of my OSVR server but I was unable to find what the file content would look like in general. Thanks for your help.

what runtime are you using? you should just be able to run the roomsetup and select standing mode with from memory doesnt need the trackers setup or just fakes that they are setup

3dof is alright but can make you really ill fast especially when playing game like elite that have a pitch and roll function. I would highly recommend to help against this you setup some kind of positional tracking. quite afew cheap low effort solutions for that if all your gonna play is sim style games positional track is 100% must for that extra piece of the puzzle.

and being a dk1 good luck reading those tiny screens without being able to lean in closer

[michael-rauschenbach]

I'm not using the Oculus Runtime. I've taken the route via OSVR with OpenHMD. Inspite of GTX970 the Optimus feature of my gaming laptop gets in the way of the runtime. The fake tracker doesn't report to be seeing the HMD. Issue is with the steamvr driver for the OSVR. I believe it lists 2 trackers, hence the issue.