HTC’s Vive Trackers are finally rolling out to developers, and, yes, someone’s already stuck one on an Oculus Rift.
That someone is Ivan Mathy of VR developer OKatBest. Last month, we labelled the Rift as one of the things we couldn’t wait to stick the Vive Tracker on and enable SteamVR tracking on Facebook’s headset, but Mathy has beaten us to it. Late yesterday, he showed the Tracker stuck to the front of the headset with a custom rig. The Tracker enabled positional tracking on the Rift inside a SteamVR experience. Without it Rift’s rotation headtracking was still enabled, but the Lighthouse base stations can’t detect its actual location.
We all knew this was coming. Lighthouse tracking on the @Oculus Rift using a @HTCVive tracker. Works great, better video & details soon! pic.twitter.com/iclwTK0BoI
— Ivan Mathy (@OKatBest) April 2, 2017
You might wonder what the point in this is, and Mathy himself admits it’s an experiment just for the sake of it, but it does has some interesting results. Apparently the developer has to block out the Rift’s infrared lights as they were causing interference. More importantly, however, the developer was then able to attach the Vive controllers to his feet while holding the Oculus Touch controllers in his hands. The result is hand and foot-tracking on Rift but, as we’ve already seen from Cloudgate Studios, that could feasibly go a step forward and enable full-body tracking on the platform too.
I just realized I can add Touch AND Vive controllers to the mix. That means… Foot tracking on the Rift!! Had to put them in my socks. pic.twitter.com/RX62IdfMr6
— Ivan Mathy (@OKatBest) April 3, 2017
It’s not the first headset we’ve seen the Tracker attached to; Master of Shapes also stuck the kit on the front of a Google Daydream device to enable positional tracking within mobile VR. The device sold out pretty quickly when it went on sale last week, though it’s only available as a $99 developer edition right now. The consumer version is expected to go on sale later in the year.
