Curious about the tech behind Valve's Lighthouse room-scale VR positioning system for the HTC Vive? Learn about it from Alan Yates, one of the leads on the project at Valve over at Hack a Day in a 40 minute video. He discusses the various attempts at finding a way to make the positioning system work, from failed bearings to the eventual discovery of the optimal thickness for the mirror. If you can't wait for the second generation of Lighthouse, he also provides you with a way to get your hands on an ASIC on a breakout board which will help you build your own version.
"[Alan Yates] is a hacker’s engineer. His job at Valve has been to help them figure out the hardware that makes virtual reality (VR) a real reality. And he invented a device that’s clever enough that it really should work, but difficult enough that it wasn’t straightforward how to make it work."
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I wish Valve would actually
I wish Valve would actually open up Lighthouse already!
So far it’s an ‘open’ standard that has no public documentation, requires the closed-source SteamVR in order to implement (timing data and IMU data passes through the SteamVR which then passes you back the final pose), and actually getting ANY documentation to use it (and licensing to do so) requires a mandatory $3000 in-person training course. At least the license is royalty free, but that’s no good for anyone who can’t fly their engineers out to the US. You also can’t make your own basestations, just tracked objects.
I couldn’t find the video,
I couldn’t find the video, can somebody point to it please?
[edit]
found it: https://hackaday.com/2016/12/21/alan-yates-why-valves-lighthouse-cant-work/#more-236448
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