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Don't want to join the growing ranks of virtual reality fatalities? In-headset room tracking may be for you:
Occipital, a company based in Boulder, Colorado, focuses on 3D scanning hardware and depth-sensing cameras: One of its Structure camera sensor arrays works with both an iPhone mixed-reality headset and an upcoming home robot. Occipital's team put an HTC Vive VR headset on me, outfitted with an in-development feature that let me see the room even with my headset on. The technology is called Occipital Tracking. Its aim is to replace external room-sensing hardware completely, like the Oculus Rift's cumbersome stands or the Vive's light-emitting Lighthouse system, in favor of all in-headset tech.
Inside-out tracking, as in-headset room-tracking tech is called, has been in place on Microsoft's VR headsets and upcoming hardware like the Lenovo Mirage Solo with Daydream as well as AR devices like the Microsoft HoloLens, but Occipital Tracking aims to make that tech even better for VR with far more room-aware scanning.
Much as Apple's ARKit or Google's ARCore can scan a room and sense edges and surfaces using a camera and the phone's motion sensor, Occipital's tech pinged my demo space and found glowing points in space that formed a map. The test demo alternated between the real world via pass-through cameras and a fully closed-off VR world with edges of the room overlaid. The VR hardware I tried had stereo cameras, but Occipital says the tracking will work with a single camera, too. It really does seem like ARKit/ARCore for VR.
A game could show a partial overlay only when you are in imminent danger of colliding with something, or even create a virtual environment that incorporates real life obstacles (walls, tables, etc.).
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday January 18 2018, @09:49PM
It gives you more freedom to look around.
Even when seated, with untethered headsets you could at least do a 360° spin or three in your office chair or otherwise move your head around a lot without tangling a cord.
A "mixed reality" headset would be able to switch from VR to AR mode (using the front-facing camera(s), which are necessary to make Occipital's tracking work). This would allow you to exit a room without taking the headset off, or otherwise use it for both VR and AR applications.
Do the omni treadmills add to realism? I don't know, I've never used one. It could help prevent players from becoming complete fatasses.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]