The Vive Tracker, a ‘puck’-like device designed to attach to objects to track them in VR via the SteamVR Tracking system, went on sale this week after 1,000 units went out to developers earlier this year. One developer aptly demonstrated the tracking performance by juggling a trio of Trackers in VR.
We’ve seen people juggle virtual objects in VR, but what about real objects that are tracked using the SteamVR Tracking system? Thanks to the high-quality tracking performance of the HTC Vive tracker, that’s apparently now a possibility.
Steve Bowler, co-founder of Cloud Gate Studio, shot a quick video of himself juggling three active Vive Trackers while wearing the Vive headset. Even as the devices are spinning through the air and being occasionally occluded by his hands, they appear to maintain robust tracking the entire time. For juggling of course, it isn’t just accuracy of the objects that’s important, but also the latency.
How accurate are the @htcvive and the Trackers?
This accurate. pic.twitter.com/DbiLGKiuvi
— Steve Bowler (@gameism) March 28, 2017
Bowler must be quite confident in the Vive Tracker’s capability, as that’s $300 worth of equipment being juggled. And while some seasoned jugglers might be able to juggle spheres with their eyes closed or blindfolded, the irregular shape of the Vive Tracker and the way it spins through the air makes it all the more challenging. As we see in the video, it appears Bowler is relying quite heavily on the information he’s seeing through the headset (the location, direction, and speed of the Trackers through the air) to accomplish this task.
For $99 each, the Vive Tracker became openly available for sale this week, though with the accessory ecosystem just getting underway, it’s still at this point recommended only for developers. Later this year HTC is expected to push the device more widely to businesses and consumers.
