Meant to be Seen

I'm mostly just a lurker here and have very little to contribute. I don't have enough time to keep up with most of you smarties, though I do swing by and dabble from time to time.

I know that there have been several different attempts to add some degree of positional head tracking (and body tracking too) to the the Rift- from strapping a hydra to the top of your head, to free/trackIR, to android, etc...

For people like me, can someone run downs the pros/cons/cost of each and maybe make a recommendation for what the sweet spot is?

Thanks!

It depends on the demo you're trying to use (or game) and what it supports.

I recommend the hydra, I use the oculus strap to strap the second controller to the head when playing Half Life or doing the Titans of Space demo. (I have some additional velcro on the bottom of the hydra so it doesn't slide off with fast head movements)

I believe it's the same type of thing for all of the things capable of positional headtracking support (mostly flight simulators and racers). (Use OpenTrack and look up the script for your game)

If you're doing half life, the VR HL mod website has a guide on calibration, you're supposed to hold the hydras at about the shoulder joints and press the start button on each controller.

If you're doing the Skyrim Skydra demo, you would leave it on the base until the script says it's ready and then bring them to the same shoulder joint points and press the start on each one.

If you're doing the rift shooter demos, the OP has a recomendation of like a chest mounted fanny type pack that the hydra is put in to track position of the chest.

If you're doing something like DIRT with either Vorpx or Tridef, you would use Opentrack and use one of the options (hydra, QR, IR etc)

The Hydra is the most supported out of all the three, you can also use in with things like The Gallery, Surgeon Simulator ETC.

Lastly, if you have the STEM on preorder, and if I recall correctly, Sixense released a statement saying that you can use the Hydras in addition to the STEM packs for a total of 7 tracking points. (or something it might be 5 and then two because the bases might interfere with each other? I can't remember)

It really depends on the support though, Opentrack lets you work with a lot of things but has limited support, you could always use Freepie also, but that isn't as good of a solution. QR codes are just messy. If you use TrackIR I believe you have to make some IR thing or buy one and that just seems not as good as using something cheaper.

The kinect works great, if your game supports it.

Anyone have any suggestions for the best way to attach the hydra to the headstrap? I just fit it in the top strap and it wobbling around was just too annoying to do more than a few rounds on Dirt 3

Get the sticky velcro and affix it to the bottom of the controller. It will help it stick to the velcro part of the rift straps. (if you need more support, you can put some on the top so it affixes to both the bottom and top of the straps)