Hi All,
For my omni directional treadmill project I am going to need an accurate and reliable hand tracking device.
From what I have read so far the Razer hydra is my best option but one piece of information that I can not find
is the limitations of the device. My ODT will be roughly 3 meters wide so the farthest out from the base sensor would be
1.5 meters. Would the Hydra detect reliably at that distance as well as having a body between the controller and base station.
Can the Hydra detect in ALL directions i.e 360 degrees around the station and pointing towards and away from the station.
Picture the hydra base suspended above the ODT in the centre with the user moving about the ODT as well as the user changing height.
So it's not helpful seeing people just staying in the same position the whole time, what would happen if they turned their back to the base station?
All of the videos for hydra that I have seen so far have been used on a conventional desktop set-up. I have seen one video from the holodeck
project where the users are wearing the hydra base station on their heads, how would it distinguish head movement from controller movement?
I have played a bit with wiimotes but they seem to be a bit jerky and unreliable for 360 degree movement, or more so way beyond my capabilities to
create an IR camera system to track motion at any position/orientation.
Any other suggestions would be much appreciated.
Cheers
Question about Razer Hydra
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Applemung
- Two Eyed Hopeful
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WiredEarp
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Re: Question about Razer Hydra
Back when I was using my Hydra gun for L4D, I could turn 360 degrees with the base on the desk. As long as I didn't move any further away, this was ok.
If you suspend the Hydra above the user, then you'll probably need to transform the coordinates back to the scheme you are after. Im not sure if the SDK supports this or not - officially it doesn't but Dan the Sixense guy seems to have released quite a few modified SDK versions for people, so it might be possibly. Note that this would probably only work if you mount the Hydra on its side as well above the user. If you put the Hydra totally upside down, in the centre of the ODT, then you might get weird results when you cross over hemispheres.
Basically, what happens is that the Hydra returns 2 sets of coordinates, one for one hemisphere (for example, facing you) and another one for the other hemisphere. It cannot tell which if these coordinates is the correct one - so when you initialize it, it asks you to aim at the base. This tells it which hemisphere to use the coordinates of. When you cross over hemispheres, the code does its own bit of logic to figure out which hemisphere its swapped to - but this can potentially cause glitches as you cross over. I've had some issues with this in VRPN (ok, along with many other issues) which I haven't really solved fully yet - ended up using the SDK code which is filtered and manages the hemisphere swaps better, but is potentially laggier.
I haven't seen the head mounted base bit, but perhaps they are subtracting the Rifts turning from the Hydra base? Personally I think it would be easiest to mount the base on your back. Then the handsets will always be within range and the correct hemisphere. To track the turning, you could use Kinect, or you could give up one handset and mount it to the side of the ODT, and use that to determine the degree of turn. Alternatively (IMHO a better solution) you could just use any decent 9DOF gyro tracker mounted on your hips to provide the turning information. Gyros are good for turning and stuff like that, and I don't think you'll need positional tracking on the hips. I think a few people in this forum have also used the gyros on their smartphones with some application to do this as well.
If you suspend the Hydra above the user, then you'll probably need to transform the coordinates back to the scheme you are after. Im not sure if the SDK supports this or not - officially it doesn't but Dan the Sixense guy seems to have released quite a few modified SDK versions for people, so it might be possibly. Note that this would probably only work if you mount the Hydra on its side as well above the user. If you put the Hydra totally upside down, in the centre of the ODT, then you might get weird results when you cross over hemispheres.
Basically, what happens is that the Hydra returns 2 sets of coordinates, one for one hemisphere (for example, facing you) and another one for the other hemisphere. It cannot tell which if these coordinates is the correct one - so when you initialize it, it asks you to aim at the base. This tells it which hemisphere to use the coordinates of. When you cross over hemispheres, the code does its own bit of logic to figure out which hemisphere its swapped to - but this can potentially cause glitches as you cross over. I've had some issues with this in VRPN (ok, along with many other issues) which I haven't really solved fully yet - ended up using the SDK code which is filtered and manages the hemisphere swaps better, but is potentially laggier.
I haven't seen the head mounted base bit, but perhaps they are subtracting the Rifts turning from the Hydra base? Personally I think it would be easiest to mount the base on your back. Then the handsets will always be within range and the correct hemisphere. To track the turning, you could use Kinect, or you could give up one handset and mount it to the side of the ODT, and use that to determine the degree of turn. Alternatively (IMHO a better solution) you could just use any decent 9DOF gyro tracker mounted on your hips to provide the turning information. Gyros are good for turning and stuff like that, and I don't think you'll need positional tracking on the hips. I think a few people in this forum have also used the gyros on their smartphones with some application to do this as well.