foot position precision

SeanBlader

So I'm curious about the precision of the foot position, because there are times where I feel like if I move my feet just a little bit, that I end up moving in game a disproportional amount, and it's noticeable enough to induce my DIMS. Are your feet tracked as well as the controllers, and if not, could the Omni drivers be adapted to track Vive Trackers mounted to the Omni shoes?

pittsburghjoe

I'm not helping here: As far as I know, the foot pods only have a single imu in them. Be sure you updated the firmware on the pods and the omni.

Wombatcave

Which game are you playing? If you are using keyboard emulation on a game it will tend to be a little jumpy. You can adjust the sensitivity in the Omni ap, but it is the nature of not having native support. If you still experience this in TraVR Training Ops, I would definitely play with sensitivity settings, as I found the native games to be pretty accurate in that regard.

sutekiB

The tracking sensitivity setting has no effect on 'native' games that use the Omni's SDK - it only affects keyboard mode and Bluetooth mode. We appreciate your feedback regarding the movement speed @SeanBlader - we're sorry to hear you're finding it a bit too high. If we have any updates related to tracking we'll be sure to announce it here on the forum.

pittsburghjoe

We are asking for stats on how exact the positional tracking is.

SeanBlader

Wombatcave said:

Which game are you playing?

Only game I've gotten working with the Omni is Travr Training Ops.

And thank you @pittsburghjoe there wasn't really an answer to the original question. Basically it doesn't seem like the game is using my foot position to place the feet of the in game character, which there's no reason why it isn't.

sutekiB

Hi guys, the Pods use IMUs, which do not track position, only rotation. This is why HMDs augment their IMU tracking with another method, such as inside-out or outside-in optical tracking.

jgwinner

IMU's can, however, infer position as they do have acceleration. And I agree, TraVR seems disconnected from foot position or motion. I tried VRZ Torment and fell off the pier at the start TWICE. I seemed to just slide into the water.

I really like the Omni - don't get me wrong. I went through the Bellows last night and got a little better. There are times though it seems as if I slide or shift without really intending too. The foot motion isn't quite as connected as I would like. I also find strafing a little weird. People can naturally 'strafe' ... it's called Sidestep. That doesn't seem to work though. It would be great if that could be incorporated.

I have the SDK, I'm thinking of making a REAL training app that'll show, in 3D, your foot position so you can more accurately train yourself to move forward and the right techniques. Is there any need for this? I haven't opened up the SDK yet, though.

== John ==

pittsburghjoe

You think you can hack in acceleration data to the foot pods? I would love to see someone using the sdk out of curiosity. I think you'll find that Sean has the real answer and that's to ditch the foot pods and get steam tracker pucks.

jgwinner

Vive tracker pucks make a lot of sense We know they are accurate! Sean is dead right.

Hmm ... I didn't apply to the Vive hardware program, but dang, it might have been a good idea. That tracking is going to be a lot better than an IMU unit, due to drift. My thought was, it's not the position that matters though, it's the velocity and direction of the feet - and THAT you don't need dead accurate 3D positional tracking for. You MIGHT need 'up / down' contact info, which we know the Omni doesn't give (if you swipe your foot in the air, it shouldn't cause you to move).

So, I took a look at the SDK, without really integrating it, just the SDK calls, and they do NOT give you real time position info on the feet. Just forward / side to side info.

So, you're pretty much limited to what the Omni developers figure you're doing.

Look, I like the Omni. I just don't think the firmware or software drivers is the best it could be.

When I step forward, I want to actually feel like my foot is pushing the ground backwards - and right now, it just doesn't feel *real*

It would be really funny if the best part about the Omni was the physical part, with the firmware given over to iKinema and Vive

Ok, this sounds really grumpy, but I fell off the pier in VRZ Torment twice so I'm entitled, LOL.

Now, after having said that, the Omni ring is AMAZING. IF you look at it, it exactly knows where you are, position wise. So, you can couple that with the foot location (IF WE GOT IT) and then know if you're walking forward, and with what foot. This info does not seem to be exposed, however.

== John ==

jgwinner

The STEM system might work too - although the (rather nice) metal in the Omni might cause some issues with the STEM.

== John ==

MarkV

You assume the STEM system will ever ship which, as a backer, seems unlikely.

jgwinner

Yea, I'm a STEM backer too, and I agree
The best bet is the Vive trackers. I tried to get one but I didn't apply for the HW program, and they aren't quite for sale yet. Would love to try it when one comes out - maybe even make a small device driver for it w/games.

== John ==

smoothblur

A developer friend of mine and I built a really crude prototype of using VIVE trackers for foot tracking on the Omni and it worked surprisingly well.

Here is a super short video of it in action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7jUJqIytcE

You have to be careful where you have your lighthouses due to the 2 pillars on the Omni which can occlude the trackers easily. Having the lighthouses point between the pillars opposite each other worked well.

Xain

@smoothblur *jolly old man voice* You're doing God's work exile.

jgwinner

Excellent Smoothblur! Are you going to release a driver, or is this just an experiment?

I just got access to a beta of a Kinematics library - tempted to order some trackers

Virtuix - any interest in co-developing this or incorporating?

== John ==

smoothblur

I'd definitely classify my VIVE Tracker based foot tracking as an experiment, at least at this point. Its not a driver and basically just a mod to an existing VR locomotion method. For the Unity developers here, we based our test on using VRTK. One of the example scenes has a demo of "Move In Place" locomotion where you'd swing VIVE Controllers like you were walking and it would use that motion to move you. There is a similar VR locomotion for Unity called "Arm Swinger".

We adapted this locomotion example to use VIVE Trackers instead of VIVE Controllers and attached the Trackers to the Omni shoes using elastic GoPro camera mount bands. After a few tweaks it was working surprisingly well. It has the benefit of being able to track the foot in 3D space as well so you can detect foot contact with the ground with decent accuracy.

I think nearly any Unity VR dev could do the same experiment with minimal effort.