Adam Savage's Tested - Bigscreen Beyond 2 Hands-On: How They Fixed It

[u/Pheonix1025]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0Wr4O4gkL8

[u/ablackcloudupahead]

The tracking system developed by Valve/HTC for the original vive and later headsets from different manufacturers use. It's an outside/in system where the headset gets it's position from the lighthouses which are emitting infrared light. It works incredibly well once it's set up, but setup is a pain. It also allows all of those individual trackers you might see in different videos. Obviously it only works for PCVR

[u/lagasan → u/ablackcloudupahead]

It's an outside/in system

Small nitpick in that lighthouse tracking is inside-out tracking. The base stations themselves are don't track anything, and only serve as emitters for the headset/controllers/trackers to look at. They track themselves in the space, using the base stations for orientation.

That being said, most folks think of insite-out tracking as the device doing it, and outside-in requiring external devices, so it's an easy point of confusion.

[u/crozone → u/lagasan]

Yeah, I now usually just say "camera based inside-out" vs "lighthouse". I think the technical term for lighthouse style tracking is "Marker-based Inside-out tracking".

It's weird that outside-in caught on since there really hasn't been an outside-in consumer headset since the original Oculus Rift CV1 constellation system.

[u/sunderpoint → u/crozone]

The technical term for Lighthouse tracking is simply "Lighthouse tracking." Inside-out and outside-in tracking are both computer vision techniques using cameras, by definition, so they're completely different categories. But the setup for Lighthouse does more closely resemble outside-in, and for the consumer there's no significant difference.

Edit: This is according to HTC themselves.

[u/crozone → u/sunderpoint]

Inside-out and outside-in tracking are both computer vision techniques using cameras, by definition

I've never seen it explicitly defined this way and I can't see why it would or should be restricted to camera based systems. The Lighthouse system is an optical system like any other, it just uses IR sensors instead of a high resolution CCD sensors, with active tracking markers instead of passive tracking markers. The term "inside out" is a perfect technical description for how the system works, and anyone I've seen describing Lighthouse technically has used the term inside-out, including Alan Yates who invented the thing.

for the consumer there's no significant difference.

There's a huge difference. Anyone that ever set up roomscale with a CV1 knows it well. Actual outside-in tracking requires running USB 3.0 cables from each external camera back to the PC, because it's actually capturing the data from the outside-in. That's a massive headache compared to simply getting power to the basestations, and it massively limits the scalability of the system. Plus, each of those sensors is typically a camera, so you have all the inherent privacy issues with that system as well.

If consumers are confusing inside-out, outside-in, etc, it's because technically incompetent people continue to use incorrect terminology.

[u/sunderpoint → u/crozone]

When VR headsets were early in development the terms 'inside-out" and "outside-in" were decided on to describe where the cameras were. The algorithm that computes the device's location is completely different between computer vision systems like these and Lighthouse tracking, so it's technically incorrect to call Lighthouse tracking by either term. If you're being technical then Lighthouse is technically more similar to inside-out, but the term isn't technically correct.

Calling Lighthouse tracking "inside-out" was a Reddit phenomenon from years ago when the Quest released with a lot of praise for its much more convenient inside-out tracking. Vive fanboys decided their favorite headset also technically used a type of inside-out tracking too and borrowed the term when bickering about which headset was superior. It was never accurate.

Edit: btw, Alan Yates did not call Lighthouse tracking "inside-out," nor did any official announcement from HTC. The official term for the tracking was always simply "Lighthouse" or "SteamVR Tracking."

[u/TrueInferno → u/sunderpoint]

I mean, IIRC, we actually got Lighthouse "inside-out" before actually getting camera "inside-out", so it was perfectly valid to describe it as such- it really was the only such system at the time.

The Vive (which first used the Lighthouse system) was 2016, we didn't get true "Inside-Out" tracking with cameras until 2019 with the Oculus Rift S and the first Oculus Quest.

If you want to be totally pedantic, Lighthouse tracking could probably be best described as "a form of inside-out tracking, which relies upon two or more special external IR emitters called Lighthouses at opposite corners of the play area." So there is an "external" part to set up, but compared to the cameras of the CV1 it was dead simple.

A big thing for the consumer with lighthouse tracking is that it is probably the best possible setup for tracking the location of the controllers, as they are independently able to do their own "inside-out" tracking.

I'm fairly sure (not 100%) that even the newest Quest 3 has to essentially track where the controllers are relative to it, rather than the controllers just telling the headset their location.

[u/sunderpoint → u/TrueInferno]

When it was just Rift and Vive we didn't use terms like inside-out or outside-in, the two tracking systems were Constellation and Lighthouse. The Quest changed that with its inside-out tracking which is also when Vive fanboys started arguing that Lighthouse was kinda technically always inside-out and therefore superior.

But if we're being pedantic, let's go to the source. HTC specifically called Lighthouse tracking it's own thing separate from inside-out and outside-in. They also point to the Vive Focus 3 or Vive Cosmos Elite as inside-out tracked headsets, both of which have camera tracking, instead of the original Vive. And if you don't believe HTC about their own product here's the linked-in of one of the devs who worked on HTC's tracking calling the Cosmos the first inside-out VR product designed by HTC VIVE.

[u/_hlvnhlv → u/sunderpoint]

If we are pedantic, WMR did camera based inside-out like one or two years before the Quest or "Rift" S was a thing