Vive tracker setup?

Development Cinematics & Media
1

I been reading a lot on vive tracker for real life camera tracking. I read there is possibly a way to do the tracking without the hmd and base station? I’m not looking into buying another VR headset as I have 3 already. Just vive wasn’t one of them.

Can I just buy a vive tracker and make it work with just that? No hmd/base station.

2

Tried a while ago with some hacks found online, didn’t work, and I think that Valve added something specific so that you do need the HMD in order to use the Trackers.

If you have any luck with something else, feel free to share

3

I haven’t tried this yet but someone else at my office has and says it works. I will ask him what setup he is using but he is on vacation for awhile so that may take a bit.

What did you try to make it work?

One article I saw How to use Vive Trackers without Vive headset - The Ghost Howls claims you just have to change a “required hmd” flag in the steam config to make it work. I have seen other articles that sound like more complicated solutions to access the trackers via various non-steam APIs. I will give this solution a quick test here, if it doesn’t work for me we will have to wait for my co-worker to return from his vacation so I can ask him.

4

I found a wireless solution but it requires a oculus quest. I think it works pretty decent with a Go Pro since you can just strap it to the hmd and align those two easily (in theory). But trying to strap the oculus quest to a dslr camera with stability is pretty hard.

Using the controller for tracking still requires hmd as a base station and again stabilizing it with the camera is pretty hard.

I don’t own a vive tracker but was thinking of getting one just for this. I’ll see what else I can test out with the oculus quest.

Edit: I was just thinking if someone came up with a 3d printed hmd mount for a camera everything should work pretty good and wireless.

5

Thingyverse.com pretty much has everything you need :wink:

6

the hdm isn’t necessary，but the base station is necessary！
a tracker and two base station are the minimum requirements。

7

I think 1 base station v2 can be used over 2 base station 1s? I could be wrong
I only have base station 1s

8

Would it be possible for you to point me in the right direction to get this solution working? I have an Oculus Quest but only now looking at UE4 (non programmer and coming from Unity)

ideally what I’d like to do is this DIY setup to start with:

  • Use an Iphone XS with UE Remote 2 app and the virtual camera plugin and the VP example level in UE4
  • off load the tracking work to Oculus Quest controller.

The experimental outcome being, potentially large volume - inside out tracking. I’d wear the Quest HMD at an angle above eye-level (yes, weird but experimental and doable I figure)
This is for purely CG filming (at least as a first step before venturing into green-screen mixed live/cg)

Any help to get the Oculus Quest hand controller to work with the example Virtual Production template in UE4 I’d be grateful.

9

Using the quest, using apps like virtual desktop or alvr, you can link it to your ue4. Attach a camera to your hmd oawn/controller. That’s it basically. The hard part would be alignment and strapping a camera to the quest.