In this period, I’m so lucky that I have on my desk two great 6 DOF standalone headsets that have been lent to me: the Lenovo Mirage Solo and the Vive Focus. Both headsets are able to track your position in space, to offer you a virtual reality where you can move potentially wherever you want, with the headset continuously tracking you. A world scale tracking that allows a new kind of applications, also considering that thanks to the frontal cameras, it will also be possible to use these devices to create mixed reality applications (as I did with the Focus). But… what device performs the best positional tracking? Follow me and you’ll discover it.
Most people think that the tracking technologies of both headsets offer the same performances. Actually, the performances are similar but not equal. When I tried the Vive Focus for the first time, I noticed that the tracking was a little sloppy: I mean, it works well, but it doesn’t appear completely smooth as the one of the Rift or the Vive. I thought that it was a problem of all the standalone headsets, but when I started the Mirage Solo for the first time, I noticed that this little problem was not present. I had the impression that Mirage Solo’s tracking was a bit better, but I thought that a more thorough test was needed to compare the two headsets.
That’s why I went to a little terrace next to my office and I decided to do a simple test to verify the tracking accuracy: I started from a precise point in the real and in the virtual world and then I walked 25-30 meters in one direction and then I tried to return back to the same position in the virtual world, to verify if I was able to return to the same position in the real world as well. I know, it was not a test with precise quantitative data but was perfectly ok to give me the idea of how the tracking drifted over time.
Here you can see me walking back and forth on the terrace. I made various tests for every headset, but all in the same conditions, that were very challenging for a standalone headset: outdoor setting and sun lighting directly the cameras of my poor devices.
As you can see, I also risked the life during this experiment: since I had to test the devices within a virtual scene, I couldn’t use the passthrough mode and so I almost stumbled across a wall various times, with my buddy Max yelling at me everytime I was going to die for the VR community 🙂
The results of these simple tests have been:
- The Lenovo Mirage Solo shows a smoother positional tracking;
- The Lenovo Mirage Solo drifts very little over time and space, while the Focus drifts a bit more;
- Both headsets showed robust tracking and continued tracking me over time, with the exception of moments when I directly looked at the sun or put some hands in front of the cameras.
So, both headsets showed a good tracking, that offered continuous tracking over time, wherever I moved: world scale tracking is already here. I also tried to go upstairs and downstairs and everything continued working, even in outdoor conditions, so kudos to both Google and HTC. But Google’s technology showed better performances over time. While walking, I did notice nothing, but slowly the Focus drifted over time, so when I tried returning to the initial position, I was always on a slightly different point. In these walking tests, it drifted something like 1-2 meters on the horizontal plane and 50cm on the vertical plane. The Mirage Solo, instead, showed really little drifting, sometimes it was really unnoticeable. You can see the difference between the two technologies in the following images.
As you can see, we have a winner: the Lenovo Mirage Solo. In case of standard use of a standalone headset, e.g. to use VR in your office, the headsets have similar performances, but if you need to use VR in warehouses or other big spaces, my advice is to use the Mirage Solo.
And, honestly, I think that this win is pretty obvious: Google is working on SLAM technologies since a lot of years (the name “Tango” means something to you? It is a project from 2012) and has also been able to develop an AR framework working with only the RGB camera of your phone (ARCore), while HTC has just started working on that. It is obvious that it needs more time to get to the same level. This makes me wonder about the upcoming Oculus Santa Cruz: will it have a tracking worse than the Google’s one for the same reasons, or since Facebook is investing a lot of money in AR, it will offer the same performances? We’ll discover that in some months: I’m ready to go out and have some VR walks again…