Virtual reality enjoyed hype levels over 9,000!
Just a few short years ago only, to have a lot of the fanfare die down shortly thereafter.
And justifiably so, a lot of people had understandable misgivings
about things like comfort, cables, and the cost of entry.
If only there was a technology that would make it possible to create a cheap,
easy, and wireless platform that provides all the benefits of enthusiast-grade VR
without the drawbacks. Well, that is exactly what
Markerless Inside Out Tracking promises to provide.
Now, although it's true that devices like the Windows Mixed Reality headsets
and Lenovo's Mirage Solo have used Markerless Inside Out Tracking for a while,
they've never achieved the status of the more premium offerings
from companies like HTC, Oculus, or Sony.
Fortunately, for VR lovers, things are changing as late-model headsets
with this technology, like the Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift S,
have almost completely closed the gap, and HTC revealed at CES this year
that the Vive Cosmos will be taking advantage of Markerless Inside Out Tracking as well.
So it's safe to say then that the heavyweights have entered the ring.
But what exactly is Inside Out Tracking, and specifically Markerless Inside Out Tracking,
and why is everybody jumping on the bandwagon? Well, put simply, Inside Out Tracking
is a way to track the position of a head-mounted display or HMD in three-dimensional space.
Up until recently, the biggest six degrees of freedom VR platforms,
the Rift and the PSVR, have been using either Inside Out Tracking with Markers
or even the opposite approach outside in tracking,
which uses external sensors or cameras to determine where the headset is located.
And while these methods are very accurate
and some with very minimal latency, they're not without problems.
So the sensor towers require a line of sight with the HMD and controllers at all times,
meaning that if you don't have a clear play space or you haven't set up the sensors properly,
they could get occluded and lose tracking. And what's more, setup can be a total hassle
if you don't have a dedicated VR area where you can just set it and forget it.
You gotta push away your furniture, mount your sensors, define your play space,
and finally step into the virtual world.
But even if you have plenty of space and you don't mind the setup time,
you will still need external sensors and either a PlayStation 4 or a VR-capable PC,
each of which drive up the cost of entry. Markerless Inside Out Tracking on the other hand
has all of the required sensors embedded
within the headset itself, allowing the HMD to track its own position,
resulting in a simpler, quicker, and generally cheaper way to get immersed in VR.
So it sounds great, right? But how does all this Inside Out trickery work?
The answer, of course, is SLAM tech.
I'm serious, actually. It's called SLAM technology. You see, SLAM stands for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping,
which describes the problem that the head-mounted display has to solve.
That is, creating and constantly updating
a map of the environment that it's in while simultaneously tracking its own location
within that map. It does this by using a combination of physical sensors,
like cameras, accelerometers, and gyroscopes
to continuously detect information about itself
and the world around it. This data is then passed over to the software
that's responsible for processing it and generating a 3D mapping of the environment.
Now, while solutions to SLAM were originally developed for other applications,
like robotics and self-driving cars, it's now being used for hardcore VR gaming.
Like, who cares about the advancements of collective human knowledge when you could be playing?
Super hot, super hot.
But it's no guarantee that super hot or any VR experience for that matter
will be better with Inside Out tracking. Like I said before,
the reason that anyone would care about all of this at all is if they want a cheap, easy, and wireless VR platform
that has all or almost all of the benefits
of an enthusiast-grade experience. The issue here is that in order to make it wireless,
everything has to run on mobile hardware. So if you're a member of the glorious PC gaming master race
or even an ordinary PS4 gamer, VR games running on mobile hardware
is gonna be a step down for both of you
in terms of both fidelity and immersion. Plus, both the Mirage Solo and Oculus Quest
feature piddly refresh rates in the mid-70 Hertz
with the Rift S at 80 Hertz, the original Vive at 90,
and the Valve Index at a whopping 120 Hertz
or even 144 in its experimental mode. So if you suffer from simulation sickness
at reduced refresh rates, you might not wanna buy into the marker list
inside out hype just yet. Making matters worse, occlusion is still a problem
when it comes to Inside Out tracking. The difference here is that instead of stuff
getting between the sensors and the headset,
Inside Out occlusion happens when the sensors on the HMD get blocked.
For example, you might be aiming down the sights of a rifle with one of your hands
right up against your headset. Or if you simply look away from the controllers
or put them behind you to grab an arrow out of your quiver,
the controller will try to continue tracking
based on their last known position, but it might be with lower resolution data.
So the longer the disruption, the more out of sync with reality things can become.
Plus, the image processing that's done on captured footage while impressive isn't perfect.
And Inside Out tracking doesn't really work outdoors
because sunlight can interfere with the sensors. These issues though,
do not amount to a death sentence for Inside Out tracking.
As processing power, sensor performance, and slam tech
continue to improve, we'll see a lot of these early problems become less and less pervasive.
And there's also room for software to make more efficient use of the processing power
that we have using still in development techniques like foveated rendering
to get heavier games running on lighter hardware.
So with all that in mind, there is still absolutely hope for VR
to go truly mainstream once they make headsets
that don't make you look like an idiot. So thanks for watching guys. Like, dislike, check out our other videos
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