Hi all,
we are a greenscreen-studio in hamburg and for many big productions we need the vive-trackers. No HMD, no controllers etc. Just 2-4 VIVE TRACKERS.
We are happy with the precise results of the trackers and a little proud of our UNREAL-BASED Camera-Tracking-System.
The only really really bad, annoying and frustrating part is the STEAM/STEAM VR environment. 100 of Pop-Ups, annoying screen messages and the
inconsistent storing of the trackers roles. Sometimes the trackers are stored right with eg. SPECIAL_1 as trigger for an UNREAL MotionActor and
sometimes we need to re-define all configs. Sometimes we load a tracker-role-config from the STEAMVR tool and the config file says
HAND CONTROLLER 1 or HMD ROLE instead of out stored TRACKER ROLE (TRACKER ON CAMERA).
This STEAMVR-Env is more forgetful than my grandma!
And if everything works fine ... than an STEAMVR-Update comes along and everything is again starts from the beginning.
There are so many film/vfx-studios I know who got the same problems and told me to buy real TRACKING-HARDWARE -> STEAM VR is for
gaming KIDS they say. I dont believe that - I still belive in the power of HTC/VIVE and their trackers but STEAM VR and the whole surrunding
is not made for 24/7 perfect and reliable use in professional studios.
Please: is there any C++ coder out there or any API/SDK with which we can read out the position and rotation of our Vive-Trackers without
using the annoying STEAM environment! This would be a professional solution to have an small executable which reads out the Tracker-Dongles
Data and provide those datas to an e.g UDP Port which than can be read out by UNREAL/UNITY etc. without installing a software package
which pops up with commercials for kiddies-games and forgots daily any custom-settings. 😒
best regars
jerry
