20' x 20' 4 Player Arena

[react149]

Hey everyone, I am looking to install two 20'x20'(4 player arenas) side by side in an open area using HTC VIVE and a group of race sims with Oculus HMD. There will be no partitions but I will limit the angle of lighthouse to 90 degrees.

My question is: 

1. Based on this diagram, should I be worried about the interference between the Vives in the two areas and Vives to Oculus area?

2. Will players 2 & 4 suffer occlusion if the lighthouses are about 13ft high?

[Synthesis]

I'm assuming that the red boxes represent base station locations (facing into the squares) and the red circles represent Oculus sensors facing to the right? If that's not the case, disregard my comments as necessary.

 

So first off, you don't want to place your base stations like that. The moment anyone turns away from them they're going to lose tracking immediately. You have to place them facing each other to cover as much area as possible.

 

Secondly, once you do that you're going to need to place partitions between you play areas or the IR signals will interfere and you won't be able to get any tracking at all. That problem may extend to the Rift sensors as well, but I'm not 100% on that.

 

Third, you've got a 20'x20'x13' play area and that's going to be a problem. You could probably get away with 20'x'20'x'7' but by setting them so high you're reducing the effective sensor range, while increasing the number of players you can potentionally track without occulsion. You'll likely experience jitters and tracking loss, especially if anyone looks directly down.

 

I'd recommend a smaller play area if possible. Unless you're running some sort of multiplayer game like Star Trek: Bridge Crew, you definitely are better off keeping your players seperated. I hope that helped, though it probably raised more questions. I'm happy to answer those as well.

 

Thanks!

-John C

[react149]

Thanks John! Yes, my 20x20 areas are meant for multiplayers games and the whole idea is to create (as much as possible) airy, open, partiton-less space.

Regarding the height: In my case Iighthouses could be placed at any height from 7 to 13'. You recommending 7. Would it create any issues if one or several players would be as tall as 6'?

Another thing, in case of 10' high placement the farthest point for IR to travel would be exactly 30'. As I understand it is not a problem for the current version of Vive to shoot for 30'. Is this correct?

[Synthesis]

You could probably get away with 8' 

 

Our official guideline is 16' between base stations (straight line) but it can go farther, though tracking will start to degrade slowly. You'll find the performance is improved with the wired sync cable at greater distances though. I'd recommend experimenting with heights and distances before settling on something concrete.

You're still going to need an IR opaque partition between each pair of base stations or they'll cross-talk and the set up will fail. So in your diagram, you'll need one between the two "stages"

Thanks,

-John C