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base stations 2.0 play area size limits


dslnc

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Hi All

 

The documantation is a bit scarce regarding the base station 2.0 specs - 

 

Setting up my tracking area with steamVR I cannot seem to be allowed a bigger play area than 4x3m although I have a vive pro Sku set with base stations v2.0 -

In theory it should be up to 6x6m with 2 basestations, right? meaning up to about 8,5m diagonal between the base stations?

If the base station are longer apart than 5,5m steamVR  complains as well (although the tracking works)

 

 

 

 

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, 2.0 basestations are now individually rated as having a range of 6 meters in ideal environments meaning that you could create a upto a 6m diagonal between two 2.0 basestations and expect that an device should be reasonably tracked by them. Real world conditions will vary from this ideal. This range is consistently with SteamVR's complaint. It is only by using additional basestations that areas with a larger diagonal can be achieved but these advanced featuresets have not been finalized yet. 

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Sure, I am up to speed on that -

Looking forward to the firmwareupgrade to add two more base stations into the mix.

 

I find that the base stations handle 6m distance fine. Mounting them high really helps alot (3+m)

However in order to make a 6x6m tracking area the basestations will have diagonal distance of 8,5m? or am I calculating this wrong?

Reaching 5,5m steam vr complains. Although I had the base stations 6,83m(accordingly to SteamVR) apart and the tracking worked fine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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  • 11 months later...

So, just to confirm, the documentation included in the box for the Vive Pro headset kit (image below), which includes 2x 2.0 basestations, is incorrect?

"Max play area - 6m x 6m" is not the same thing as "a range of 6 meters" or "upto(sic) a 6m diagonal." In fact, a square play area with 6m sides would imply a diagonal range of approxmiately 8.5m.

If the documentation is incorrect and this limit has been known since at least June of 2018, can you please explain how the kit I purchased in April 2019 still contains this incorrect information?

 

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Two 2.0 stations can cover an area around 6m x 6m depending on the environment and the coverage of the stations. The stations themself have a 6m range (but SteamVR wants you to mount them no more than 5.5m apart for optimal tracking).

 

The diagonal is longer than 6m; the tether to the HMD however is not and in many cases, it's the teather that actually dictates the range of the HMD. You can have a massive playspace but little range on your HMD - the playspace is simply referring to the roomsetup configuration that is stored by SteamVR and composited into the the output of the game engine. Not everybody using Pro is tethered, and not everybody using Pro is using 2 stations, there's quite a bit of 

 

I don't see anywhere in the image where it's referring to a "6m range" diagonally on that image? Did something get cut off at the bottom? I'm not sure where you're getting that value from.

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"Two 2.0 stations can cover an area around 6m x 6m depending on the environment and the coverage of the stations."

This agrees with the documentation included with the Vive Pro headset.

"The stations themself have a 6m range"

This does not agree with the documentation, or with your previous sentence.

 

In order to "cover an area around 6m x 6m," wouldn't the base stations have to be placed further than 6m apart? This is basic geometry.

 

What I'm asking about (and what I think the OP was asking about originally) has exactly zero to do with the range of the HMD tether. It is about the playspace that SteamVR lets you set up, which does not change for a tethered or untethered setup.

Additionally, while it's true that "not everybody using Pro is using 2 stations," the image shown in the documentation included with the Vive Pro kit, which includes 2 stations, depicts 2 stations and a max range of 6m x 6m.

Also, you seemed to cut off your thought there mid-sentence. Did you have more to say after "there's quite a bit of"?

 

You are correct that nothing in the image refers to a "6m range." That quote is from your earlier post in this thread, which is what I was replying to. My entire point was that your post made nearly a year ago disagrees with documentation included with a kit I purchased a few months ago.

 

Again, I would like to ask why this discrepancy exists, as well as why there isn't more up-to-date documentation available for a device that has been out for over a year.

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  • 1 year later...

Hi there,

I've have this exact same problem with my newly purcahsed Vive pro kit [and wireless adaptor].

The documentation that shipped with the equipment [attached] shows a maximum play area of 7x7m using 2x 2.0 base stations. However when using Steam VR for room setup, it allows no more than a 4x4 play pace, even when a larger area is traced out [attached].

This appears to be an ongoing issue, can we please have a clear response on how to set up a 7x7m playspace with 2x 2.0 Base Stations, as advertised?

Many thanks.

 

 

IMG_0006.jpg

Screenshot 2021-03-04 165237.jpg

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@brucef This is an unfortunate legacy behavior of SteamVR's roomsetup app. If you click "next" and actually get into the headset, you'll notice that your chaperone walls should be in the correct place.

In short, the SteamVR compositor can handle larger spaces upto ~10m if you have the right base station configuration but the room setup app itself will subdivide out a 4x4m area within your larger space. The center and boundaries of this 4x4m playspace is what gets reported to the video game engines (Unity/Unreal) in order to help those apps properly be able to "center". The reason that it's 4x4m is that is where you cross from "roomscale" and start getting into arena scale stuff. By forcing there to be a virtual 4x4m space; it saves developers who built their apps to be seated or for smaller spaces to redesign their app to work with larger spaces. If you were to tell some older apps that you had a huge room - it wouldn't know how to handle it correctly and it would cause a compatibility issue. It's often called the "playspace" but your walls can actually extend beyond the playspace.

It's just a smaller virtual section of your playspace, you should verify the size of your actual playspace by putting on the headset and seeing where the walls are.

I hope Valve fixes this at some point in the future - it's confusing af.


 

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