An awesome demo of the Oculus Go VR headset with 6DOF

Here’s a cool demo of the Oculus Go VR headset with 6DOF – six degrees of freedom positional tracking. This is one of the things we like about the VR space – it’s still possible to hack solutions to hardware limitations.

The problem with the Oculus Go VR headset – great as it is – is that it only offers 3DOF – three degrees of freedom. After using Rift or Vive that’s a huge let down, despite the obvious advantages of a standalone HMD. You might say you get what you pay for with a $200 device. The Lenovo Mirage does a little better, but you’re still not walking around in virtual reality as you are in the Vive.

 

It’s no surprise that the solution comes from Antilatency, which makes 6DOF positional-tracking solutions for just about any VR system, including mobile VR.

Antilatency Tracking for VR headsets

Here’s the announcement on Reddit,

Hi guys! We just received our Oculus GO. Everyone knows that positional tracking is must have feature in VR headset nowadays! We want to share with you how just in 1.5 hours we made 6DOF GO with Antilatency tracker. It was easy, trust us. All oculus headsets use the same SDK. Our antilatency tracker (or just Alt) integrated with all devices on Unity3D side and works equally well. Ask, what did we do all this time? Firstly, we admired the box for 5 minutes. Then we determined the necessary position of the alt and set this distance. For everything works correctly, we slightly changed the program code and tested new oculusGO with our GearVR application (find more details in the funny gameplay video) https://youtu.be/h0CA05m2Jfs

By the way, our special Alt system application with placement function makes it easy to change the alt position by yourself and create custom tracking environment. MANUAL: Unbox Oculus Go Use our pattern to place tracker in right position Run application Play and have fun.

And a quick video,

6DOF on the Oculus Go VR headset

Of course, these hacks always come with a few caveats. The wall or tripod mounted base-stations may be gone but you are still using a system from Antilatency with strips on the floor for external tracking. And unless this gets support from developers, a hacked 6DOF HMD doesn’t do you all that much good.

The major issue is that you need Antilatency’s tracking system which actually costs more – $300 – than the Oculus Go VR headset itself. As others pointed out, why not just wait for the Santa Cruz HMD due out at the end of the year? It will probably cost $400 – $500, have 6DOF, and broad developer support. That beats spending $500 for this project which will – at the moment – only give you a one-off experience.

Still, we like the idea and it’s a sign of what’s to come in the VR headset market. Everything will be 6DOF – except perhaps for inexpensive units for seated 360° video experiences. And even here, the best solutions may be the ones that do both – like the HMD from GameFace Labs.

We want our virtual reality as real as reality – and that means walking through it. Soon enough, we’ll look back and wonder how we ever sat still in VR.