What is the goal? To be able to walk freely in the virtual world, with no motion sickness. How does it work? It can be broken down into these concepts:
1: Application
An application such as a game or other virtual reality experience is created in a program such as Unity. To give a good virtual reality experience, the application will update its screen display at 60 fps (frames per second) or faster. As you move your head position, the application updates your location every frame. This gives you the realistic experience that you are in the virtual world.
2: Head Tracking
In order to track your head position, you have to calculate the linear motion in all three axis (X,Y,Z) and the rotational motion in all three axis (X,Y,Z). The headsets that only use your smartphone have to rely on the accuracy of the sensors inside. Unfortunately these sensors are of low quality which leads to motion sickness. The reason is because if they don’t track your head position accurately your brain will think you are moving in one direction while the display your eyes see moves in a different direction. The HSKT™ tracking tag provides excellent head tracking and can be used with any HMD that may or may not already have head tracking technology built in.
3a: HSKT™ 6DOF Position Tracking
Provided you have a high quality image for your eyes and the motion you see updates accurately and quick enough (head tracking), then you can sit in a chair and have a great virtual reality experience, but who wants to sit in a chair the whole time? Most people would like to get up and walk around. Now you can, by incorporating a HSKT™ tracking tag into the headset (direct USB, WIFI or Bluetooth), it will not only give you wonderful head tracking, but it will also track your absolute 3D position as you move around the space. HSKT™ uses a ultra wide band high frequency signals that pass through walls and obstacles.
3b: HSVT™ 6DOF Position Tracking
HSVT™ (high speed visual tracking) is the newest technology from IndoTraq®. It has sub millimeter precision with 150 updates per second (150 Hz). This technology combines the previous success of the HSKT™ tracking tag with inside-out camera tracking (IOT). In this case, the HSKT™ tag gives the headset its initial starting position and rotation. Then constantly corrects the drift in the IOT so that real world objects appear at the correct 3D position in the virtual world. It also allows you to have accurate safety fences around the entire tracking space. Using IOT by itself is limited to small spaces. It completely loses tracking when there are changes in lighting, smooth wall or floor textures, or if the cameras are blocked. That’s where the HSKT™ tracking tag becomes critical so that you don’t break the user’s experience. When the IOT loses its tracking, the HSKT™ tag takes over and gets the IOT system back on track.
Supported Devices
All HMD devices are supported, but here are some that IndoTraq® has been incorporated with.
Indotraq’s HSKT™ tag can be added to this premium headset. This allows the tracking of multiple headsets in the same room. The users will be able to see and interact with each other. See this link for more information.
HTC Focus with HSKT™ Tag
This displays IndoTraq’s newest HSVT™ (high speed visual tracking) technology. It fuses the inside-out camera tracking from the HTC Focus with the HSKT™ tracking tag.
The high speed update rate of the HSKT™ tracking tag allows each frame to obtain a new position update. This gives the best experience and updates at 75 Hz.