https://community.openmr.ai/t/lighthouses-controllers-pimax-8k-vr-heaven/14841/26
Actually I [Kevin] said small scale for April and general purchasing in the summer.
The quote set is at 9:01.
(Controllers, at least)
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Letâs not forget that from the start pimax (if my memory serves me) has said that they were looking at inside out tracking and I believe at the beginning they said it will be able to run on both outside in and inside out
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Maybe they did, just with Kevin saying luckily whilst almost saying in the next breath that they couldnât source them in any volume seemed a little suggestive.
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He only answered those who asked him about other types of tracking.
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Valve already stated they were going to be selling these for $60 each to OEMâs since they are cheaper to make. I guess the problem is manufacturing enough of them. I bet HTC has the supply locked up.
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I kind of regret selling my Vive now, money is in the pocket but⌠when my headset arrives (whenever that may be) Iâll surely miss the base stations, controllers and DAS for a while if they are that far
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You can probably buy some used ones off of eBay. Or buy one from HTC for $135
Iâm not entirely sure I understood Kevin that way tbh but do agree it could be understood that way in hindsight.
The whole basestation 2.0 situation is quite the conundrum. HTC absolutely do not sell them outside the Vive Pro bundle and having contacted them pretty much bi-weekly on this, they have no idea when, if ever, they would offer them. Similarily, alternate.de as a very large IT retailer in central Europe has listed them as âorderedâ or âexpected shortlyâ numerous times throughout the last 12 months, and I have pre-ordered them on three different occasions. Eventually, I got in touch with their procurement directly, who basically had no idea when, if ever, they would become avaialble so eventually the just unlisted them.
Iâm pretty damn close to certain Valve wouldnât do this intentionally to consider HTCâs market position, as they profit from HMD vendor agnostic sw sales. Ever since the announcement of the non-SteamVR tracked HTC Cosmos, I have only been confirmed in that assumption although the somewhat recently SteamVR update introduced inability to use an HTC linkbox to control HTC lighthouses when using a Pimax HMD has me absolutely gobsmacked.
To me, there is only two possibilities that would explain the basestationsâ poor availability, and that is a monumental issue in production and/or Valve stockpililing sufficient supply for an impending HMD launch of their own HMD package.
Personally, I lay absolutely no blame on Pimax in this situation; had I been in their shoes way back when, I would have considered a timely and sufficient supply of a product whose dispersement is 100% aligned with the manufacturerâs core business strategy as the safest of all variables before going into that Kickstarter campaign.
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It does not much sense to promote v2 tracking and then to not make it available.
First there was this article by @Pumcy
Then there was another following the same idea:
Right now, I believe, HTC is selling them with Vive Pro.
Apart from that, to OP (@fishfingers), lighthouses are inside out tracking too. They just use sensors instead of the cameras and synchronize with lasers instead of furniture shapes, but in both cases the sensors (which are âinsideâ) read the environment (which is âoutsideâ).
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Sharp observation on the nature of lighthouse tracking as inside out, particularly when compared to e.g. Riftâs true outside-in Constellation approach.
I do, however, believe that with the increasing dispersement of e.g. Microsoftâs âMixed Realityâ HMDs, inside-out tracking has become or is becoming synonymous with SLAM based 6DOF localization.
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Q. Why arenât you letting third-parties build their own versions of SteamVR base stations?
A. For now we need to make sure that there is complete compatibility among base stations and tracked devices. Longer term, we do want the hardware community to help us evolve base station design and to help innovate in that area, but given our own limited bandwidth we need to push that collaboration out to some future date
Looks like valve time at work here
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Well then. Can we get oculus controller support?
Too different technology
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I dont understand pimax will not send 2.0 lightouses? @PimaxUSA can you answer please.
As Pimax said, the lighthouses is the next step after pledged headsets delivery.
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They will send them, theyâve said thatâs going to start happening second quarter 2019, with controllers third quarter. They have to set up a production line to have them manufactured - theyâve already shown test prototypes working.
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Bare in mind long ago folks talked about wanting to use pimax controllers with other tracking tech ie i think it was Oculus mentioned back then. So they might have an option to make their controllers support some kind of modular tracking.
Ie clip on leds to cover Valve tracking sensors to support some kind of optical tracking.
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Ouch at that price no one will want Valve tracking. Hope that was mistake.
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They do not manufacture the lighthouseâs valve does. The sell them to oemâs