The Vive has two base stations which are supposed to be positioned in opposite corners of the room. In order for the controller to lose tracking, it has to be hidden from the view of _both_ of those base stations at the same time. Still possible, but I suspect that will happen much less frequently than with this system, which as far as I can tell will lose tracking whenever your controller goes outside the view of a single, front-facing camera on the headset itself.
For example, if you reach behind your back it loses tracking. If you look in one direction and aim a gun in the other, it loses tracking, if you look up and reach for pistols holstered at your hips, it loses tracking, etc. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, because as-is it sounds to me like this system isn't going to work very well for a lot of the more action-based games in VR.
There are definitely "shadow spaces" in even an ideal Vive setup where you're body could be occluding one base station and your hand holding the controller could be occluding the other.
It's really going to depend on the application. You don't focus your attention uniformly through the 3D space. if the application design has important interaction points that just so happen to intersect with those shadow spaces, you'll find yourself in a very frustrating situation of never being able to get good tracking. There are times when I find I can't finish a drawing in Tilt Brush or a machine in Fantastic Contraption very easily because the detail I want to work on is in a shadow space. And for many reasons, I think gun-games are quite far from the best uses of VR. I am sure a certain class of gamers will like it, but I don't think that class intersects well with current, 2D-display FPS gamers, and I don't think it will be anything close to the majority use of VR.
So yes, some UI designs will be ideal for one design and particularly buggy in another. The Vive is optimized for broad-stroke gesture control radiating out from the user in (roughly, minus the shadow spaces) equal precision 360 degrees around the user. The Windows MR is optimized for fine-detail control centered in front of the user. If you like playing wave shooters and only wave shooters, I suppose you'll want a Vive. Otherwise, I don't think it's a completely cut-and-dried situation.
> There are definitely "shadow spaces" in even an ideal Vive setup where you're body could be occluding one base station and your hand holding the controller could be occluding the other.
Huh, I've never really experienced that. Or if I have, it doesn't happen frequently enough for me to notice. It does happen in some spaces outside my play area, beyond the guardian system, but inside it tracking is near perfect. I have a Rift, not a Vive though, so maybe this is an issue specific to the Vive? My Rift uses 3 sensors, not 2, so perhaps the occlusion issue is lessened by that. Or perhaps your Lighthouses are just positioned a bit strangely?
> I think gun-games are quite far from the best uses of VR. I am sure a certain class of gamers will like it, but I don't think that class intersects well with current, 2D-display FPS gamers
Agreed. There are other games which would suffer from this type of occlusion issue though. Echo Arena, for example, often requires you to grab onto a surface with one hand while turning your head in a completely different direction to look at your surroundings. Any game that requires you to interact with something not in your field of view would have this problem.
For non-game applications like Tilt Brush, Google Blocks, or Google Earth though I can see this headset working just fine. Casual games which involve primarily working with your hands might also work well. (Job Simulator, Rick and Morty VR, etc. Not Fantastic Contraption though; that one requires you to reach behind your head to grab new parts, if I recall correctly.)
For example, if you reach behind your back it loses tracking. If you look in one direction and aim a gun in the other, it loses tracking, if you look up and reach for pistols holstered at your hips, it loses tracking, etc. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, because as-is it sounds to me like this system isn't going to work very well for a lot of the more action-based games in VR.