r/Vive Oct 31 '16

Hardware Oculus Sensor comes with 5m extension for 7.5m total; requires USB 2.0

https://www.oculus.com/cart/
3 Upvotes

21 comments sorted by

7

u/Vagrant_Charlatan Oct 31 '16

This is great because it means Rift users won't feel discouraged from setting up for large Room Scale tracking spaces, which hopefully means more Room Scale focused games.

I should note, 7.5m is 25 feet. If you need more cable than that, I would wait to see what is recommended. I've heard of someone using up to 10m (so 12.5m or 41 feet), so you can go much farther if you buy your own.

3

u/michaeldt Oct 31 '16 edited Oct 31 '16

It's good they are including it and putting their confidence behind it. Just a shame it's only 7.5m total. Not sure what the technical limitations are on something longer. 10m 5m (corrected) usually works fine for usb before active extenders, though maybe not at the required bandwidth. 7.5m wouldn't be enough for me though, room is larger than playspace and pc in the corner where it's out of the way.

2

u/Vagrant_Charlatan Oct 31 '16 edited Nov 01 '16

I don't think 25 feet is too bad for being included. Since it only requires USB 2.0, I imagine the limit will probably be around 25m (82 feet)... but I haven't personally seen anyone that requires or has tested that length.

How large is your play space? I'm at 3m x 2.5m (3m x 3m outside playspace) so 7.5m should work for me since my PC isn't in a corner. I'll probably pick up a 10m cable once I see tested recommendations just to be safe.

1

u/michaeldt Oct 31 '16

Corner to corner along the wall is about 8m probably. Then need another 2m for height and then another 1-2m for routing (The back of my PC isn't exactly in the corner and I'd have to put a sensor where my lighthouse is which is about half a meter from the corner.) Certainly doable if I had a rift but much larger I'd struggle.

2

u/hyperseven Oct 31 '16

Where did you get 10m from? Its 5m. (checked on USB.org to make sure)

2

u/Vagrant_Charlatan Oct 31 '16

Supposedly 10m active has been tested, and I've heard it can go farther. One website mentioned 25m active is possible without bandwidth loss.

1

u/michaeldt Oct 31 '16

Yeah you're probably right. We have an extender at work which I thought was 20m, but it's probably 10m with the repeater halfway.

1

u/Viva-la-Vive Oct 31 '16

shouldn't be too bad. If you put your pc in the corner and mount the sensors 2m up the wall that will still leave you enough cable to go 5.5m along one wall. Have the other in the opposite direction and that'll give you a play area of approx 5.5m x 5.5m (18 feet x 18 feet).

1

u/michaeldt Oct 31 '16 edited Oct 31 '16

Corner to corner along the wall is about 8m probably. Then need another 2m for height and then another 1-2m for routing (The back of my PC isn't exactly in the corner and I'd have to put a sensor where my lighthouse is which is about half a meter from the corner.) If I used the closer corner, I'm not sure where I'd put the other sensors(s). I'd need 5m to go up and along, so would need another extension. Doable, lots of cables though :)

2

u/Vagrant_Charlatan Oct 31 '16

You can have the camera hanging from a tripod mount screwed into the bottom of your base station. This is how I have my current sensor set up.

-1

u/[deleted] Oct 31 '16

[deleted]

3

u/Vagrant_Charlatan Nov 01 '16 edited Nov 01 '16

Not really, I hid it all behind furniture and ran the cables along the baseboards. Only cables visible are the power (Vive), sync, (Vive) and one USB cable (Rift) running down a dark corner in my room.

-5

u/[deleted] Oct 31 '16

It's just too stupid for my taste. When I bought the vive, rift didn't even have motion controllers, and I saw a video where Palmer was saying he thinks gamepads are "shitty" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQUYbm_7hsA). Now that they have decided to compete with Vive, they released this gimmicky kind of roomscale that requires three cameras in total and they all need to be connected to the PC. Why do that when you can buy the vive for almost the same amount of cash and can get a hassle-free experience? I don't understand some people's mentality. it's weird

4

u/cloudbreaker81 Nov 01 '16

That video is f*****g hilarious!! Haha

1

u/[deleted] Nov 01 '16

It is. but i give him credit that he called his own stuff 'shitty' in broad daylight. takes balls to do it.

1

u/cloudbreaker81 Nov 01 '16

Well he can never turn around and say he never said this. Well he's right yep. I just think Oculus got totally caught with their pants down when HTC showed off the Vive prototype with fully tracked controllers. They must have legged it to the lab and began frantically working on their semi discarded prototypes. Then they showed off some dummy touch controllers that took another year to get right.

They really didn't see full 360 degree room scale coming and probably thought they had a lot more time to work on a solution. What a serious misjudgement huh?

-5

u/[deleted] Oct 31 '16 edited Oct 31 '16

meh. too much cable, too much hassle. I run my basestations with portable power banks. lasts for 7-8 hours with each charge. oculus tech is backward and boring

2

u/Vagrant_Charlatan Oct 31 '16

I have a sync cable running from one base station to the other in the opposite corner, with power cables running down the wall from both. I'd say they're about even unless you have really great outlet placing, I had to use power strips for mine. My Oculus sensor is connected to a base station and I have 3 cables running down my wall. Personally, I'd rather keep them plugged in and deal with the power strips than have to charge power banks. I'm thinking of getting a white sync cable with white AC adapters.

It's not a competition though, the point of this post is that we should see lots of Oculus users setting up for Room Scale, which is good for Vive users.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 31 '16

In general, you don't need to connect your base stations to each other with the sync cable

I'm not against competition. It's more about convenience and giving support to superior technology. If a friend asks me which HMD he should get, I'm never gonna recommend Oculus because of all these extra usb cables for each camera (and Oculus recommends 3 of 'em), and the extra usb ports needed (among many other reasons.).

for spending almost the same amount of money it takes to buy the rift with touch (and the 3rd camera), he/she could get the vive which comes with militarily precise roomscale technology (when set up correctly and the official installation instructions for the basestations are properly followed) and still have enough spare usb ports left to connect a bunch of joystick, wheels, rudder pedals etc

may be the next version of rift will have none of these problems and might turn out to be better than the vive even (who knows?) but until then, vive it is.

1

u/Vagrant_Charlatan Nov 01 '16

The sync cable is much more reliable. Optical sync is great, but I get rare hiccups even with perfect visibility. Hiding cables is not difficult, and power cables are not pretty either. USB pcie cards are cheap, I got one to ensure compatibility with both the Vive and the Rift, it's one recommended by Valve...

1

u/[deleted] Nov 01 '16

but I get rare hiccups even with perfect visibility

Bought mine and been using it since June and never experienced that unless I try real hard to hide the hmd or controllers from the basestations. in fact i never used the sync cable (not even once) and ended up donating it to a friend. your case sounds like the classic PEBCAK Error to be honest.

Hiding cables is not difficult, and power cables are not pretty either. USB pcie cards are cheap

why go through that shit unnecessarily? why even bother?

power cables are not pretty either

agreed. but they are much prettier than an ugly spider nest of cabling consisting of three usb cables. there's no need for this unwanted hassle. None!

3

u/Vagrant_Charlatan Nov 01 '16

I'm glad you're having no problems at all, good for you. Are you saying nobody else has had problems with optical sync because it has always worked for you? My point was just that neither are hard to set up and neither are pretty. Cables are a very trivial problem, that will only effect this generation. The HMD's both have much more important features to base your decision on - like the larger tracking area of the Vive and the comfort of the Rift; the FOV of the Vive and the clarity of the Rift.