Last month hardware company Razer opened up pre-orders of the latest version of the official virtual reality (VR) head-mounted display (HMD) for the Open-Source Virtual Reality (OSVR) ecosystem, the OSVR Hacker Dev Kit (HDK). The kit can currently be ordered for £264.99 GBP/$300 USD and comes with a range of updates over previous models. One such update will be to the kit’s positional tracking, which Razer itself has recently detailed.
The company’s latest developer newsletter reveals that the positional tracking module of the HDK has been improved with added sensor fusion. The latest version of the OSVR Server Core will enable this positional tracking automatically. This brings the device even closer in line with the likes of the Oculus Rift’s second development kit (DK2) and PlayStation VR, both of which introduced positional tracking to HMDs back in 2014.
SteamVR integration is also said to be in the ‘early stages’, with the initial version of the plugin now released. Razer is asking for contributions on making the plugin better, however. SteamVR is of course Valve’s own VR system that’s bringing the likes of Room Scale tracking to the HTC Vive HMD.
The newsletter also notes that Unity Direct Mode and Unreal Engine Direct Mode integration is currently in progress. The Unity 5.2 plugin is said to be making ‘great progress’ supporting Nvidia GTX970 and higher. The Unreal Engine plugin now supports Unreal Engine 4.9, with direct mode support expected to launch ‘within the week’. Finally, an Alpha Build of the Mac OSX support is in progress with Linux support also planned. The first Mac build should be released ‘very soon’.
Elsewhere, the update confirms that both the Nod Backspin and Leap Motion hand-tracking controller will be further integrated into OSVR. Leap Motion already offers a faceplate module that connects to the HDK.
VRFocus will continue to follow Razer’s progress with OSVR closely, reporting back with the latest updates from the group.
-END-
The post OSVR’s Positional Tracking Improved, SteamVR Support in ‘early stages’ appeared first on VRFocus.
