VIVE Ultimate Tracker First Impressions

with meta planning on bringing leg tracking to the quest and the introduction of more affordable options like slime VR the mass adoption of full body tracking will be the next big thing in the VR industry full body tracking adds a ton of expression and presence to avatars and it's an important step for attracting the masses into VR while these new Ultimate trackers won't necessarily lead to mass adoption they certainly are a worthy upgrade for anyone who engages with social VR regularly and will be an appealing option for anyone currently on Standalone headsets before I say anything about the old ments I must state that my experience with full body tracking is quite limited my first experience was with noo trackers which are basically Chinese Bas station controllers the experience was relatively decent for the cost but was by no means perfect and was played with tons of issues although it did help wet my appetite for full body tracking at least I've also built and used DIY slimes which I think will serve as an interesting point of comparison during this video my experience with slime VR wasn't very positive but was certainly more neutral than negative it's been a few months since I've used them and some of my complaints have been been addressed however most of my issues were inherent to IMU based tracking I think slime VR and these new trackers will certainly be the most appealing options for Standalone users currently thirdparty headsets like the quest aren't supported VI will be rolling out a beta in the coming weeks that will hopefully add support for steam VR there are also plans to eventually add Stalone support but currently the release date for that is unknown and there's not many details available right now they can only be used with the Vive focus and the XR Elite and work with pcvr via streaming for the purpose of this video I picked up an XR Elite second hand so I could test out these trackers as soon as possible I've developed quite strong opinions on this headset and I plan on dedicating a whole video to my experience using it overall though the headset's just okay and it didn't feel like a bottleneck to my experience while using the trackers I want to start off by talking a bit about the unboxing experience the packaging is pretty minimal and is presented in a similar fashion to the XR Elite spot everything is well packaged and I wouldn't be too worried about damage during shipping it's pretty standard packaging stuff I ordered the three plus one bundle which includes three trackers with a free dongle I also received some track straps which are included with any bundle purchase till the end of December currently each tracker is $200 individually and the three bundle set is $600 which given that the five tracker 3.0 have been cut to $100 means these cost roughly the same as Bas station full body tracking this price will definitely be a huge turnoff for a lot of people but in my case they seem more conducive to my needs but the biggest benefit being that I don't need to drill holes or run cables all over my room inside the dongle box you get a US BC extension cable a dongle cradle and the dongle itself there's also some sort of strap but I've got no clue what it's for I really appreciate the inclusion of the dongle cradle as it shows consideration for usage on BC however I felt like a longer C to a cable would have been a great addition inside the tracker box you're immediately presented with the tracker itself and each tracker comes with a ctoc cable for charging there's also a threaded Mount that allows for the tracker to be used with original five tracker straps and mounted to other things finally the limited time time straps feel wellmade and are pretty comfortable and The Trackers clip straight onto these straps using the quick release system however I felt like they could have been a little bit more elastic but they're good enough and serve their purpose well to use the trackers you must plug in the dongle to the charging port on the back of the headset and individually pair each tracker to it in the settings despite the trackers having roughly 6 hours of battery life their usage is hampered by the battery life of the headset due to the dongle taking up the charging port this can be remedied by using a USB C Hub but this does add some bulk to the headset after the tracker have been paired there's a short calibration sequence that has you kneel and follow a little monster around your play base to scan the area once I got everything set up I was absolutely Blown Away by the tracking quality all the full body tracking Solutions I've tried up to this point always had some inaccuracies and felt somewhat floaty however these trackers tracked my feet and waist absolutely perfectly and handled fast movements while dancing pretty well felt nice to finally have some good tracking seeing how much character expression it added to my avatar and VR chat was insane I had an absolute blast going to a dance world and dancing in front of a mirror initially I did have some reservations about how well it would work but after trying it I'm super satisfied with my purchase as mentioned I think these stand to be very interesting competitors to slime VR especially for people who are looking for a more premium option in my opinion these address most of the issues I had with slime while also retaining the benefits of being a standalone system for me the biggest problem I had with slime was having to recalibrate The Trackers every 10 minutes and the somewhat floaty feeling of The Trackers with these being positional no recalibration should be required and the tracking is absolute at least this is how it is when used with the XR Elite this may change when it comes to use with other headsets I do have some mild concerns over how well these will work with other headsets as I've been reading that some people who use mixed reality systems do experience drift between two separate play areas depending on how Vive accounts for this drift it could sour what is an otherwise pretty good product The Optimist iny believes they'll find an elegant solution but Vive doesn't really have a good track record when it comes to software this is something Vive really needs to nail down as I believe this could be a very successful especially among Quest users who are looking for a premium full body tracking experience now onto some minor issues I've ran into for starters if a Tracker loses tracking for too long you have to take it off and hold it forward for it to resume tracking this is only really a minor annoyance as The Trackers are held in place by a quick release system which makes removing and resyncing them very easy another small problem I've had is when powering on my headset again despite the headset acknowledging my original play space I still had to go through the tracker calibr process due to the tracker being unable to regain position although the calibration process only takes a minute it definitely adds some friction when it comes to gang into VR while my experience was mostly Flawless sadly it's Bradley reported on Twitter having issues with the trackers causing some interference with his Wireless setup this could potentially be an issue with the transmitting channel of The Trackers being the same as the routers and could potentially be fixed by adjusting the Wi-Fi channel settings overall though these trackers are really good and I think will be a good option for people who want good full body track tracking on Standalone devices the beta for third party support should be hopefully coming in the next few weeks and I'll be doing a whole video dedicated to the process upon release I do have some mild concerns over how good support will be but that's a question that will hopefully be answered in the near future first impressions for these are really high and I hope to provide a more updated response after I use these for a lot more and I'm really able to put them through their Paces thank you for watching if you have any questions about the trackers themselves please leave them in a comment below and I'll try to respond to them as best I can if you'd like to see more VR related content like this please like And subscribe

Channel: ColinXYZ

Views: 12,408

Keywords: virtual reality, VIVE, vive ultimate tracker, meta quest, fbt

Id: 6G1HdaWONQA

Length: 6min 33sec (393 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 13 2023