How far can you be from the PC?

bazzabear

bazzabear

bazzabear

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I'm considering getting a VR headset. I very much like the idea of using it sitting in place to play things like racers and Elite - but I wouldn't want to miss out on the 'free movement' ideal too.

My PC is in a corner of the living room, so for standing VR experiences there is space in the room, as long as I don't have to be directly in front of the PC. A couple of metres away I guess. Are the sets connected by wire to the PC, or wirelessly?

Does this set-up suggest which of the VR headsets I'd be best with too? I think I say a picture of the Vive solution with small detectors mounted high in opposite corners of the room - I think that would be manageable, albeit a shame to have the power cords trailing down the walls (I think it's only power cords trailing anyway?). Is Rift the same?
 
There is a wire for the headset but for example I have a set of active 30m cables that work so I can easily move my Vive setup from the PC room to the living room. For the vive basestations its just a power cable so they just need to be near a power socket. For the rift you need USB cables to the PC so you would need extensions to be able to put the cameras further from the PC, not sure which extensions work or not.

You can also get wireless adaptors specific to the rift and vive, but they are not cheap! I couldnt justify it personally as I have a pimax 8k on order and it wouldnt transfer over.

If the PC is in the same room you shouldnt need extensions of any kind as the standard cables are a good few metres long.
 
If you're not playing 'full movement' games you could probably get away with the two sensors spaced wide enough apart. You do need an extension for the HDMI most likely.
 
Thanks!

Are the basestations used for anything you do VR? Or are they only for when you're using the touch controllers? If I'm usually gaming in the corner of the room, but then sometimes standing up in the centre, will I have to move the sensors around too?
 
bazzabear said:
Thanks!

Are the basestations used for anything you do VR? Or are they only for when you're using the touch controllers? If I'm usually gaming in the corner of the room, but then sometimes standing up in the centre, will I have to move the sensors around too?
Click to expand...
They track the controllers locations and AFAIK the headset too so are needed.
 
As a living room device that'd be ideal. You do away with a lot of the clunk, just a couple of cables.
 
lokiss said:
As a living room device that'd be ideal. You do away with a lot of the clunk, just a couple of cables.
Click to expand...

You can get a wmr headset for about 200 from CEX if you want to dip your toes, sure you get 12m warranty too.

I'm thinking about getting the Dell one (£205 grade A) for the lounge as already have extensions from my bedrooms pc for USB3 and HDMI or just run from my laptop.
 
bazzabear said:
My PC is in a corner of the living room, so for standing VR experiences there is space in the room, as long as I don't have to be directly in front of the PC. A couple of metres away I guess. Are the sets connected by wire to the PC, or wirelessly?

Does this set-up suggest which of the VR headsets I'd be best with too? I think I say a picture of the Vive solution with small detectors mounted high in opposite corners of the room - I think that would be manageable, albeit a shame to have the power cords trailing down the walls (I think it's only power cords trailing anyway?). Is Rift the same?
Click to expand...
This sounds a lot like my setup - desk in the corner, large room scale area to the side. The Vive cable stretches about 5m and that gets me from the corner of my desk all the way to the opposite corner of the living room since I can position the link box on the nearest corner of the desk (actually stuck to the underside to hide it).

Basestation emitters above the desk and in the opposite corner mounted on extendable floor/ceiling stands, and thanks to the wide fov of the emitters, it works very well for both seated and room scale games (I actually only need the basestation above the desk powered for seated games, both for room scale).
 
That sounds very good.

I've emailed Overclockers about getting a demo session and some advice (the online tool for booking a session doesn't seem to work for me - or possibly they have no available sessions for the rest of eternity). But if that's how the Vive basestations can work, it sounds ideal. Opposite room corner to my computer has a power source, and could have a basestation tucked behind the sofa and pulled out only when needed.
 
You'd probably just want to leave them in place. With either the Vive or Rift, moving a basestation or camera will usually require running the room setup to guarantee accurate tracking calibration (with the Vive this is really for determining how low the floor is and marking out the play area bounds for the chaperone - only takes a couple of minutes but would be tedious to have to do every time).

WMR headsets on the other hand don't need external sensors or basestations, but they do have some minor tracking limitations and you'd probably want to get an extension for the cable.
 
Not at all. The Vive basestations have a 120 degree sweep on both the horizontal and vertical. If they're pointing vaguely towards the centre of your room and tilted down by about 45 degrees, your entire room is effectively covered (occluded areas excepted) unless you have some very weird corners. I'm practically almost underneath my closest basestation when at my desk:
y4mUEwUWNpuK4OmsyaUk-jobyuUqYcKeXwww5ykv8ZkOSuzN9xgy81FTQqVGLzaMvSEvt9g11vRKDZwCOo8TvVdEIjV1dOwCWZQx--M8OMRewbj934mzo8ne62f1OvOPYCZUC___oSsgxIToAK_SqMgpJ4MoMAM9Mb6JnNe0zsXhPvVtncDSQE0UzUM1gKjUWJjZrb9kzxECrJXxx2Hfj4eGA

The HMD and controllers only really need to "see" one of the basestations at any one time to track correctly.
 
Base stations on opposite sides of the room with a good view of where your desk is should cover you. You've got a lot of freedom with mounting them and hiding cables if that's a concern too. I've got one of mine effectively on top of of a bookshelf so the cables are completely out of side, the other's cable is just pinned to the wall.

andybird123 said:
There is a wire for the headset but for example I have a set of active 30m cables that work so I can easily move my Vive setup from the PC room to the living room. For the vive basestations its just a power cable so they just need to be near a power socket. For the rift you need USB cables to the PC so you would need extensions to be able to put the cameras further from the PC, not sure which extensions work or not.
Click to expand...
Bit of a hijack from the OP.... Can you tell me more about the active cable setup? Currently I've got my Vive in my lounge along with my PC, but want to move the latter back to the office for more conventional gaming... Some friends suggested the latency of using a long USB3/HDMI cable would cause notable issues which sounds a bit extreme considering I'd probably only need around 5m from the PC to the Vive Link Box. Sounds like you are doing similar to what I want to do, have you had any issues or does it work perfectly? If so - any recomendations on active cables?
 
I don't think you should need active cables - a pair of good quality 5m HDMI and USB 2 cables will do the trick I think for the link box (you don't need USB 3 - just set the camera framerate to 30fps).
 
PinkFloyd said:
Base stations on opposite sides of the room with a good view of where your desk is should cover you. You've got a lot of freedom with mounting them and hiding cables if that's a concern too. I've got one of mine effectively on top of of a bookshelf so the cables are completely out of side, the other's cable is just pinned to the wall.


Bit of a hijack from the OP.... Can you tell me more about the active cable setup? Currently I've got my Vive in my lounge along with my PC, but want to move the latter back to the office for more conventional gaming... Some friends suggested the latency of using a long USB3/HDMI cable would cause notable issues which sounds a bit extreme considering I'd probably only need around 5m from the PC to the Vive Link Box. Sounds like you are doing similar to what I want to do, have you had any issues or does it work perfectly? If so - any recomendations on active cables?
Click to expand...

For 5m you wont need active cables, from memory its over 15m you start to get issues. Vive only needs USB2 aswell anyway.

I've done 10m on normal cables and 30m on active cables and there's no difference to latency. The extended cables go from the PC to the link box and then the normal headset cable plugs in to the link box. It isnt even adding 1ms.
 
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Thanks guys, sounds promising. I'll do some testing with HDMI cables, 5m is reliant on me cutting holes in the house to route the cable as directly as possible. Might see if I can borrow a 10m for testing at first, since I can get away with a temporary bodge of running the cable down from the office through the banisters :D
I'm thinking USB3 between rooms to try and future proof as much as anything!
 
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