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. 2017 May 18;8(3):2041669517708205.
doi: 10.1177/2041669517708205. eCollection 2017 May-Jun.

The Accuracy and Precision of Position and Orientation Tracking in the HTC Vive Virtual Reality System for Scientific Research

Diederick C Niehorster  1 , Li Li  2 , Markus Lappe  3
Affiliations

The Accuracy and Precision of Position and Orientation Tracking in the HTC Vive Virtual Reality System for Scientific Research

Diederick C Niehorster et al. Iperception. .

Abstract

The advent of inexpensive consumer virtual reality equipment enables many more researchers to study perception with naturally moving observers. One such system, the HTC Vive, offers a large field-of-view, high-resolution head mounted display together with a room-scale tracking system for less than a thousand U.S. dollars. If the position and orientation tracking of this system is of sufficient accuracy and precision, it could be suitable for much research that is currently done with far more expensive systems. Here we present a quantitative test of the HTC Vive's position and orientation tracking as well as its end-to-end system latency. We report that while the precision of the Vive's tracking measurements is high and its system latency (22 ms) is low, its position and orientation measurements are provided in a coordinate system that is tilted with respect to the physical ground plane. Because large changes in offset were found whenever tracking was briefly lost, it cannot be corrected for with a one-time calibration procedure. We conclude that the varying offset between the virtual and the physical tracking space makes the HTC Vive at present unsuitable for scientific experiments that require accurate visual stimulation of self-motion through a virtual world. It may however be suited for other experiments that do not have this requirement.

Keywords: data quality; head mounted display; natural vision; position tracking; virtual reality.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
(a) Top view of the measurement setup. The crosses indicate the grid points that were drawn on the floor, and the black boxes indicate the lighthouses units. (b) Schematic representation of the axis conventions used in this study.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Recorded X-Z position (a) for when the headset faced along the positive X axis and (b) for when the headset faced along the negative X axis.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Recorded height at each of the grid locations for (a) when the headset faced along the positive X axis and for (b) when it faced along the negative X axis. No data could be recorded at the black locations due to loss of tracking.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Recorded (a) X-Z position for both headset facing directions. (b) and (c) Recorded height at each of the grid locations for (b) when the headset faced along the positive X axis, and for (c) when it faced along the negative X axis. No data could be recorded at the black locations due to the loss of tracking.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
(a) The Vive’s reference plane (red) fit to the 3D measurement locations (blue dots) reported by the Vive. The green plane indicates the plane formed by the physical measurement locations. Observed (b) pitch and (c) roll orientations against the predicted values for a physically level headset based on the Vive’s tilted reference plane. Blue dots indicate individual measurements, and the black cross the mean of these measurements for each headset facing direction.
Figure 6.
Figure 6.
Amount of sample-to-sample jitter (RMS) in each of the reported 3D positions and orientations, at each measurement location in the grid. As there were no systematic differences in RMS between the two headset facing directions, these plots show the data averaged over the two facing directions.
Figure 7.
Figure 7.
The orientation, aspect ratio, and relative size of the BCEA ellipses at each measurement location for (a) when the headset faced along the positive X axis and for (b) when it faced along the negative X axis. The red line indicates 1 mm.
Figure 8.
Figure 8.
Offsets from the mean measured position (left panels) and orientation (right panels) for 20 trials. The gray shaded areas indicate the range of position or orientation values seen during a 1-min recording.
Figure 9.
Figure 9.
Offsets from the mean measured position (left panels) and orientation (right panels) for 10 trials. The shaded areas indicate the range of position or orientation values seen during a 1-min recording.
Figure 10.
Figure 10.
Offsets from the mean measured position (left panels) and orientation (right panels) for 20 trials. The shaded areas indicate the range of position or orientation values seen during a 1-min recording. For Trial 8, the offset was 163 cm along the Y axis, −34 cm along the Z axis, 15.8° pitch and −11.5° roll.
Figure 11.
Figure 11.
Recorded (a) X-Z positions and (b) height at each of the grid locations. No data could be recorded at the black locations due to the loss of tracking. (c) Offsets from the mean measured position (left panels) or orientation (right panels) for 20 trials. The shaded areas indicate the range of position or orientation values seen during a 1-min recording. For Trial 16, the offset was 146 cm along the Y axis, −55 cm along the Z axis, 6.1° yaw, 19.3° pitch, and −3.8° roll. For Trial 18, the offset was 153 cm along the Y axis, −57 cm along the Z axis, 6.2° yaw, 18.6° pitch, and −3.9° roll.
Figure 12.
Figure 12.
Recorded (a) X-Z positions and (b) height at each of the grid locations. No data could be recorded at the black locations due to the loss of tracking. (c) Offsets from the mean measured position (left panels) or orientation (right panels) for 20 trials. The shaded areas indicate the range of position or orientation values seen during a 1-min recording. For Trial 1, the offset was 32 cm along the Y axis and 5.2° pitch. For Trial 5, the offset was 59 cm along the Y axis and 6.3° pitch.
Figure 13.
Figure 13.
Recorded (a) X-Z positions and (b) height at each of the grid locations. No data could be recorded at the black locations due to the loss of tracking. (c) Offsets from the mean measured position (left panels) or orientation (right panels) for 20 trials. The shaded areas indicate the range of position or orientation values seen during a 1-min recording. For Trial 18, the offset was 4.2° yaw.
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