Cheap Method For Great VR Full Body Tracking

Cheap Method For Great VR Full Body Tracking

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Full body tracking is something most VR users end up wanting to try out at least once in their gaming lifetime.

However for some reason, whether it’s the fact that it’s quite cumbersome to put on all the trackers and then have to take them off, or maybe it’s the setup, or it maybe it’s the price.

A lot of these people end up not even going near full body tracking, well today I’ll be telling you possibly the cheapest way of excellent full body tracking that we have tried in a long time.

Slime VR and its potential as a cost-effective solution

Slime VR is a project that has been running for multiple years at this point their trackers are quite Advanced and can do a lot of things. 

however what you may not know is the fact that it’s open source and fully customizable as well which means that if you have any other sort of trackers that you would like to use, you can with this.

I highly recommend that you guys check out our slime VR video it’s one of my favorite videos on this channel link that will be right up here if you’re interested in the project or in how to set it up and how it works.

Compatibility with various trackers

Today we’re trying out something a little bit more experimental and yes we will be using slime VR for it, with slime VR you need a certain number of trackers to even get the project to work because it’s based on a lot of computation when it comes to Imus.

however Virtual Desktop has recently come out with a new update this is a beta update so you will need to join the beta Channel.

what it does is it takes quests estimated upper body tracking and throws that in as Vive trackers meaning that you no longer need the entire Suite of slim VR trackers.

you can have full body tracking with just four Slime VR trackers, so if you make these DIY the price substantially goes down. 

the fact that it is based on that brand new Quest inside-out body tracking though means it will currently only work with the Quest 3.

but would I recommend this method, that’s for you to judge when we jump into the game and try this out in case you are interested in trying.

Tutorial: Utilizing Virtual Desktop for Full Body Tracking

So first thing you’re going to be required to join the beta branch of the virtual desktop, this is simple to do just jump onto the meta store find the virtual desktop inside the store scroll down, and change from live to Beta.

this will give you all the latest features and do keep in mind it’s a beta some of these things may have bugs, and you will also be required to get the beta version of virtual desktop onto your computer.

you get the latest version, the exe for Windows then you install it like you would any other Windows app and it will replace the current version of the virtual desktop that you have if you have one.

once you have this installed, type in your Oculus username so that the quest can find your computer.

now on your quest, you will want to update the virtual desktop application in case it hasn’t been done and this will put that beta version from the beta Branch onto your quest.

The functionality of Virtual Desktop in conjunction with Slime VR

now inside your quest, You’ll want to select the emulate Steam VR trackers this will allow the quest to take an upper body estimation and turn it into essentially Vive trackers for PCVR.

now there is going to be a problem virtual desktop not only creates upper body trackers but also creates lower body trackers these are not as good as the upper body tracker part they’re still better than having no trackers whatsoever.

what we’re trying to do here is get really good full body tracking so you will require an additional little piece of software that is on the virtual desktop Discord this piece of software will allow you to disable the lower body trackers inside the virtual desktop 

so you want to get this extract to launch it and disable the trackers that you don’t need. for us, that’s going to be the entire lower part of our bodies once you have this done you’re pretty much ready to go put on your four slime VR trackers.

that’s going to be your ankles and your thighs, I also have a foot tracker because why not so theoretically speaking I’ve got six here but you do not need the foot tracker.

now is going to be potentially one of the most important parts of how to install Slime VR and set it up right, now what you’re going to want to do is launch Steam VR from a virtual desktop.

you will see all your virtual desktop trackers appear, you should also see your four Slime VR trackers appear as well.

now inside the Slime VR server, you’re going to want to assign the virtual desktop trackers to your chest and your waist, this is very important as Slime VR needs these to know where to place its trackers.

once you’ve done this stand straight and reset, you should see that the tracker is now in the correct position and they’re bound to the virtual desktop trackers, which are brilliant this is exactly what we want and you should see that they move in the correct direction.

if you’ve done everything correctly now you can fire up VR chat or any other game that you want to play with full body tracking and calibrate your trackers.

Testing in VR Chat

Jumping directly into VR chat, you can see that everything kind of works exactly how you’d expect it to.

Elbow tracking from a virtual desktop works just fine you’re able to move your elbows up and down and you can see that translating into VR chat 

what I have been told in the past is that there is a little bit more latency here than there is with slime VR trackers and now you can see some latency between those.

however, you will not notice that when you’re gaming unless you’re trying to use your elbows to fight someone or something like that.

with like tracking, the latency is just as good as Slime VR has always been which means brilliant and you can see because it’s bound to that chest and that waist from a virtual desktop.

Performance during various movements and positions

it’s all working ideally I’m also able to lay down and sit down and there are no issues with that whatsoever you can also lean forwards and backward because those virtual desktop trackers are using the upper body skeleton.

I even tried a few crazier things like laying down on the floor completely or sitting up with one of my legs up and one of my legs down tried moving my foot around because I did have that extra foot tracker and I even tried push-ups surprisingly push-ups did work with upper body estimation.

I’m not entirely certain how this works I was expecting the quest to lose track of my elbows however it seems to have continued tracking just fine.

I highly doubt doing a handstand would work though I can only imagine how much that would confuse the quest.

I have tried many fast movements like jumping and spinning and everything just works fine.

Conclusion

I think that this is a valid solution for full body tracking for those of us who are looking for the cheaper method or the easier method because this also only requires you to put on four trackers.

you no longer need to strap on a waist tracker, chest tracker, elbow tracker things like that and the answer is absolutely yes is it as good as a fully blown slime VR skeleton?

I would say no especially with the current latency but I would say that this is Miles better than having nothing and it works for most of our needs sitting down, jumping, kicking things like that.

It seems to work with these with no issues whatsoever so if you guys are looking for the cheapest possible way of good full-body tracking this might be your go-to.

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