User Invents Custom Tracking Solution

While the accessibility of full-body tracking remains a popular issue for VRChat users, one person came up with his own alternative solution to provide full-body tracking at lower costs.

A user named Zuwaii shared some details regarding his project with us. “There are people who will just spend a lot of money on known hardware,” he said, “but at the time in 2018, I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on VR Hardware, and I had old hardware [lying] around that could be used for tracking. That's why I spend time to research how the drivers work in SteamVR and how to parse data to SteamVR from DIY hardware.”

With the “do-it-yourself” kit Zuwaii is aiming to release in the future, users should be able to access full-body tracking with a full set of 3–5 trackers for under 100 euros, which is approximately thrice as cheap as using Vive trackers, known for being the most popular solution at the moment.

According to the developer, the trackers may have different sizes, depending on the batteries, “The battery I was using is a Lithion Ion 1500 mAh battery which [is] about 5 cm x 3.5 cm, and gave me a playtime of 5–7 hours.”

Since he claims to be working on an upcoming soon GitHub release, we recommend following @Zuwaii_ on Twitter to keep track of his progress.