Absolutely. Vive uses a combination of IMU based dead reckoning combined with Lighthouse sensors to provide tracking. The dead reckoning is super important for maintaining tracking during sensor occlusion. The API it interfaces with is SteamVR, which is mostly open source, so you can even see how they’re doing it. The new generation Vive Pro will combine this along with stereo camera CV based inside out tracking for even better precision.
Look again. The Odyssey's cameras sit below eye level and point down & sideways, which makes sense for tracking:
https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/hmd/windows-mixed-reali...
The Vive Pro cameras sit at eye level, at average interpupillary distance, and point straight ahead:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/digitaltrends-uploads-prod/2018/01/h...
That makes most sense for pass-through AR.
The headset is not wireless and the controllers have 1-2 ms of latency. They compress the controller data a lot in a very smart way. More info: https://hackaday.com/2016/12/12/cnlohr-reverses-vive-valve-e...
Quick question for any experts reading this - do Oculus or VIVE use any sort of dead reckoning/movement prediction in their tracking? Also does anyone have any documentation on the APIs for this, or information on how the devices keep track of their latency and calibration information?
There are fundamental limits on latency, especially with spread-spectrum transmission when all of this goes wireless. As accurate as the tracking and pointing are for controllers, I feel like some additional extrapolation is happening. It would be great to have an open source library for this so we can give hand-built rigs the best tracking that's mathematically possible.