©Varjo HMD

ART and Head Mounted Displays (HMDs)

It is essential that a fully immersive Virtual Reality experience should be both accurate and comfortable to use. When merging with real-world objects, VR representations have to precisely match reality. This means that the used motion tracking system must provide a reliable and repeatable high accuracy for the overlay as well as a lowest latency for a natural immersion.

So why not combine ART's professional high tracking quality with the comfortable and easy to use HMD experience?

Of course, you can use it with our interaction devices Flystick and Fingertracking2 Tactile as well as with the ART Motion Capture suit.

The combination of an ART optical tracking system with an inertial measurement unit (IMU) means that the HMD wearing user has advanced immersive options, depending on the use case: he can either sit in a small compartment doing training or educational simulations, or the user can move freely within a large area, knowing that he can return to his starting point within a few millimetres.

ART’s approach with hybrid tracking technologies with low latency rates creates a natural feeling when moving in VR worlds. Experience yourself and feel good!

In summary, ART Tracking of HMDs offers important advantages:

  • high accuracy and stability, crucial for industrial use
  • no drifts, substantially reduced jitter
  • enhanced „close to reality“ experience
  • adaptable to all kinds of HMD devices
 
Scenarios and suitable products

Cockpit integration

  • In limited spaces, such as airplane or jet cockpits, small and unobtrusive tracking devices are crucial
  • The tracking systems also need to track from a very short distance already, while the field of view should be wide enough to catch the scene
  • SMARTTRACK3(/M) or ARTTRACK6/M are our recommended products


In-car-Tracking

  • Besides a small size, short distance and wide-angle tracking ART tracking devices for in-car-use also provide a very robust shock resistance
  • SMARTTRACK3(/M) or ARTTRACK6/M have been optimized for these scenarios
  • For outdoor tasks, special filters for sunlight elimination are available
     

Large Scale Tracking

  • Virtual Walkthroughs with precise interaction: house building, interior design, factory walk throughs, inspection of production lines, …
  • Location based entertainment applications and sophisticated gaming surroundings
  • Multi user applications
  • Virtual Showrooms: Marketing presentations of new products or solutions
  • Further professional immersive and/or collaborative large-scale applications
     

Further possible use cases

Trainings

  • Astronaut training
  • Training nuclear power plant operators in VR
  • Pilot training in airplane cockpits
  • Test drives in cars, both fully virtual or as overlays while driving in real world


Design work

  • Creative teams can work in photorealistic and real time new design concepts


Architecture

  • Entire lifecycles of buildings can be worked on by VR and thus save time, money and efforts


Marketing & Sales

  • Tracking the head- and eye movements of customers in retail shops may allow adaptions to optimize the shelf settings.
  • Digital showrooms of huge buildings or transport systems make customer experiences close to reality.


Extensive collaboration

  • Most projects come to life amongst a collaborative team. Large-scale immersive environments enable a team of researchers, designers, engineers, manufacturers, and marketers to all view and collaborate on concepts, design modifications, and changes simultaneously, and in real-time. Incorporating VR into organizational workflows reduces the need for physical prototypes, increasing productivity, reducing design flaws, limiting recalls, and reducing overall costs.

Why combine HMDs with optical tracking systems?

  • Increase the position accuracy of head mounted displays
  • Full integration with LPVR sensor fusion middleware and IMU solutions
  • Enhanced tracking inside a vehicle or on motion base simulators with LPVR Duo
  • Large scale tracking offers advanced professional applications and use scenarios, see above
     

Tracking system and supported HMD / software

  • VRgineers XTAL (all versions),
  • HTC VIVE (Pro),
  • Valve INDEX,
  • Varjo (all versions),
  • PIMAX.
  • All HMDs except XTAL use LPVR for optimal performance, VRgineers have implemented an own equivalent system that is included with the HMD.
  • Additional or new headsets can be added to the list after extensive compatibility tests.
  • Please also have a look at our targets page.
     

Why ART?

  • Wide range of products and compatible applications, like Motion Capture
  • Low total cost of ownership (TCO)
  • High reliability. System can be used well over 10 years.
  • Coordinate system can be calibrated according to CAD coordinates of real objects.
  • Interfaces to Unity, Unreal and other applications (via VRPN)
  • Clip-on adapter for most popular HMDs available.
  • Low maintenance costs.
  • Long-term stability of system calibration.
  • Competent and fast ART service & support by ART and well instructed distributors