HTC Vive & PsychVRHMD?

1
Dear all,

SMI announced an eye tracker implementation for the HTC Vive last week.
http://www.smivision.com/fileadmin/user_upload/downloads/product_flyer/SMI_HTV_VIVE_Tech_Specs.pdf

I have some ongoing experiments with the Oculus under PTBs control and am quite happy with it, but SMIs eyetracker with a sampling of 60 Hz for the DK2 wasn't quite what I've been needing.

Now the higher sampling rate of 250 Hz on the Vive's eyetracker makes this more interesting for me, but I would love to stick with PTB further.

Mario, would the PsychVRHMD Driver work just as 'plug and play' on the Vive as it does with the Oculus?
Could anyone else already gather experience in this?

Thanks and best,

Milosz
2
Hi Milosz,

XX---In PSYCHTOOLBOX@yahoogroups.com, <milosz.krala@...> wrote :

Dear all,

SMI announced an eye tracker implementation for the HTC Vive last week.
http://www.smivision.com/fileadmin/user_upload/downloads/product_flyer/SMI_HTV_VIVE_Tech_Specs.pdf

I have some ongoing experiments with the Oculus under PTBs control and am quite happy with it, but SMIs eyetracker with a sampling of 60 Hz for the DK2 wasn't quite what I've been needing.

-> Interesting. Are SMI eye trackers supported on Linux?

Now the higher sampling rate of 250 Hz on the Vive's eyetracker makes this more interesting for me, but I would love to stick with PTB further.

Mario, would the PsychVRHMD Driver work just as 'plug and play' on the Vive as it does with the Oculus?
Could anyone else already gather experience in this?

-> No, it won't work plug and play. Neither would/does it work with the Oculus consumer model afaik. Because both the Oculus SDK 1.0 for the consumer model and the OpenVR api of the Vive use a very different way of driving the headsets, PTB's imaging pipeline will need some enhancements to make interfacing with those consumer class headsets possible. I hope to get to work on this this month, and then to probably first enable the new Oculus Rift support, as i have part-time access to a DK2 here -- well during the night when it isn't in production use. My friends at Oculus research also promised that they would send me a shiny Rift consumer model soon, but there wasn't a specific ETA attached to this. I hope christmas comes earlier this year. Once that is done i'll look into HTC Vive support. The lab next door has a Vive and maybe i'll get some playtime on it.

According to our user survey 29% of polled labs are interested in VR support in PTB, a surprisingly high number, given that the direct user feedback i received in the last 10 months hinted to more like 6 users. It's strange how little people give feedback about what they do or need unless the moment they need it, so in that sense the survey already has quite a bit of value.

So i'm interested in getting this working hopefully soon, but all my ETA's are subject to change without notice, especially as long as i'm not paid for my work and while i have to do things Mac Gyver style with insufficient equipment.

I assume your lab already filled out our user survey?
http://goo.gl/forms/zfu1OPrMEtyFc3b52

-mario


Thanks and best,

Milosz
 
SMI announced an eye tracker implementation for the HTC Vive last week.
http://www.smivision.com/fileadmin/user_upload/downloads/product_flyer/SMI_HTV_VIVE_Tech_Specs.pdf

I have some ongoing experiments with the Oculus under PTBs control and am quite happy with it, but SMIs eyetracker with a sampling of 60 Hz for the DK2 wasn't quite what I've been needing.



Now the higher sampling rate of 250 Hz on the Vive's eyetracker makes this more interesting for me, but I would love to stick with PTB further.

Mario, would the PsychVRHMD Driver work just as 'plug and play' on the Vive as it does with the Oculus?
Could anyone else already gather experience in this?




Thanks and best,

Milosz
3

On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 10:11 AM, milosz.krala@... [PSYCHTOOLBOX] <PSYCHTOOLBOX@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
Now that I reread your answer - I don't know any details about the SMI Eyetrackers or their Linux compatibility.

No, they're not. Windows only
4
Dear all,

I decided to post here as my question falls under the same category as Milosz's, though it's about a different VR device (so apologies if this is technically not the appropriate thread for my question).

As you may know, there's a new VR HMD on the market, Fove ( https://www.getfove.com/ ), which has a built in 120 Hz binocular eye tracking. This HMD is more than an order of magnitude cheaper than what SMI is offering with their Oculus and Vive headsets with custom-added eye tracking, and so I wouldn't be surprised if many researchers were thinking about trying to adopt it for studies combining VR and eye tracking.

The labs I work with (Engel lab and Legge lab at U of Minnesota) have recently purchased a Fove, and so I'm wondering whether there are any plans to add PTB support for it (or at least if it's on your radar, Mario)? I understand that the answer will depend on the adoption rate / demand, so to that end, this post is partly intended to bring some attention to this device and to express that at least our lab would be interested in it receiving PTB support. 

Finally, I am also curious more generally about whether there are any updates on whether/when to expect addition of support for other HMDs besides Oculus DK2 for PsychVRHMD?  

Thanks for any info related to the above questions, and thanks for all your hard work, Mario (and everyone else contributing to PTB development)!

Best,
Juraj