Wonder if I can do Oculus Quest + PC Link + Index controllers. Don't really want to buy an Index, but the controllers look really nice. Also considering Quest since my biggest gripe before was the wired headset and how heavy it was overall.
I'm not sure about the index controllers with a Quest but the game is supported on the Quest via the link cable it seems: https://half-life.com/en/alyx/vr
Basically anything the Rift can do, the Quest can do too.
So I'm assuming that means that Valve programs this in a way that dictates the hardware, instead of having an abstraction layer that accepts player position, viewpoint and hand inputs regardless of the hardware?
Is that something you have a source to confirm?
I would like to think that if Quest is going to release a way to hook up to the PC to play SteamVR, they'll be sending all that positional data from the headset tracking to the PC through the link.
No, there's an abstraction layer [0], the problem is the quest and valve's controllers use incompatible methods to track position. The Vive/Index uses its camera to detect the motion of fixed markers (the lighthouses), while the Quest analyzes the surrounding environment directly. The Quest's cameras are looking for lights on the controller to track it, while the controller's cameras are looking for the lighthouse's lights to track themselves.
> The Vive/Index uses its camera to detect the motion of fixed markers (the lighthouses)
This is inaccurate.
The lighthouses scan the room with lasers. The dimples on the Vive and its controllers detect the very precise timings of getting hit by the lasers from the lighthouses and derive their location and orientation relative to the lighthouses.
This is how the Vive supports easily adding Vive tracker pucks to the room to add body tracking to games like VRChat. The lighthouses are passive and don't care that there are more devices to track, as each device tracks itself.
