A question for fellow Vive users about base stations

  • I was wondering where you sit with your yoke and pedals within the defined boundary rectangle. Do you sit right in front of one of the base stations/lighthouses, or are you in one of the "empty" corners with the base stations at 90 degree angles to you?

  • Hi Oldar, I’ve done both. My base stations are in the corners of my room and my desk is along one wall. I’ve been set up at my desk where one is behind me and to the right and the other is just to my left, and where I face one base station with the other behind me and not really seeing the headset until I turn to one side or the other. Performance and tracking has been fine both ways and when standing in the room doing room scale or just sitting in my office chair. Kind of unremarkable all the way around.

    I haven’t tried facing the empty corners routinely, though. I do at times when I get out of the cockpit to check out the aircraft and am looking around. I’m sometimes at the very corners of my room when I do that since the airplane cockpit area does a good job of filling my room. I can lose tracking if my shelving blocks one base station and I’m down to one and turn just right. I can’t get far enough out in the othe corner to do that since a file cabinet is in the way.

    I don’t know if I’ve answered what you’re looking for though.

    Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog, MFG Crosswind pedals, 2 dof Motion, Valve Index

  • Thanks for the replies guys. I have mine set up in the empty corner. I have mostly been using the Oculus for FS 2 over the last several months, so the two trackers have been right in front of me. Now that I am using the Vive Pro again I am finding that the cockpit seems to be jumping around during flight. I was wondering if having one of the of the base stations directly in front might stop that from happening. My base stations are admittedly further than five meters apart due to the size of my room, and that might be contributing to the problem.

  • It certainly could especially if a light fixture or ceiling fan blocks or partially blocks the view from one to the other since they synchronize optically. If that’s the case you can run that sync cable they came with and they don’t need to see each other at all. Or move one or the other so they can see each other. But having one directly in front of you is also fine and will make sure the headset always sees tracking sweeps.

    Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog, MFG Crosswind pedals, 2 dof Motion, Valve Index

  • I think I would need significant extension cord to be able to connect them, unless I ran the cable diagonally across the room. In any case they are unobstructed. As I just posted elsewhere, I have returned to the Oculus for now when using FS 2. I get stutters with the Pro in areas where I have made any but the smallest areas of cultivation. It breaks my heart to have to do this, but in truth I have been using the Oculus for FS 2 for the last seven months because it displays the text more clearly and gives slightly better performance than the original Vive. I have used the original Vive for all other gaming, and I will now use the Pro for that purpose.