Former Oculus VP of Engineering Shows Long Range VR Tracking System

Leap Motion's new SDK has also been getting positive reviews.

http://blog.leapmotion.com/orion/

It has taken several years but it looks like this technology might finally be ready for general commercial use. Hopefully, we can use it for more than gaming.

From the article I could not figure out how it determines the full XYZ position of the retro-reflective object. Clearly it is possible to determine the ray along which the retro-reflective object will be, but how does it determine its depth? I do not see the article mention anything about time-of-flight measurements for the laser or that you need a stereo setup that will triangulate the position.

The article shortly mentions needing two retro-reflective objects to determine the XYZ. But do you then need two lasers, or does one laser quickly alternative between the two objects?

Edit: just re-read the article. The idea is indeed to use two base stations or a second marker.

That makes me wonder about the scalability of this solution. What about the typical HMD + 2 6DOF controller setup? 6 Base stations?

I haven't yet tried a modern VR system, but that's some crazy low latency. I know Mr Carmack is all about low latency :)