SteamVR Base Stations for Sim Racing (2026)

I’m a sim racer and amateur racer with a passion for Motorsport, good racecraft and the technical and setup aspect of sim racing.

Featured image: Pimax Dream Air on my race seat

Today we’re looking at Lighthouse tracking, specifically on the Dream Air – whether it’s the right choice for static, seated gaming like flight or sim racing, what the pitfalls are, how to get set up, and whether you need Lighthouses in your life in 2026. Two base stations is preferable for sim racing and, if like me, you still have monitors, you need to mount them in a way the monitors can’t block tracking.

Pimax Dream Air hanging on a Sim Dynamics race seat — My Dream Air Lighthouse hanging on my race seat

Lighthouse tracking works from base stations, small boxes that sweep the room with infrared lasers, and sensors on the headset use the timing of those sweeps to work out where you are. SLAM works the other way round, with cameras on the headset mapping the room and the maths running on your PC.

The Dream Air Lighthouse and the Dream Air SLAM share the same Sony Micro-OLED panel at 3840 x 3552 per eye, the same lenses, the same weight of under 170 g and the same Tobii eye tracking. You choose the tracking when you buy, and there’s no faceplate to swap later, so a Dream Air SLAM can never use base stations. On a wheel you don’t need controllers with either one, and the Dream Air Lighthouse ships without them anyway.

	Dream Air Lighthouse	Dream Air SLAM
Tracking	Base stations (Lighthouse), outside-in	Cameras on the headset (SLAM), inside-out
Base stations	Required, not included (1.0 or 2.0)	Not used
Controllers in the box	None	Two
Tracking CPU cost	Lower	Higher, as it’s worked out on the PC: 5-6% more CPU in MSFS 2024 and 6-8% in ACC (Pimax’s benchmark)
Dark room	Works	Needs light and texture
Passthrough	No	Yes
Panel, lenses, weight	Same	Same
Best for	A fixed cockpit with somewhere high to mount two stations	No stations to mount, in a well-lit room

How many base stations, and where to mount them in a cockpit

I have two Base Station 2.0s on my main sim. In my case that’s on the shelves above my sim, angled to peer down into the cockpit. That way the monitors can’t block them.

Diagram: a base station mounted above the monitors and angled down into the cockpit, so the screens can’t block its view.

Valve’s own guidance is to mount base stations above head height, about 2 m up, angled down 30-45°, no more than 5 m apart and on something solid. On a sim rig, vibration upsets a 2.0 station, and its LED flashes blue when it can’t hold steady, so think twice before bolting one to the frame of a direct drive rig.

Monitors block the line of sight, and their screens reflect the lasers too, which is why Valve lists monitor screens alongside windows, mirrors and TVs as things that interfere with tracking.

Once your stations are placed, leave them alone, because moving one means re-running room setup.

Pimax Play device page showing one base station detected and a second greyed out — Pimax Play’s device page, with one base station detected and the second greyed out

Is one base station enough for a seated rig?

It can be. Valve says one base station can be sufficient for seated play but still recommends two. People running a single station find tracking holds while they’re facing it, then drops out when they turn their head a long way from it. For sim racing I’d still go with two.

Setting up base stations: channels, power and standby

On my rig, the pitfalls were just the inconvenience of early config, getting the Lighthouses positioned properly and the extra power cables for each. That’s a bit of a peeve for me as I’m already inundated with cables! Each base station needs its own mains socket, and none of them connect to your PC.

Once your base stations are positioned and powered, install Pimax Play and SteamVR, then let the firmware update and restart. Every Pimax headset that’s come through my office has been awkward on its first start, and the Dream Air Lighthouse was no different. Pimax Play had found the base station, but I couldn’t power the Dream Air Lighthouse on. The power button sat there with a red light tempting me to press it (which of course I did) – no bueno. I unplugged the USB and plugged it back in, and after that everything just worked.

Pimax box label reading Model: Dream Air Lighthouse — The Dream Air Lighthouse box label

Channels are each station’s ID, so that two stations don’t clash. On Base Station 2.0 you set them in SteamVR over Bluetooth. Head to Devices > Base Station Settings > Configure Base Station Channels and let Auto-Configure do the work for you. On Base Station 1.0 it’s the button on the back.

SteamVR’s base station power management is off by default, which means the stations stay on and emitting whenever they’re plugged in. It works over Bluetooth, and Dream Air owners switch their stations off with OVR Lighthouse Manager, the Base Station Companion app or smart plugs.

It’s a trade-off – well-configured Lighthouse tracking with the SBoys3 driver works really well after you’ve tweaked the positioning and you have good coverage.

Does Lighthouse tracking use more CPU than SLAM?

My intuition, based on what I’d read, was that the Lighthouses add CPU load, and I’d have pointed anyone on less than a 12th-gen Intel CPU at the SLAM Dream Air SE. I checked, and I stand corrected. Pimax’s own benchmark on YouTube says the opposite.

Pimax Dream Air SLAM headset on its box, tracking cameras on the front corners — The Dream Air SLAM, with its tracking cameras on the corners of the front

SLAM is worked out on your PC, so it’s SLAM that costs you CPU. On a Ryzen 9 5950X with an RTX 4090, Pimax measured 5-6% more CPU on the tracking process in MSFS 2024 and 6-8% more in ACC, which came out at a frame or two at most. On an old RTX 2080 laptop, SLAM head tracking on its own kept up with Lighthouse – it was the two SLAM controllers that froze games, and on a wheel you won’t be using them. Even so, Pimax’s advice from that test is that an older CPU is better off with the Dream Air Lighthouse.

As with all things VR, CPU spec is as important as GPU spec. A powerful GPU bottlenecked by the CPU will give you the worst of all worlds. If you’re running, say, an i7-14700K, you’ll have no problem whatsoever.

Tracking quality in a seated rig

Reviewers split on seated head tracking. MRTV and VR Flight Sim Guy find Lighthouse the steadier of the two, while others find SLAM holds its own sat down, on the Dream Air SLAM and the Dream Air SE alike. My take is that a well set up SLAM beats a marginally placed Lighthouse, and the wobble lives in the controllers, not the head tracking.

Lighthouse works in the dark, because the headset is tracking the stations’ infrared lasers rather than the room. SLAM needs light and texture to see by, and it starts to drift in a dim room, in front of glowing monitors or facing a blank wall.

Some Dream Air Lighthouse owners have reported micro-jitter, and Pimax said in July that it was following up with its engineering team. Other owners measure none at all.

Base Station 1.0 vs 2.0, and which to buy

A Valve Base Station 2.0 on a white worktop with its power supply — My Base Station 2.0 on the worktop, with its power supply and cable

If you’re buying base stations new, buy 2.0. Base Station 2.0 has a 160° x 115° field of view and 7 m of range, and you can run up to four in a room. Base Station 1.0 tops out at two, and the pair have to see each other to stay in sync unless you run a sync cable between them.

The Dream Air Lighthouse works with both. Base Station 1.0 needed a channel fix early on (B and C for two stations, per Pimax staff), and one report of 1.0 stations flashing green was still unresolved in August.

	Base Station 1.0	Base Station 2.0
Field of view	120°	160° x 115°
Range	Stations up to 5 m apart	7 m range
Stations per room	Two	Up to four
Sync	Stations must see each other, or share a sync cable	No line of sight needed between stations
Channels	Button on the back	SteamVR over Bluetooth
Power	One mains socket each	One mains socket each

The stations that came with a Valve Index are 2.0s, and they carry straight over to a Dream Air Lighthouse. New 2.0s are harder to find. On 25 September 2026 Valve’s store listed them at $149, but out of stock, which leaves other retailers and the used market. Check the price at the checkout rather than trusting a figure in an article, including mine!

Can you mix 1.0 and 2.0 base stations?

No. Valve and Pimax both say never to mix the generations in one setup, so pick one and stick with it.

What about flight sim?

For flight sim, just go for the Crystal Super with the 57 PPD (pixels per degree) lens, or the Crystal Light. Superior FOV (field of view) and better, less fiddly tracking. Both track by SLAM out of the box, so there are no base stations to place.

Loading products...

Pimax discount codes: use SIMRACINGCOCKPIT for 2% off, or SIMRACINGCOCKPIT25 for $25 off, at pimax.com.

VR Flight Sim Guy sees it the other way and prefers the Dream Air Lighthouse for flight, because it never loses tracking when he looks down at the consoles and it works in the dark.

So which should you choose?

If you already own base stations from a Valve Index or a Vive Pro, buy the Dream Air Lighthouse and reuse them.

Loading products...

If you’re starting from nothing and want the easiest setup, with no stations to mount and no extra power cables, pick SLAM. The Sony panelled Dream Air SLAM comes with controllers. At the budget end, the Dream Air SE has its own 2560 x 2560 Micro-OLED panel, and you can have it with SLAM or Lighthouse tracking.

If your CPU is on the older side, pick Lighthouse. With triples in the way, Lighthouse only works out if the stations can go high above them – otherwise go SLAM, keep the room lit and give the cameras more to look at than a wall of screens.