First off, I want to reiterate that I'm most excited about the lighthouse tracking system, it fits well with projects where I'd like to apply tracking, but my main objection is to your comment that it's an objectively superior design. All designs have pros and cons. Also, I realize I'm nit picking, but there's a couple inaccuracies in what you've said:

I'm not sure where you're getting the significantly more processing power; particularly if you're comparing to lighthouse. General image processing can add latency, but they've constrained the tracking problem, and it currently doesn't heavily utilize the CPU [1] . You can perform similar tracking cheaply with an ASIC like castAR does [2]. Lighthouse still has to perform sensor fusion with different time stamps for the tracker locations as I previously mentioned, which can also be processor intensive. I haven't done or seen any CPU usage comparisons between the two, but I believe they'd be comparable.

You are limited by the resolution of the camera, but you can still get subpixel accuracy when tracking. With lighthouse, you don't exactly get infinite resolution either, but I do think lighthouse takes the cake here. Once again though, it's the IMU that ultimately determines the accuracy.

Lighthouse being untethered is one of the more exciting things to me as it lends itself well to doing tracking in large event spaces.

The limiting factor for lighthouse isn't whether the laser is in range, but whether the LEDs are in range. In between each laser sweep, the IR LEDs flash, so that the tracking points know when to start timing [3]. I believe they've improved the distance of this flash in the consumer Vive, but they will still limit the distance.

Adding base stations does help improve accuracy, just as it does with constellation, but it won't improve precision. It only helps prevent issues with occlusion. However, adding more base stations won't improve the precision of the tracking device's location.

I believe the current lighthouse systems are still technically limited to two base stations, because of how they are time multiplexed. They're planning on frequency multiplexing which should allow this to grow without having to connect the base stations.

Also, lighthouse is susceptible to IR interference in ways that constellation isn't. They both utilize IR for their tracking, but since each tracker in the constellation system flashes a pattern, it's able to eliminate environmental IR. Lighthouse doesn't have a direct way to prevent IR interference that I'm aware of other than accounting for potential errors in their pose estimation.

Lighthouse also has moving parts, so there's a chance for mechanical failure. The motors are manufactured by Nidec [4] who are one of the largest manufacturers of hard drive motors, so they should be very high quality, but it is a potential point of failure.

Lastly, your statement "while this might be possible with the rift, the experience is likely not going to be as good as the Vive, and may be quite poor at times," seems to be entirely speculation. There are several tests with both single and multiple cameras that have performed room scale tracking exceptionally well. [5] [6] [7]

These are both great technologies that have their own strengths and weaknesses. I don't think there's one objective winner here. That being said, I'm looking forward to the updates to lighthouse that they've been talking about to make lighthouse viable for large event spaces, and I could even see a day where other IOT objects utilize lighthouse for tracking in ways that wouldn't be possible with constellation.

[1] http://uploadvr.com/oculus-cv1-positional-camera-efficient/
[2] http://www.theamphour.com/transcript-of-episode-147-absorpti...
[3] http://www.pcper.com/reviews/General-Tech/SteamVR-HTC-Vive-d...
[4] http://www.nidec.com/en-Global/product/news/2016/news0108-01...
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_HlXzELHgo
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXrJu-zOzm4
[7] http://uploadvr.com/room-scale-possible-testing-the-standing...