Razer, Valve, and Sixense Working On Motion Control For PC Games

An anonymous reader sends along this excerpt from Shacknews: "Gaming hardware developer Razer has announced a new multi-year partnership with Sixense Entertainment and Valve Software to deliver a '...revolutionary true-to-life, next-generation motion sensing and gesture recognition controller for PC gaming.' Razer, Valve, and Sixense, along with a selection of PC OEM partners, are aiming to produce '...ultra-precise one-to-one motion sensing controllers that use electromagnetic fields to track precise movements along all six axes.' Each controller will reportedly track its orientation within a single degree, and detect positioning within one millimeter. Thankfully, the device will be compatible with both current and future generation PC games."

Re:six axes?

[BESTouff]

They're nos axis, but rotation instead of translation along the same axis. They're called Degrees of Freedom, so a game allowing uncosntrained movement is 6DoF.

Re:Casual Gaming

[imakemusic]

Steering wheels are the superior controller for driving cars. Joysticks are superior for flying planes. The whole argument is dumb.

Re:Electromagnetic tracking?

[jeti]

Only the surrounding fields change a lot over time. They change when you turn on a light, when the compressor of the fridge turns on and whatnot. Also the EM input I tried did lag a lot because so many samples had to be averaged to compensate for errors.

Re:Nice concept

[IBBoard]

Not only that, but you need the space. My wife (g/f at the time) got a PS2 with the EyeToy and the exercise games. Great idea, and it worked okay in a sufficiently lit room, but not ideal in a student flat. Even if we moved the sofa out of the way as far as we could and stood on the opposite side of the room we were still too close and furniture/walls were still in the way. Some of these controllers don't need quite that much room, but you've still got obstacle issues.

Also, for anyone who has watched Michael McIntyre's latest standup DVD, don't forget about the "youngest son meets daddy playing tennis on the Wii" sketch ;)

Re:six axes?

[IrquiM]

axis are better than "spacial directions" or whatever the alternative was...

Up / Down
Left / Right
Forward / Backwards

3 axis with 6 directions... "6 axis"

Re:six axes?

[Anonymous Coward]

But they are expressed as axes on the controller interface (to the system) as continuous values, thus defining a point in a six axis hyperspace.

Re:Casual Gaming

[robow]

You would still have to get an alignment, an alignment does more than center the wheel it adjusts the steer wheels on the car, wear causes the wheels to go to an incorrect caster and camber angle.