Razer Hydra Brings Motion Control To PC Gamers

Zothecula writes "While motion controllers are becoming a staple for console gamers with the release of the Wii, PlayStation Move and Microsoft Kinect, PC gamers have been left wanting. Razer is looking to change that with its Hydra motion controller which has been developed specifically for PC gamers. Unlike console-based motion control systems, the Hydra uses magnetic tracking technology by way of a base station that emits a magnetic field that Razer says allows the exact location and orientation of the handheld controllers to be detected with millimeter accuracy."

Old school

[gr8_phk]

Great, now lets get the 3d head mounted display - which is where this type of tracker was originally used way back when - and get on with the real 3D environments. I played Dactyl Nightmare in the early 90's and have been waiting for that to arrive at home for like 16 years. And that was powered by what? An Amiga?

Re:millimeter accuracy

[Peteskiplayer]

Not from a magnetic field from any reasonable distance, not by itself, liars.

You need a whole slew of additional sensors to even get close to such accuracies.

The Polhemous Liberty and other devices have been around for a while now and offer 0.03" accuracy with 6DOF: http://www.polhemus.com/?page=Motion_Liberty [polhemus.com]

These only use a single sensor (for a single location, can use many with one base station for multiple points tracking), I've used them for motion tracking and they seem pretty accurate to me. I'm not sure what you consider reasonable range, but considering the Razer system is supposed to be used with a PC, I'm guess you're not counting in the 10s of metres. This system has an optional source which can get you 5 metres of accuracy from the base station.

These are quite expensive (in the thousands of pounds sterling) so would be interesting to see how Razer managed it on the cheap.