Sixense TrueMotion bringing 3D motion control to the PC

Razer is best known for its variety of gamer-centric peripherals. Today at CES they were showing off technology that right now is focused on gaming, but has a wide variety of other uses as well. The technology is actually developed by a company called Sixense, the technology being Sixense TrueMotion. It will be Razer branded and marketed when it is released, however.

Sixense TrueMotion, simply put, is motion control in a 3D space. It uses two controllers that interact with a base station using a very weak magnetic field. That way, unlike the motion controllers on video game consoles (the Wii, Xbox 360′s Natal and Sony’s wand), the controllers don’t need direct line of sight to use their full capabilities. In the tech demo shown, you could use the controllers in a variety of ways that will seem vaguely familiar to anyone who has used multitouch inputs. You can zoom in by holding a button and bringing the remotes closer together, zoom out by bringing them apart. All the motions are 1:1, so it will pick up every movement you make, exactly how you make it.

Right now the main focus of the Sixense controllers is gaming. The other demo was actually a Valve-created Left 4 Dead 2 demo that showed how the controllers could possibly be used for gaming. The results were impressive, especially considering the demo was built in only a few weeks. There are plenty of other applications, one example I was given was for media control, but everything is up to the developers. Sixense is hoping the controllers will ship sometime this year.

Read [Sixense]