OptiTrack Delivers Missing Links For Arcade VR At SIGGRAPH 2017

OptiTrack has announced that it will be showcasing two key advancements in their wide-area VR tracking at SIGGRAPH 2017, continuing their commitment to make motion tracking for immersive VR experiences as plug-and-play as possible.

These advancements mark a massive leap forward in both the quality of the experiences and also the usability for single and multi-site deployments of out-of-home VR.

Full-Body Motion Tracking – Designed to deliver accurately moving avatars for each of the participants in a multiplayer VR game, the latest release from OptiTrack delivers a low latency, real-time stream of every player's position, orientation and skeletal pose in the entire playing area.

Now participants will see other players through their VR HMDs, significantly enhancing multi-user experiences. OptiTrack Active 'pucks' are attached to the hands and feet of each participant, delivering real time animation for each player present in the experience. The pucks are small (3.75" x 3.75") and lightweight (3 ounces), powered with a rechargeable battery and are designed for the rigors of VR Arcades.

Self Calibrating Tracking Systems – Significantly reducing the day to day operational complexity, as well as the staffing expertise required to run even the largest VR arcades, OptiTrack's continuous calibration removes the need for the "wand wave" that has been a daily component of motion capture and tracking systems for over 30 years.

No calibration maintenance is required following initial installation, and there is no longer a deterioration of the calibration over time. It simply produces the very best accuracy that OptiTrack is well known for 100% of the time.

Brian Nilles, OptiTrack's CSO, said: "Full-body motion tracking and self calibrating OptiTrack systems have been at the very top of the list for all of our VR arcade customers. The lack of a full-body tracking solution has been a glaring problem for consumers, who with today's VR experiences often see no avatar at all, or at best, a crude animation of others' activity in the play area. This market needed a high quality human tracking solution – with very little additional hardware on each participant, which makes OptiTrack Active the world's first all-in-one tracking solution for out-of-home VR.

"The introduction of self calibrating OptiTrack systems is a huge benefit for all of our customers, but is vitally important to location-based VR because it dramatically reduces the time and steps to prepare the experience each day, and of course, can now be operated by arcade staff rather than experienced technicians."

optitrack.com