Check out our review of the prototype of the Sixense stem wireless tracker
It is brought to you by Maarten van Grinsven, CEO of VisionaiR3D and inventor of the Simulation Cube.
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Please understand that this is a prototype and not the final product.
let's take a look at the system itself
here we have the base station with the trackers included
With this prototype we have 1 headtracker and 2 joysticks included
the system can be booted up by pressing the button on the front
and you can connect the trackers by pressing the sixense button on the trackers.
The headtracker or "stem pack" turned out way bigger than I expected but this is still a prototype, maybe the final version will be smaller.
Syncing the trackers to the base station takes about 15 seconds.
the base station seems to make a high pitched noise when turned on that can be distracting.
Here we have the sixense config utillity:
Here we can set different parameters like player height, sitting height offset and base location settings
so you can easily adjust settings for different use locations or different persons using the system.
After booting up we connect the stempack to the oculus rift by sliding it in the provided clip-on
and we put the head mounted display.
The base station and controllers show up in the visualization. so it's really easy to find them even when you're wearing the rift. once you have taken the controllers and you're far enough away from the base station. the base station and controllers disappear, and you will only see your hands.
It's really nice to be able to see and use your hands in VR as it adds a lot to the feeling of presence. even when using the robot avatar, it feels way more like you are "there" , just because you can see yourself.
having 6 axis of freedom or full body VR as some may call it, adds way more freedom of movement in VR. Make sure you have a safe zone where you work with this system, as it is real easy to completely lose track of the surrounding area. There is an option in the Sixense software to define a safety zone, but we haven't tried it out yet. The 6 degrees of freedom really encourage you to make use of the environment like by hiding behind something and pop out guns blazing.
Rotational and positional tracking actually works very good. And I haven't noticed any lag that's discomforting. Sometimes there is some drift on the stempack when it's not in use and is just lying on the table, but a quick shake seems to fix this, and we had no problems with drift with the trackers while "in use."
The range is improved a lot over the razer hydra. The hydra only seemed reliable until about 50 cm away from the base station. moving away further than that introduced a lot of jitter. The stem can reach about 2 meters away from the base station until any jitter appears.
When inside the range of the base station, the trackers perform very smooth and there was no noticeable jitter, The stem performs way better than the flock of birds tracker. and tracking of the stem seems quite precise and responsive.
There were problems with the stem passing closely near the base station and the positional tracking seemed bending towards the middle. but this could be because of magnetic disturbance in the room, or the adjusting filter for this distortion. we will test different rooms soon to pinpoint this error. Maybe it can be fixed by adding more base stations and increase the resolution this way.
Another error that occurred sometimes is that the player height offset is wrong sometimes when starting an application. restarting the app seems to fix it. Please note that this is a prototype and all software is still in beta version.
The Unity software for the stem seems heavily focused on the Rift and GearVR, which is a shame in my opinion as the system could also be used for motion capture, Or would work great on non head mounted displays like 3D monitors, powerwall or Cave like displays. of course all the provided software is still in beta stage and all this could change upon release.
Although it may take longer than expected Sixense seems to be on the right track to deliver what they promised, a wireless 6 degrees of freedom tracker that requires no line of sight and actually works.
Background music: Kirill Pokrovsky
