The Oculus Rift has been available as a developer kit for quite some time now, and is already making a serious impact on the gaming world. Much like the Wii introduced stable and marketable motion controls to a mainstream audience, the Oculus Rift is quickly proving itself to be a stable and marketable VR experience.
Yet for all of its advancements, the Oculus Rift can only add realism through visual augmentation; a Plain Jane controller or a keyboard/mouse are still required to actually play the games. If we want to create a truly incredible VR experience without resorting to NerveGear helmets, we’re going to need a method of playing Oculus Rift games that matches up with the Oculus Rift’s visual-spatial style. It needs a yin to its yang.
Oculus Rift, Sixense has found your yin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b1ycwQIG7c
Sixense has developed a revolutionary wireless platform they call STEM. Much like the Oculus Rift can track the movement of the player’s head and calibrate the camera accordingly, STEM can track the player’s arm position and the controller’s to manipulate objects in-game. This means that turning your hand with STEM turns your in-game arm with stunning accuracy. The Oculus Rift provides the look of VR, and STEM provides the linked movements to complete the experience.
Sixense has stated that STEM will be an open platform, in order to draw developers to the device, as well as releasing an SDK for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
To fully experience STEM in action, players will have to buy both the Oculus Rift and Sixense’s motion trackers. STEM can currently be pre-ordered as a 2 tracker bundle for $299.99, a 3 tracker bundle for $389.99, or a 5 tracker bundle for $579.99. The Oculus Rift is sold separately.
What do you guys think of the STEM technology? Will it flop, will it fly? Leave a comment below!
