CES 2014: Ohio Company is Bringing Military-Grade Motion Sensors to Gaming

In a town called Portsmouth, Ohio, a company called Yost Engineering (YEI) Technology has quietly been making motion sensing devices for military, aerospace, industrial, robotics, and other commercial motion capture uses, including rotoscoping for the film/video industry. Now they want to bring this same technology to gaming. They tried a Kickstarter campaign in 2013, but only got a little less than 1/2 of their target amount pledged. They're going to do Kickstarter again, starting Feb. 14, 2014 -- and this time, they've been working on PR before asking for money. You can see what they're up to in gaming sensor development at www.priovr.com/. Or go to the main YEI Technology corporate site, which has a whole bunch of free downloads in addition to the usual product blurbs.

Comments

Tried it & it's awesome

[loopdloop]

I was at CES and got to put on their sensor suit with an Oculus Rift. It's the best immersion I've experienced so far. The ability to independently rotate your hands, biceps, and forearms is hugely beneficial.

Because the system isn't based on optical tracking, there are no occlusion issues. The biggest drawback is that it takes a couple minutes to "suit up". They need to devise a way to attach the sensors to you without all the straps. Also, I've heard people report that there can be sensor drift problems. I didn't experience that, though.

Overall, I was super impressed with the experience.

-Matt Sonic / virtualreality.io