Razer Hydra
motion and orientation detection game controller developed by Sixense Entertainment in partnership with Razer USA
The Razer Hydra (previously known as Sixense TrueMotion) is a motion and orientation detection game controller developed by Sixense Entertainment, a company founded in 2007, in partnership with Razer USA. It uses a weak magnetic field to detect the absolute position and orientation of the controllers with a precision, as stated by its developers, of 1 mm and 1°; it has six degrees of freedom. The original release is wired, but a wireless version was also in development.
The game controller has been showcased many times with different video games and 3D modeling applications, most prominently Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Portal 2, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 2, World of Goo, Call of Duty: Black Ops and Half-Life 2.
A partnership with Valve was announced, and said company appears as a partner, alongside Razer and Intel. No word has been said by the game developer but they helped Valve modify Left 4 Dead 2 and other Valve games to be played with the Razer Hydra Motion control, and an official SDK is available for download in Steam's 'Tools' page.
It was subject to a demo under the name Sixense Truemotion and tested to a close focus group of PlayStation Underground Members in August 2008, where its full functionality in various types of games was shown.
The Razer Hydra was released through Steam and Razer's official website on June 16, 2011, for US$139.99. It was sold in a bundle with Portal 2, which has exclusive content for those with the controller. Support for many other games is either implemented or planned. According to a forum post, from December 2010, Sixense is also working on musical control with the controller.
The public source identifies “Razer Hydra” as motion and orientation detection game controller developed by Sixense Entertainment in partnership with Razer USA. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Razer, Hydra and motion.
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This entry incorporates text from “Razer Hydra” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.