How HTC Vive Accidentally Created Mo-Cap Tech 10 Times Cheaper Than the Industry Standard
Five years ago, when “Rogue One” was nominated for an Oscar for Best Visual Effects, the team at HTC Vive was surprised to find that they were part of the story. In a BBC documentary about the execution of the movie’s fast-paced space scenes, a member of the effects team from Industrial Light & Magic showed off the way they used a real-time virtual reality camera to explore the imaginary environment before staging shots within it. That camera took the form of an iPad with a Vive controller stuck on the back.
That was a shock to the developers of the virtual reality headset, which Taiwanese smartphone company HTC and video game developer Valve released one year earlier, but it opened a whole new potential to the technology that has only just started to take root — a cost-effective approach to motion-capture technology that could revolutionize the way stories are told.
When the initial HTC Vive headset was released, the trackers existed only inside a pair of controllers used to track hand movements, but the company fast-tracked the release of the HTC Vive Tracker, a wireless tracking device that can be attached to any object and mimic its movement in virtual environments. While other VR companies have released trackers of their own since then, Vive remains the industry standard, and more recently has shown new potential as a cheaper version of motion-capture technology used by studios.
... Trackers can be attached to hands, feet, and the waist to fully encapsulate the range of human motion. ...
See the full story here: https://www.indiewire.com/2021/08/htc-vive-trackers-motion-capture-filmmaking-1234657119/
