A new motion controller arrives ready to gain a foothold in our teams. This is Trinity Magnum, a low-cost pistol that offers functionality similar to Sixense STEM or PrioVR within its limitations. It requires an external solution such as Kinect or a webcam to work and includes 1 trigger, 2 analog joysticks and 4 touch buttons.
Trinity Magnum is a motion controller designed specifically for virtual reality applications. It allows you to unlink the weapon from sight, as we have seen in Half-Life 2 with the Razer Hydra, and we can use a weapon in each hand to simulate two pistols, a sword and a shield, the controls of a spaceship or anything we can think of. The positioning accuracy and latency will depend to a large extent on the optical device used, since although Trinity Magnum has a 9-axis IMU, if we want absolute positioning we will have to use an external device that is not included in the price.
The Trinity Magnum Developer Kit will be compatible with the Oculus Rift camera, both the DK2 and the CV1 (that is the intention of the creators), in addition to PSEye, Kinect and a wide variety of webcams. The better the camera, the more accurate the tracking will be. Trinity VR has chosen a scalable and open system, OpenCV, which will be compatible even with devices that are not yet on the market, and we will be able to use it with Unity, Unreal Engine, Windows, Mac and Linux.
The campaign ends on August 20 and we will be able to get a Trinity Magnum for $ 80, with December of this year being the expected shipping date if all deadlines are met (a rare thing in hardware developed on Kickstarter, as we all know well). It will also be accompanied by some compatible titles such as Quail Hunt VR, Boot Camp and Z0ne.
