SpacePoint: Motion tracking technology

Let PNI's revolutionary SpacePoint™ technology take your motion-tracking controller a giant step forward. By enabling the creation of controllers with true, 360 degree pointing accuracy, full-range-of-motion tracking and no perceivable lag-time, SpacePoint technology provides an unbeatably accurate interface for high speed gaming controllers, and other motion-tracking devices such as novel remote controllers and augmented reality headwear. Plus, by making full use of the various sensors, new gesture-based controls can be developed, such as ZoomPoint™ in which twisting the controller either magnifies or shrinks rendered objects, or Point & Push™ wherein rolling the controller move's an object or the user's viewpoint forward or backward in a 3D environment.

Most motion-based controllers today incorporate accelerometers to measure linear acceleration and tilt, and/or gyroscopes to measure rotational acceleration and rotation angle. SpacePoint's additional inclusion of PNI's patented magnetometers provides an absolute and highly repeatable pointing reference by measuring Earth's magnetic field. Using the company's Kalman filtering algorithms, the magnetometers correct for gyroscope drift, remove accelerometer jitter, and eliminate the need to reset the controller during operation. With SpacePoint technology, developers now have the ability to provide exact and instantaneous pointing/posture references, giving gamers an unprecedented total-immersion experience.

SpacePoint Fusion module

Designed for easy integration, the SpacePoint Fusion module allows developers the opportunity to fully utilize and evaluate SpacePoint technology. The module streams raw accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer data, as well as meaningful orientation information represented as quaternions, through a USB/HID interface.

Features of the SpacePoint Fusion include:
  • One piece solution: no need to install a sensor bar or camera
  • Low latency: below human perception
  • 9 DOM: 3-axis magnetometer, 3-axis gyroscope, 3-axis accelerometer
  • Proprietary extended Kalman filter to fuse raw sensor data into meaningful orientation data.
  • Outputs can be raw sensor data and calculated quaternions
  • USB/HID interface: no need for custom drivers
  • Example VC++ program and application note
  • Example web-based Unity demos(v10.5)

For some ideas of games which can be created with the SpacePoint Fusion module, see our Game Jam webpage. Also, if you have a SpacePoint Fusion module, you can test it out with our FusionPointer and Seagull demo programs, and accompanying instructions.

Note that if you're developing a high volume product (>1M units/year) which will incorporate SpacePoint technology and you need an API solution, PNI can help support this approach. Please contact PNI for additional information.