We have been quiet lately, focusing on making the DecaMove standalone version.
We thought it would be a walk in the park process but turns out that the park was in the middle of a warzone.
We wish we had the amazing team of engineers working in Oculus, but we don’t, so our small team went underground for the last month focusing solely on this DecaMove version.
Many things needed to be reconsidered, some issues required different IC components and problems popped everywhere such as bad NRF reception when player is far away from the PC, NRF packets loss when player’s body blocks the line of sight between the unit and the dongle and re-pairing issues when this happens. On the software level, the inference service needed to run on the PC instead of the headset and it also required different integration with SteamVR.
But everything is now solved and the DecaMove standalone version is ready! with some cool new perks:
Small things:
- Playing area support is up to 10 meters from the PC – stable NRF reception.
- Calibration is rarely needed, the DecaMove can remain accurate for long play times.
- When calibration is needed, players just need to look straight and place their hands together for 2 seconds for a very quick calibration process when needed, no other input is needed.
- Stronger and more accurate Haptic engine – give sense of touch or interaction along the waist.
- Optional Heading UI overlay – displays an arrow that represents the hip heading over the game when needed (it’s good for practice) and a battery indicator.
And 2 big things:
- DecaMove now supports games on the platform level, which means that most of the games on SteamVR are supported. (a list of games we actually checked the device with will be posted soon)
- Everything is accessible – the DecaMove data and components are open for the game to use through the SDK
- Accurate rotation data can be used for better lower body IK
- Strong haptics can be triggered on interactions (i.e: taking out ammo magazine) or hit
- Button for extra control (i.e: show inventory)
We will start to ship the Blogger Edition next week and the first production batch right away after China is back from New year Holidays (1st of March).
