Razer Hydra
The Razer Hydra is a 3D tracking-based game controller developed by Sixense Entertainment in partnership with Razer. It uses a kind of electromagnetic tracking to work. It has six degrees of freedom.
It has a precision, as stated by its developers, of 1 mm and 1°. The original release is wired,[1] but a wireless version was also in development.[2]
It was manufactured at Pegatron in China.[3]
A partnership with Valve was announced and fulfilled, alongside Intel.
The Razer Hydra was released through Steam and Razer's official website for $140. It was sold in a bundle with Portal 2, which has exclusive content that works with the controller.[4] Support for many other games is either implemented or planned.
The unbranded prototype was known as Sixense TrueMotion.
Hardware[edit]
The controller contains two boards, one with the 3 sensing coils, two AD8656 dual opamps and an ADG794 electronic switch/mux with 4 channels.[5]
The coils that the Razer Hydra controller uses are a set of three standard through-hole inductors, which appear to be standard power inductors. Their inductance is about 20 microhenries (uH) each.
The controller can be disassembled, removing as much as possible, leaving only the sensing coils. However, a small mod is required for this to work properly.[6]
The magnetic signals are sent as follows: There are three pulses, each 2ms long, followed by a pause of 2ms again, giving about 125Hz refresh rate. The three pulses correspond to each of the three crossed coils in the base – they are pulsed in series.[5]
Supported games and applications[edit]
The Razer Hydra has been showcased 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.
See: Games compatible with Razer Hydra
References[edit]
- ↑ "Razer Hydra Store Page." Razer. Razer, n.d. Web. 17 June 2011. http://store.razerzone.com/store/razerusa/en_US/pd/productID.228849000.
- ↑ "Joystiq Impressions at CES." Joystiq, Joystiq.com, 8 Jan. 2011, http://www.joystiq.com/2011/01/08/razer-hydra-impressions-super-precise-motion-controllers-make-i/.
- ↑ "File:Plume-master.zip". 2025-09-25. https://www.xvrwiki.org/wiki/File:Plume-master.zip.
- ↑ "Razer Hydra Gets Own Portal 2 Version". Rockpapershotgun.com. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/01/09/razer-hydra-gets-own-portal-2-version/.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Razer Hydra HMD hack « Jan's bits and bytes". 2012-09-20. http://janoc.rd-h.com/archives/212.
- ↑ "Razer Hydra HMD hack – Jan's bits and bytes". 2012-09-16. https://www.jciger.com/archives/212.