It looks like backers of Sixense‘s successful STEM Kickstarter campaign may soon receive news of their long-awaited motion controllers. In the mean time, Sixense have released footage of the game that will ship to supporters of the campaign, an extremely cool looking in-house developed archery game which of course takes full advantage of STEM’s wireless positional input.
The game places you in a verdant scene, surrounded by improbable looking archery targets. As the player scores more and more points, more difficult targets appear – flying, spinning, distant balloons and even culminating [spoilers] in the appearance of a mysterious tentacled creature being summoned (by you) from pool of water before being used as more target practice.
Clearly designed to showcase Sixense STEM’s wireless motion input prowess, it’s a reminder that the company’s technology still offers a pretty compelling input package – despite it’s lengthy development and testing window meaning that competitors such as Oculus Touch and HTC Vive’s SteamVR controllers are poised to steal STEM’s thunder.
The video was released as part of the latest update, sent to backers of the STEM campaign in which the company stated “We just want to let you know that we are in final testing and will be sending out a more detailed update next week.” The original campaign hit its target way back in September 2013 and since then has hit multiple production and testing snags in bringing the input devices to market.
As a backer myself, I’m very much looking forward to finally getting my hands on what, even after all this time, looks like a great way to interact with virtual worlds.