Mocap sabers

Beat up your friend with foam swords on an OptiTrack stage

This is a prototype VR game where two players fight with foam swords on a motion capture stage. The mocap data is streamed to the VR headsets to drive lightsabers and full-body characters in VR.

I work with some pretty awesome people. VR light saber battles at the @PurdueRCAC Envision Center 20th anniversary open house today 🤖 ⚔️

Best use of PVC pipe and pool noodles that I’ve ever seen, but the VR goggles and mocap suit obviously take it to a whole other level 👌🏼 pic.twitter.com/jqHgVm2TUJ
— Paul Branham (@BoilerPaulie) April 17, 2024

Tracking & calibration

OptiTrack's official plugin for Unity annoyingly supports neither 1:1 skeletal tracking nor Android & Meta Quest. I instead modified an old third-party plugin compatible with Android ➔ to support 1:1 skeletal tracking and the latest version of OptiTrack's NatNet API.

While OptiTrack supports VR headset tracking, the Quest headset already tracks itself and with much less latency. I initially calibrate the headset to stage space once. The headset is responsible for its own tracking from then on.

Visuals

Thanks

I'd like to thank my friends Hazel ➔ & Matthew ➔ for testing and also coming on a late-night run to buy pool noodles for the swords. Thank you!

I threw together several CC0 assets from PolyHaven.com ➔ and AmbientCG.com ➔ to create a placeholder lava planet environment. The robot model is a Unity standard asset ➔.