Mike Sutherland of YEI Technology talks about the PrioVR immersive body suit, which aims to immerse your whole body into VR experiences. YEI Technology is bringing this technology that they’ve been developing for the military into the consumer gaming market.

They’re hoping to provide the first, consumer-grade motion capture suit with their pro version for $429, and also have a Core full-body option for causal gamers for $369, as well as an upper-body only Lite version for $289.

Mike talks about succeeding with the PrioVR Kickstarter the second time around, their custom motion controllers, game development plans, interest in finger tracking, target time for suiting up, and more details about their 3-Space Sensor technology.

Their website describes these sensors as “miniature, high-precision, high-reliability, Attitude and Heading Reference Systems (AHRS) / Inertial Measurement Units (IMU). Each YEI 3-Space Sensor uses triaxial gyroscope, accelerometer, and compass sensors in conjunction with advanced processing and on-board quaternion-based Kalman filtering algorithms to determine orientation relative to an absolute reference in real-time.”

For one of the most comprehensive reviews about this technology, then I’d recommend checking out this epic review of SVVRCon gear by Oliver “Doc_Ok” Kreylos.

Reddit discussion here.

TOPICS

0:00 – Intro. PrioVR first consumer level, full immersive gaming suit. Bring VR into the next stage by bringing your body into VR

0:39 – Low-cost motion capture suit. Working with motion sensors for the military, and bringing that technology into the consumer level. Core suit configuration. Pro version for motion capture for indie developers AAA game toolsets into the hands of independent devs. Also an option for upper body suit for seated VR

2:07 – Arm controls. Currently have an aftermarket controller, and they’ll be shipping with custom controllers.

2:52 – Kickstarter history. Launched unsuccessful Kickstarter. Learned lessons, and focused on improving the suit, and did better marketing.

3:44 – Using PrioVR for motion capture. Pro suit with 17 sensors cost around $400. Get rich character animations. They have an existing motion capture studio, and have tooling around that

4:36 – Game titles that will be available. Have an in-house dev team, and getting it into the hands of developers as quickly as possible. Some partnerships developing.

5:32 – What type of user interactions are possible? Doing full-joint reconstruction rather than inverse kinematics. Keyboards or mice doesn’t work in 3D. Use your hands and reach out, and it’s more intuitive for the non-gamers. Don’t have to remember buttons

6:56 – Finger tracking plans? Just focusing on the suit for now, but interested in it.

7:19 – Talk about the types of sensors and fusion system that you’re using. Untethered experience and range.

8:07 – How long does it take to suit up? Working with design companies to get it easier to get on and off than alpha suit. Target is 15 seconds.

8:44 – What type of latency can you get. 9:26 – What’s the roadmap for when these will be available. Later this year for dev kits.

10:08 – Price points for the different products. $289 upper body. $369 core suit. Pro suit $429. First time for sub-$1000 motion capture suit will be available. More info PrioVR.com. Available for pre-order now.

Theme music: “Fatality” by Tigoolio