This consists of an obelisk which creates a magnetic field and two hand-held stick controllers with buttons. It's a 1:1 movement system; each movement of your hands is mirrored exactly onscreen, including tilting and rotating. A special port of Left 4 Dead 2 was used to demonstrate the system – the man from Razer held a samurai sword in front of him which twisted and turned, exactly mirroring his hand movements, before a quick swipe dealt with an incoming zombie. It also worked perfectly to aim and fire guns, and a quick flick of the wrist reloaded the weapon.
It was far more accurate and sensed a much greater degree of movement than a Wiimote. There are also non-gaming applications. The controls could be used to pick up and scale objects and move the camera in 3D rendering applications such as Maya – the fact that you have two controls designed to be used in a 3D space, as opposed to a 2D mouse, makes the task more natural and intuitive.
The second input device was the Peregrine (above). This is a glove with five touch sensors in each finger, which you activate by tapping with your thumb. Each sensor can be mapped to one of your keyboard's keys. It's designed to replace the keyboard when playing games, and we were shown a demonstration on the Warcraft III mod Defense of the Ancients. The hero character you control in DotA has several powers, all of which can be accessed by keyboard shortcuts. It's far quicker, though, to simply tap your thumb to one of your fingers when wearing the Peregrine. As success in real-time-strategy games is often measured in the number of actions you can perform per minute, saving vital milliseconds when accessing spells and special powers is a distinct advantage.
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