OptiTrack adds realism to shooting games in VR

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
April 9, 2017
Updated June 18, 2025
2 min

When you suit up for an OptiTrack demo, it feels pretty serious. First, the demo guy puts a very heavy machine gun in your hands. Then, he straps a backpack with a big battery onto your back. And then, you put on a VR headset.

I tried out the OptiTrack Active demo at the recent SVVR event in San Jose, Calif., and it was perhaps the most realistic experience I’ve had in a shooting game in VR. The demo used the OptiTrack technology with the Oculus Rift VR headset, a Striker VR faux assault gun, and an MSI VR One backpack PC. The setup was fairly heavy, and by the end of the demo, my arms were getting tired.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.