(Road To VR) Dualsense's Impressive Motion Tracker in Action

[Uzupedro]

Posted by McFly on the Dualsense OT, I think it's worth a new thread since this is pretty crazy.

https://www.roadtovr.com/watch-ps5-dualsense-controller-imu-motion-tracking/

While the PS5 DualSense controller doesn't currently allow for position (6DOF) tracking, its rotational (3DOF) tracking is very impressive thanks, apparently, to a stellar IMU inside

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Sony seems to have found some ultra-precise IMU because, even without any external reference point, the DualSense controller seems almost devoid of drift. That's counter to my experience with PSVR devices in the past. Even with external tracking from the PS4 camera, I've noticed plenty of drift from the headset, PS Move, and PS Aim in various games.

While playing in 'Cooling Springs' in Astro's Playroom the game allowed me to 'inspect' an object I found by rotating my controller in space, which would then rotate the object on screen. This gave me a good chance to test out the DualSense motion tracking.

No matter how violently I tried to shake and twist the controller, the on-screen object never lost its 'forward' direction—even without an external camera aiding in the tracking. I even sat the controller down in a random orientation for 30 minutes, and then compared the position of the object before and after, and found hardly any change. This shows that the controller's IMU has very little internal drift and noise.​

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You'll surely notice the latency in the video, but considering this isn't a VR application (and therefore not tuned for latency) I'm not terribly worried about that.

The really impressive thing we're seeing here is the controller seems to remember its forward direction with absolutely no problem, even without an external point of reference. With PS4's DualShock controller (as well as PSVR, PS Aim, and PS Move), the PS4 camera provides the external frame of reference to ensure the devices can maintain an absolute forward direction.

From an IMU alone, knowing a device's downward direction is pretty trivial because gravity offers a strong directional force which can be detected reliably by an accelerometer. While a gyroscope can reliably tell you when an object is rotating around its axis, it's still doesn't have any explicit understanding of 'forward', which means its susceptibility to drift is equal to its margin of error.

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While not as strong as gravity, there is another force that can be used to help reliably maintain a forward heading: the Earth's magnetic field. Some modern IMUs incorporate magnetometers to do just that, and it seems like the IMU in the DualSense controller may now include a magnetometer—or perhaps a much more precise one than was available previously.

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[Ryengeku]

But we can't use it for VR......

 

[Thiago]

"DualSense controller seems almost devoid of drift"

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Heh.

 

[Equanimity]

The lack of drift in this footage is simply amazing.

 

[NLCPRESIDENT]

PS3? What game is that?

 

[MercuryLS]

Heh.

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They gave that drift to Nintendo.

 

[Equanimity]

But we can't use it for VR......

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of course you can. There'll be seated controller based games for PSVR 2 as well.

 

[Deleted member 437]

I noticed with the ds4, that no matter how straight I held it, it would slowly start to drift after a little bit. Hope this wont have the same problem.

 

[Uzupedro]

PS3? What game is that?

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Astrobot's Playroom, the collectibles are accessories and products from Playstation 1 to 5

 

[Equanimity]

PS3? What game is that?

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Astro Bot's Playroom. It comes packed in with the PS5.

 

[NLCPRESIDENT]

Astrobot's Playroom, the collectibles are accessories and products from Playstation 1 to 5

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Astro Bot's Playroom. It comes packed in with the PS5.

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Oh.. I was perplexed for a second and thought I missed an Astro Bot game 😅

 

[Fat4all]

really interested in games that fully support gyro for aiming and the like, hopefully a lot of games will support it

 

[delete]

But we can't use it for VR......

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I think the point is that similar tech could be used in psvr2 to have positional tracking without a camera.

 

[jotun?]

I have significant drift issues with the DS4 while playing Astrobot VR, but that kind of quick jerking/spinning motion is exactly what I use to REALIGN it. The drift happens when it's not moving so much. I don't see this doing anything in particular that the PS4/DS4 wouldn't match

 

[zero71]

There seems to be quite significant latency though.

 

[Neoxon]

Once again…

To PlayStation Studios & All Third-Party Developers: We want gyro aiming & flick stick as an option for PS5 shooters

I thought now would be the perfect time to revisit this topic since we're all seeing the DualSense in action for the first time. But the DualSense has a ton of impressive tech crammed inside of it. One of which it its gyroscope, which is likely at least as good as the DualShock 4's (place your...

www.resetera.com

 

[gofreak]

I think it was in the Easy Allies impressions, one of the commentators - someone apparently very skeptical of motion control - mentioned that the Dualsense in Astro Bot was the first time motion control 'felt right' to him. I think the NXGamer video also mentions that the motion control segments in that Astrobot level gave very precise control.

That's probably a function of a number of things, but maybe the quality of the motion sensor helps too.

 

[Uzupedro]

There seems to be quite significant lag?

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On the Article:

You'll surely notice the latency in the video, but considering this isn't a VR application (and therefore not tuned for latency) I'm not terribly worried about that.

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[Klokwerk]

I think the point is that similar tech could be used in psvr2 to have positional tracking without a camera.

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It will be usable in PSVR 1 too. It's just the PS5 camera you can't use. You need your PS4 camera and the free PS5 adapter.

 

[Optmst]

Jibb Smart rn

 

[Akronis]

looks like there's a lot of latency there tbh

 

[zero71]

On the Article:

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Yes. I can read. I'm just wondering how useful motion control like that is in a non VR application, with so much latency.

 

[Doskoi Panda]

But we can't use it for VR......

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you can't use it for VR yet.

Plus, 'road to VR' is the name of the website this article was pulled from. The subject of the article is the Dualsense's improved and more stable motion sensing over the Dualshock 4. The article's author does mention at the end of the article that the quality of the Dualsense 5's motion sensing bodes well for the future of Playstation VR controllers. PS VR on PS4 used some pretty antiquated technology in innovative ways to enable inexpensive and accessible VR, but with PS5 VR likely being built from the ground up with new controllers and tracking tech, any new hint at what sort of tech they're utilizing on PS5 in general helps give us a better idea of what VR on PS5 might be like.

 

[gofreak]

There seems to be quite significant latency though.

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That'd be a function of the application/engine (and/or possibly even other things, like the display setup) more than the controller or sensor hardware. The DS4 gyro sampled at hundreds of times a second IIRC, it's likely this sampling rate is higher still. But, yes, it would be nice to see engines tuning as much as possible for reduced input latency.

 

[Jonnax]

That's probably why they got rid of the front facing light

 

[jroc74]

This is good.

Too bad those of us that want VR have to wait a few years for the next version.

 

[Stowaway Silfer]

It's beautiful.

 

[EssBeeVee]

That's probably why they got rid of the front facing light

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now its just a front facing light.

 

[Uzupedro]

Yes. I can read. I'm just wondering how useful motion control like that is in a non VR application, with so much latency.

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Little to none I assume, this is why they didn't bother to make a better latency for the game, it's just a glimpse of the precision.

 

[Doskoi Panda]

Yes. I can read. I'm just wondering how useful motion control like that is in a non VR application, with so much latency.

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The latency you see in those gifs is not innate. Gyro functionality is (optimally) tuned to suit any given game and its mechanics. There are games on PS4, Switch, and previous Nintendo and Sony platforms, which demonstrate just how snappy gyro can be (all the way up to 'seemingly instantaneous'), and it's easy to try it yourself with any PC game that has camera control via Steam input, where custom gyro-to-mouse mapping will generally feel incredibly responsive before you've even tuned it.

 

[jotun?]

I think the point is that similar tech could be used in psvr2 to have positional tracking without a camera.

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But this isn't showing any positional tracking, just rotation

 

[Komo]

Heh.

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I mean if their basing it off of that gfy or something.

It's just a 6axis sensor on it the controller doesn't even move lol.

 

[construct]

doesn't more movement tend to calibrate drift? is this actually impressive? the latency is pretty bad regardless of the "it's not tuned" hand wave.

 

[SixelAlexiS]

I really can't see what's impressive about this... I mean yeah, it's a more stable gyro but that's it, there is no moving in space of course since the lack of external tracking... so really, we can't say that the controller wouldn't have start drifting anyway with a 6DOF implementation.
This could be cool for precise gyro aiming but that's it.

 

[Kuro]

People keep talking about latency from the video when that's just the specific game's handling of it. DS4 gyro doesn't have that level of latency on PC even.

 

[construct]

DS4 gyro doesn't have that level of latency on PC even.

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That makes it more strange instead of less.

The article also comparing it to the PSVR and Move Controller tracking is also weird since that technology was outdated when it was released by a generation (now 2 gens old)

You'd hope it's be able to do this stuff at a bare minimum now.

 

[Kuro]

That makes it more strange instead of less.

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Here's an example and that controller is wired which on DS4 introduces more latency than bluetooth.

It wouldn't be too strange if Astrobot's implementation is to keep the movement as smooth as possible considering this is more of an inspection of an object rather than a gameplay thing. It really won't be an issue for VR although I 100% see PSVR2 having more modern VR controllers bundled in to the point where you wouldn't really be using the Dualsense in the first place.

 

[BeI]

Hope this means good things for the eventual use of its gyro on PC.

 

[Calabi]

I was hoping they would solve this. Playing games with this or using the motion controls will be great if it as good as this seems, and it would be even better if developers fricking supported and used it.