Massless Pen
More actions
| Massless Pen | |
|---|---|
| Basic Info | |
| VR/AR | Virtual Reality |
| Type | Input Device |
| Subtype | Stylus |
| Platform | Oculus Rift, SteamVR |
| Developer | Massless Corporation |
| Announcement Date | 1 June 2017 |
| Price | US$500 early-access pre-order price including one year of Massless Studio (August 2019); planned price after the initial release US$1,000 |
| Website | https://massless.io/ |
| Requires | VR-ready PC; dedicated Massless tracking camera (included) |
| Tracking | |
| Tracking | Dedicated stereo camera tracker fused with the pen's IMU; 90° x 70° tracking volume (2019 specification) |
| Connectivity | |
| Connectivity | Bluetooth Low Energy; USB-C (2019 specification) |
| Battery Life | Up to 12 hours (manufacturer claim, 2019); up to 3 hours (2017 announcement) |
| Device | |
| Dimensions | 162 mm long, 11 mm wide (2017 specification) |
| Weight | 25 g |
| Sensors | Inertial measurement unit, capacitive touch pad, surface sensing |
| Input | Capacitive touch pad, surface (tip contact) sensing, haptic feedback |
The Massless Pen is a tracked stylus for virtual reality developed by Massless Corporation, a startup with offices in London and San Francisco. It was designed for professional 3D design and engineering work, such as computer-aided design and concept sketching, where more precision is needed than game-oriented VR controllers provide.[1][2] Instead of relying on the headset's own tracking, the pen is followed by a separate stereo camera that watches markers on the pen, and the camera data is combined with readings from an inertial measurement unit inside the pen.[3][4]
Massless announced the pen on 1 June 2017 and claimed accuracy of up to 0.05 mm.[1] The pen worked with the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive and could also be used as a stylus for 2D applications.[3] After a 2018 prototype demonstration and a US$2 million seed round in 2019, the company began accepting pre-order applications in August 2019 at an early-access price of US$500, with shipping planned for the fourth quarter of 2019.[5][6]
Announcement and release
Launch announcement (2017)
Massless Corporation announced the Massless Pen in a press release dated 1 June 2017, issued from Santa Clara, California. Chief executive Jack A. Cohen called it "the first solution to bring the benefits of immersive VR to complex, high precision 3D modelling applications for Mechanical Design, Animation and Civil Engineering". The release said the pen would be available before the end of 2017 and that a limited Early Adopter Program was already running.[1] It also quoted David Edge, Global Visualization Leader at the engineering firm Arup, on the pen's use for infrastructure design and review, and Ori Inbar of Super Ventures, who said the fund had made an initial investment in Massless "last Spring".[1]
VentureBeat covered the pen at the Augmented World Expo in June 2017. It reported that Cohen had a doctorate from Oxford University, had been an enterprise fellow at the Royal Academy of Engineering, and left academia in 2015 before raising money for Massless the following year.[7] Tom's Hardware noted that Massless had not given a release date or price at launch.[3] By November 2017 the company's website said the pen would be available for pre-order in late 2017 and invited interested users to register.[8]
Prototype demonstration (2018)
At the Game Developers Conference in March 2018, Road to VR tried a 3D-printed prototype used with an Oculus Rift. A separate camera, aligned with the Rift's sensor, tracked the tip of the stylus. The prototype had no button on the pen: the user drew strokes by holding a button on an Oculus Touch controller held in the other hand and changed stroke size with the controller's thumbstick. Massless told the outlet that it avoided a button on the pen because pressing one would move the pen slightly and reduce precision.[2]
The prototype had full positional tracking but no rotational tracking yet, so it could not use tilt information. Massless had also not yet added surface sensing, which it planned to do.[2]
Funding and pre-orders (2019)
On 12 February 2019 Massless announced a US$2 million seed round led by Founders Fund Pathfinder, with participation from Entrepreneur First, Vivi Nevo, Shrug Capital and Wendy Tan-White. The company described itself as a San Francisco and London based startup and said the money would be used to build its engineering team, complete the pen and secure an initial group of customers using it in production.[9][5]
Pre-order applications opened in August 2019. Buyers paid a US$50 deposit toward a total of US$500, which included one year of the Massless Studio software. The box was to contain the stylus and a dedicated tracking camera with a stand. Massless said it planned an early-access launch in the fourth quarter of 2019, after which the pen would cost US$1,000 and Massless Studio US$20 per month or US$200 per year.[6][10]
Later plans
In a news post dated 10 December 2019, Massless said it would run an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign in February 2020 to make the pen available to anyone, not only professionals, and to deliver it at higher volume. In the same post Cohen said he had started Massless in 2016.[11]
The company's website later promoted other products. In July 2021 the site promoted a multimedia processing API, and in February 2022 it presented Massless as an NFT launch partner.[12][13] A later version of the site, archived in October 2024, described Massless as developing "spatial computing products for engineers" and listed the pen next to Massless Studio, the collaboration tool Massless Space, a subvocal recognition project called Massless Speechless, and Massless Visioneer, a product for designing engineering projects with the Apple Vision Pro.[14]
Design and hardware
The pen is tracked by the Massless Tracker, a stereo camera that captures a set of markers on the pen 60 times per second, according to the 2017 announcement coverage. Data from the IMU in the pen keeps tracking stable when the camera briefly loses sight of the pen.[3] The tracker is separate from the headset's own tracking system.[6] By 2019 Massless specified a 90° x 70° tracking volume and a machined aluminium stand for the tracker, and said the volume was meant to cover a user's natural reach and allow the desk surface to be used as a workspace.[4]
The 2019 product page lists these pen features:[4]
- Surface sensing: the pen detects when its tip is near or touching a physical surface, so it can work in 3D space or on a desk as a graphics tablet or mouse.
- Capacitive sensor: a touch pad, which Road to VR described as located near the index finger, for menus, brush size and tool selection.[6]
- Haptic feedback: an ERM (eccentric rotating motor) that vibrates, for example when scrolling through menu items or when meshes collide.
- Bluetooth Low Energy and a USB-C port for charging, updates and customization.
The specifications changed between the 2017 announcement and the 2019 pre-order.
| Specification | 2017 announcement | 2019 pre-order |
|---|---|---|
| Claimed accuracy | Up to 0.05 mm[1] | Not stated |
| Optical tracking rate | 60 Hz[8] | Not stated |
| Tracking volume | Not stated | 90° x 70°[6] |
| Battery life | Up to 3 hours[3] | Up to 12 hours[6] |
| Charging and connection | Inductive charging, USB 3[8] | USB-C, Bluetooth Low Energy[4] |
| Pen size | 162 mm long, 11 mm wide[8] | Not stated |
| Pen weight | 25 g[8] | 25 g[10] |
The 2017 website listed recommended PC specifications of an Oculus Rift CV1 or HTC Vive, an NVIDIA GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 480 graphics card or better, an Intel i5-4590 or equivalent processor, and Windows 7 SP1 64-bit or newer.[8]
Software and compatibility
Massless Studio was the company's own application for the pen. It was built for concept sketching with editable 3D splines, simple mesh generation and 3D modeling, with presentation output (MP4, PNG), a design review mode for mark-up and annotation, and import and export in FBX, OBJ, STL and STEP formats. A "Massless Live" feature produced mixed reality capture video for streaming. Studio also supported real-time multi-user collaboration with audio.[4][6]
| Category | Listed support (2019 product page) |
|---|---|
| Headsets | Oculus Rift CV1, Oculus Rift S, HTC Vive, HTC Vive Pro, HTC Vive Pro Eye, other SteamVR compatible devices |
| 3D design software | Massless Studio, Gravity Sketch, Vector Suite (listed as coming soon), Autodesk Maya and Blender (both through the MARUI plug-in) |
| Visualization and review | Unity, Unreal Engine, Autodesk VRED |
| Non-VR software (Tablet Mode) | Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premiere, Fusion 360, SolidWorks, AutoCAD |
The same page also named Medium, Quill and Tilt Brush as VR design applications that could be used with the pen.[4] Version 4.0.0 of the MARUI plug-in, released on 8 April 2020, listed "Improved Massless and Varjo support" in its change log.[15] A later version of the pen's product page, archived in February 2023, listed Oculus Quest, Oculus Quest 2, Oculus Rift, Oculus Rift S, HTC Vive, HTC Vive Pro and Valve Index under product integrations.[16]
In TechCrunch's 2019 report, Cohen stressed that the pen did not require a headset: "I think the most important thing about this product is that it works in three-dimensions, but you don't have to use VR."[5]
Reception
After the GDC 2018 demonstration, Ben Lang of Road to VR wrote that he could write tiny letters easily and that the pen felt at least as precise as Touch and Vive controllers, while noting that he had no objective measurement. He found the tracking area of the pen's camera narrow compared with the Rift's own tracking; the stylus stopped tracking when moved outside it. When he drew on a tabletop, the overall sketched area was flat, which suggested well calibrated tracking, but individual lines showed small jitter, which he linked to the missing surface sensing.[2]
Covering the 2019 pre-order, Road to VR said it was unclear how Medium and Quill would support the pen, since Oculus had no framework for third-party controllers in its software. The outlet also pointed to Logitech's VR Ink, a professional stylus prototype based on SteamVR Tracking that had not yet been announced for public sale.[6] TechCrunch described the product in its headline as an "Apple Pencil for virtual reality".[5]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 "MASSLESS Unlocks Virtual Reality for Designers and Engineers". Massless (press release, archived). Massless Corporation. 2017-06-01. https://web.archive.org/web/20170702230434/http://www.massless.io/docs/MASSLESS_LAUNCH_PressRelease.pdf. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Ben Lang (2018-03-24). "Hands-on: Massless Wants to Bring High-precision Stylus Input to VR". Road to VR. https://www.roadtovr.com/hands-on-massless-wants-to-bring-high-precision-stylus-input-to-vr-gdc-2018/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Kevin Carbotte (2017-06-02). "Massless Introduces Massless Pen VR Peripheral For 3D Modelling, CAD Professionals". Tom's Hardware. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/massless-pen-vr-cad-peripheral,34629.html. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 "Massless Pen". Massless (archived product page). Massless Corp. 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20190825080200/https://massless.io/massless-pen/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Lucas Matney (2019-02-12). "Massless raises $2M to build an Apple Pencil for virtual reality". TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/12/massless-raises-2m-to-build-an-apple-pencil-for-virtual-reality/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 Ben Lang (2019-08-07). "Massless VR Stylus Now Open for Pre-order; Release Date & Price Revealed". Road to VR. https://www.roadtovr.com/massless-pen-pre-order-release-date-price/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ Dean Takahashi (2017-06-04). "Massless lets you write with a pen in virtual reality". VentureBeat. https://venturebeat.com/business/massless-lets-you-write-with-a-pen-in-virtual-reality. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 "MASSLESS". Massless (archived home page). Massless Corporation. 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20171120112138/https://massless.io/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ "Massless secures $2m seed funding to transform XR design and engineering in the enterprise". Massless (archived press release). Massless. 2019-02-12. https://web.archive.org/web/20190719125157/https://massless.io/2019/02/12/massless-secures-seed-funding/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 "ワコムやLogitechに続け、"VRで描けるペン"が予約開始 期間限定で半額 (in Japanese)". MoguraVR News. 2019-08-08. https://www.moguravr.com/massless-pen-pre-order-start/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ "Massless Crowdfunding News". Massless (archived news post). Massless Corp. 2019-12-10. https://web.archive.org/web/20200918064734/https://massless.io/massless-crowdfunding-news/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ "Media API - Massless". Massless (archived home page). Massless. 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210725210103/https://massless.io/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ "Massless - Your NFT Launch Partner". Massless (archived home page). Massless Corp. 2022. https://web.archive.org/web/20220214041842/https://massless.io/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ "Massless - Spatial Engineering". Massless (archived home page). Massless Corp. 2024. https://web.archive.org/web/20241004195624/https://massless.io/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ "MARUI-PlugIn Version History". MARUI-PlugIn documentation. https://www.marui-plugin.com/documentation-versionhistory/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ "Massless Pen". Massless (archived product page). Massless Corp. 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230206063634/https://www.massless.io/pen. Retrieved 2026-10-15.