OptiTrack

OptiTrack
Information
Industry	Motion capture, optical tracking
Headquarters	Corvallis, Oregon, United States
Notable Personnel	Sidney Rittenberg (CEO)
Products	PrimeX, SlimX, VersaX and Flex motion capture cameras; Motive software; ActiveIO active tracking hardware; TrackIR
Parent	Planar Systems
Website	https://www.optitrack.com

OptiTrack is an American maker of optical motion capture and 3D tracking systems. It is the trade name of NaturalPoint, Inc., which designs and manufactures its cameras in Oregon. Its headquarters and manufacturing plant are in Corvallis, Oregon. The company says it has delivered tracking technology since 1996. Its systems surround a capture volume with high-speed infrared cameras that locate markers on people and objects, and its Motive software turns those observations into real-time position and orientation data.

In VR, OptiTrack has supplied wide-area outside-in tracking for location-based experiences. The Void used its cameras to track visitors, headsets and props in its mixed reality arenas, and in 2017 the company introduced an active-marker system built for large VR venues. Its other main markets are character animation for film and games, virtual production, movement science, and drone and ground robot tracking.

Reviewed 27 September 2026. Checked every infobox value, date, price, spec, quote and company claim against the cited OptiTrack pages (archived), SIGGRAPH archive, Road to VR, UploadVR, American Cinematographer, press releases and 2016 acquisition reports. About review dates.

History

Origins in head tracking

NaturalPoint's first product was SmartNav, a device that let users move a computer mouse with head movements. The company followed it with TrackIR, which lets PC gamers control the in-game camera by moving their heads. According to OptiTrack, it then used TrackIR technology to build its first multi-camera motion capture volume, and that system grew into the OptiTrack product line. NaturalPoint still sells TrackIR alongside OptiTrack.

By the late 2000s OptiTrack was selling low-cost full-body capture systems. At the SIGGRAPH 2007 exhibition, NaturalPoint showed six cameras, accessories and full-body motion capture software for less than 5,000 US dollars, with export to MotionBuilder, .bvh and c3d formats. By SIGGRAPH 2009 its listed systems offered full-body and facial capture from under 6,000 US dollars.

In November 2016 Planar Systems, a Leyard company, announced an all-cash deal to acquire NaturalPoint for 125 million US dollars. At the time NaturalPoint made the OptiTrack, TrackIR and SmartNav products and employed about 60 people in North America. Planar cited augmented and virtual reality among the growth markets behind the purchase. After the deal closed, NaturalPoint remained a separate business with its own executive team. Planar described OptiTrack as an affiliate company in 2025.

Move into virtual reality

At the Game Developers Conference in March 2016, OptiTrack showed a wide-area VR demo in which a player wearing an Oculus Rift DK2 with optical markers could catch, dribble and pass a real, tracked basketball. Road to VR reported that the demo used 240 Hz cameras worth about 40,000 US dollars and that the tracking pipeline, fed into a custom Unreal Engine 4 plugin, added no more than 8 ms.

In February 2017 the company introduced OptiTrack Active, a system built for theme-park-scale VR. Instead of passive reflective balls arranged in a unique pattern on every object, it used synchronized infrared LEDs that the new Slim 13E cameras could identify individually. OptiTrack said the system could track more than 100 objects over areas larger than 100 by 100 feet (30 by 30 m), and that the Slim13E captured at 240 fps and cost 40% less than its passive-tracking equivalent. UploadVR put the Slim 13E at about 1,500 US dollars, against about 2,500 US dollars for comparable passive-tracking hardware. The same report quoted chief strategy officer Brian Nilles as saying OptiTrack sold tracking into "a couple dozen" out-of-home VR installations in 2015 and "probably" 400 to 500 VR tracking systems in 2016. He said some were for research and university R&D, but "a lot of them" were out-of-home experiences in Asia, Europe and, increasingly, North America. The Void was one of the first customers for the active system.

At SIGGRAPH 2017, OptiTrack showed a tracking puck meant to be worn on the body so that location-based venues could add full-body tracking. In an interview with UploadVR, Nilles called Valve's Lighthouse system a possible "low cost competitor". Not every arena operator adopted OptiTrack; Zero Latency told UploadVR in 2019 that OptiTrack was too expensive for its first-generation venues and that it built its own camera-based tracking instead.

At GDC 2019 the company ran a modular volume with 25 cameras tracking 140 objects at once, including giant Jenga-style blocks that a player in a wireless HTC Vive Pro could stack and knock over. Road to VR reported that OptiTrack by then sold snap-on faceplates that added tracking markers to Rift and Vive headsets, and an OpenVR plugin that let its tracking stand in for SteamVR Tracking. The company told the site it had tested more than 300 tracked objects without finding a practical limit, and that a system needs at least three cameras.

Recent developments

OptiTrack released Motive 3.0 in July 2021 with a new skeletal solver, support for tracking more than 300 rigid bodies with active or passive markers, and finger tracking through integrated Manus gloves. In November 2023 it announced the 12-megapixel PrimeX 120, PrimeX 120W and SlimX 120 cameras, together with Motive 3.1. At the launch, executive vice president Stephanie Hines said the company had built more than 30,000 3D motion tracking systems.

On 18 September 2024 the company announced a new 25,000-square-foot manufacturing building at its Corvallis headquarters. OptiTrack said the building doubled its production capacity and added a surface-mount technology (SMT) line along with space for prototyping, additive manufacturing and assembly. The VersaX line of IP66-rated outdoor cameras followed on 31 March 2025.

On 21 July 2026 OptiTrack launched ActiveIO, a new generation of active tracking hardware. It adds two-way RF communication between Motive and every tracked device. CEO Sidney Rittenberg named location-based VR, virtual production and robotics as target markets.

Technology

An OptiTrack system is a set of synchronized infrared cameras mounted around a volume. The cameras detect markers, and Motive triangulates those observations into 3D positions, rigid bodies and skeletons. The company supports two kinds of markers. Passive markers are retroreflective spheres, hemispheres or discs that bounce light from the cameras' infrared LEDs back to the lens. Active markers are battery-powered LEDs that blink in a coded pattern, so each one can be identified individually. With coded active markers, many identically built headsets, weapons or props can be tracked without giving each one its own marker arrangement. OptiTrack introduced its active system for this reason, citing out-of-home VR operators who wanted to deploy hundreds of identical headsets.

Motive combines optical data with readings from an inertial measurement unit in some trackers. OptiTrack says this sensor fusion allows six-degrees-of-freedom tracking from a single visible marker. Motive also recalibrates continuously from data collected during normal use, which the company says corrects for temperature changes, building movement and bumped cameras. Tracking data streams to other software through the NatNet SDK, with plugins for Unreal Engine, Unity, MotionBuilder and MATLAB and support for the VRPN protocol. OptiTrack states that its VR systems reach sub-20 µm accuracy.

Products

Product	Type	Notes
PrimeX series (13, 22, 41, 120, 260) and Prime Color	Motion capture cameras	Full-size camera line; the PrimeX 120 and 120W are 12-megapixel models with 24 mm and 18 mm lenses, listed at 10,999 and 11,499 US dollars at their 2023 launch
SlimX series (13, 22, 41, 120, 260)	Motion capture cameras	Smaller cameras; the SlimX 120 was listed at 7,999 US dollars in 2023 and tracks active markers
VersaX 22, 41 and 120	Outdoor motion capture cameras	IP66-rated versions of the PrimeX 22, 41 and 120 with changeable lenses and a detachable ring light; released 31 March 2025
Flex 3, Flex 13, Duo 3, Trio 3	Entry-level and desktop tracking cameras	Low-cost Flex cameras and Duo and Trio desktop tracking units
Slim 13E	VR tracking camera (2017)	240 fps camera designed for OptiTrack Active in large VR venues
Motive	Tracking software	Calibration, solving, recording and real-time streaming; Motive 3.0 was priced from 999 US dollars (objects only) to 9,999 US dollars (unlimited performers) at launch in 2021
ActiveIO (BaseStation, Puck, Tag-8, Wand, Square, Wired CinePuck, AnchorPuck, HMD Clips)	Active tracking hardware	Launched July 2026; requires Motive 3.5 or later; HMD Clips for the HTC Vive Focus 3
TrackIR	Consumer head tracker	Head tracking for PC games, sold under a separate brand

XR work

Location-based VR and training

OptiTrack markets its systems as scaling "from a single headset to a full free-roam VR arena", tracking headsets, shutter glasses, controllers, hands and full bodies in one volume. An early customer was The Void, whose stages, including a Ghostbusters experience at Madame Tussauds in New York, used overhead OptiTrack cameras to track people, headsets and props. The ActiveIO launch material names location-based VR arenas with identical props or players, tactical training and CAVE environments among its intended uses. OptiTrack also says it supplies the tracking for V-Armed, which builds multi-participant VR training systems for law enforcement and military teams.

Virtual production

OptiTrack cameras have been used to track physical cameras in game-engine-driven film production. According to a case study the company published in 2019, the virtual production stage for Disney's The Lion King (2019) used a ceiling truss with 60 OptiTrack Slim 13 and Prime 17W cameras. They covered about 40 by 60 feet of the shooting volume and tracked camera rigs fitted with active LEDs, while the filmmakers viewed the film's environments in VR. In the same case study, Magnopus virtual production producer AJ Sciutto said the team chose OptiTrack Active for its low latency. A wired version of the CinePuck, a tracker for film cameras, is part of the ActiveIO range.

Research and AR prototyping

OptiTrack also sells its systems as a reference for testing other tracking methods. American Cinematographer's report on the 2023 camera launch described active-marker tracking on the PrimeX cameras as suited to "ground-truth systems for augmented reality". In 2017 Brian Nilles told UploadVR that some of the company's VR tracking sales went to research and university R&D.

See also

• Motion capture
• Outside-in tracking
• Full-body tracking
• Location-based virtual reality
• TrackIR