Sixense

Sixense
Information
Industry	Motion tracking, virtual reality
Founded	2007
Founder	Amir Rubin, Avi Arad
Headquarters	Los Gatos, California, United States
Notable Personnel	Amir Rubin (CEO)
Products	Razer Hydra (with Razer), Sixense STEM, MakeVR, SixenseVR SDK
Parent	Penumbra, Inc. (since 2021)
Website	https://www.sixense.com

Sixense is a 3D peripheral company that developed the Razer Hydra (along with Razer) and the Sixense STEM. Its CEO was Amir Rubin. The company was founded in 2007 in Los Gatos, California, to bring high-precision motion tracking to games and other mass markets, and its technology is based on magnetic (electromagnetic) tracking rather than cameras. Avi Arad was a co-founder and chairman.

The Razer Hydra, released in 2011, was selling out after the Oculus Rift developer kit appeared, and Sixense used it for early Rift demos. The company later tried to sell its own wireless system, the STEM, through Kickstarter, but never shipped it to consumers. Later, as Sixense Enterprises, the company moved into enterprise training and healthcare. Medical device maker Penumbra, Inc., its partner in a healthcare virtual reality joint venture, acquired the company on 1 October 2021.

Reviewed 27 September 2026. Re-opened every cited source (Razer and Vive Studios releases, PlayStation Blog, GamesBeat, Road to VR, UploadVR, Engadget, Penumbra releases, Penumbra FY2021 10-K, MedTech Dive) and checked all dates, prices, amounts, quotes and the Penumbra acquisition terms. About review dates.

History

Razer Hydra and Valve

At CES in January 2010, Razer and Sixense announced that they were working together on a motion-sensing PC game controller and demonstrated it with Left 4 Dead 2. The announcement described Sixense's technology as using magnetic fields to track all six axes, with positional precision "within a mere millimeter" and orientation "to a degree". Chet Faliszek, a team lead at Valve, was quoted in the release.

Razer launched the product as the Razer Hydra on 21 April 2011. It was sold on its own or in an exclusive bundle with Valve's Portal 2 for US$139.99 (or 139.99 euros), with pre-orders in May 2011 and shipping in June 2011. The bundle included six motion-controlled "Sixense TrueMotion" levels for Portal 2 that Sixense developed, and Razer said more than 125 PC games were supported out of the box. The Hydra was wired to the PC; Sixense licensed its technology to Razer, Valve and Namco Bandai.

Portal 2 In Motion

Sixense's game studio, Sixense Studios, also brought its motion work to the PlayStation 3. On 6 November 2012 it released Portal 2 In Motion, a US$9.99 downloadable campaign for PlayStation Move with test chambers built for motion control. At the same time Sixense added PlayStation Move support to the full single-player and cooperative campaigns of Portal 2. According to Sixense Studios creative director Danny Woodall, the campaign introduced three mechanics: one-to-one object manipulation, "portal surfing" (moving and rotating portals along surfaces) and scaling of cubes.

Oculus Rift era and the STEM

At GDC 2013 Sixense showed a modified version of the Oculus Tuscany demo, built in Unity, in which the Razer Hydra gave the user a pair of tracked virtual hands to pick up, throw and examine physics objects while wearing the Rift. By September 2013 the company had 18 employees and had raised US$3 million in total. GamesBeat reported that the Hydra had been selling out since Oculus VR launched the developer version of the Rift. Rubin said, "They cleaned Razer out. The community wants more units. And they also don't want wires." Brendan Iribe, then CEO of Oculus VR, told the outlet that Sixense was "doing great work in the motion tracking arena".

Sixense launched the STEM System on Kickstarter in September 2013 with a US$250,000 goal. The wireless system combined a base station with tracked hand controllers and optional extra trackers, supported up to five tracked points for full-body tracking, and was backward compatible with Razer Hydra games. Early-bird tiers started at US$149 for two trackers, and delivery was estimated for July 2014. The campaign closed in October 2013 with more than US$600,000, after reaching a stretch goal for a wireless base station.

The STEM was repeatedly delayed. In April 2014 Sixense pushed shipping back by about three months to reduce magnetic "bending" distortion and to join the STEM tracker and its battery pack (the STEM Pack) into a single module, because the separate parts had caused electronic noise and mechanical instability. The system failed FCC/CE testing in March 2015 because of problems with base station grounding and the RF dongles. In July 2015 Sixense said it was "in the home stretch" and targeted shipping before the end of that year, but certification was still pending. In December 2015 it released the Sixense Core API and the SixenseVR SDK with five demos that ran on the Razer Hydra, and said at the time that STEM would launch in April 2016. In January 2018 the company reported that its contract manufacturer was still struggling with warped plastic parts that caused misalignment.

The Sixense STEM was on Kickstarter but it was ultimately cancelled. The backers received their money back. It was cancelled partly due to production difficulties in outsourcing, and also because Oculus and HTC developed their own controllers during the time that the STEM was to be shipped. In October 2018 Sixense announced full refunds, including fees, to all 2,383 Kickstarter backers (just over US$600,000) and to pre-order customers, whose orders totaled around US$500,000. According to Road to VR, Rubin said the company reconsidered STEM once Valve/HTC and Oculus began shipping their own controllers, and made the final decision after Oculus showed controllers with its Santa Cruz prototype in October 2017 and then announced that Oculus Quest would ship with controllers at US$400 in September 2018. The refunds followed Penumbra's US$20 million purchase of most of Sixense's stake in MVI Health, and Rubin said refunding backers was the first priority for that money.

MakeVR

Sixense also developed MakeVR, a two-handed 3D modeling application. Engadget previewed it in January 2014 with support for STEM, up to five collaborating users and export to the Shapeways 3D printing service. A Kickstarter campaign for MakeVR launched in February 2014 and was suspended within days; Sixense cited feedback about the reward tiers and promised to relaunch it. UploadVR later reported that the campaign had raised US$66,294 of its US$250,000 goal. The finished application was released with Vive Studios on 27 March 2017 for the HTC Vive through Viveport, priced at US$19.99, with direct export of 3D printing files.

Enterprise and healthcare

In January 2018 Penumbra announced MVI Health, a joint venture with Sixense Enterprises to explore healthcare uses of virtual reality. Sixense contributed intellectual property and other resources, and MVI Health was based in Alameda, California. Penumbra's later filings date the venture's formation to 2017, when each partner held 50 percent; Sixense's contribution was an exclusive license to use its technology for healthcare applications. In September 2018 Penumbra raised its stake to 90 percent for US$20 million in upfront cash.

On the enterprise side, Sixense marketed a "Full-Presence Platform" for 6DOF tracking. In June 2018 it announced that VRSim, a Connecticut maker of skilled-trades training simulators, used the platform in SimSpray, a VR spray painting and coating trainer.

Acquisition by Penumbra

Penumbra announced on 21 September 2021 that it was acquiring Sixense, which it called "an integral partner" in developing its REAL System immersive therapy products. The merger agreement was dated 17 September 2021 and closed on 1 October 2021. Sixense became a wholly owned subsidiary, and Penumbra also took the remaining 10 percent of MVI Health. Penumbra paid with 661,877 shares of common stock and replacement stock options, for a total purchase price of US$251.0 million. At the time Sixense leased about 8,000 square feet of office space in Los Gatos, San Francisco and Los Angeles, as well as research and development offices in Israel.

In August 2024 Penumbra said it would discontinue its Immersive Healthcare business, which offered virtual reality-based rehabilitation and mindfulness exercises, and lay off 71 employees starting 1 November 2024. It recorded a US$110.3 million impairment charge in the second quarter of 2024.

Products

Product	Year	Type	Notes
Razer Hydra	2011	Wired magnetic motion controllers (with Razer)	US$139.99 bundle with Portal 2; six Sixense TrueMotion levels
Portal 2 In Motion	2012	PlayStation Move DLC	US$9.99 on PSN; Sixense also added Move support to the full game
Sixense STEM	Announced 2013	Wireless magnetic tracking system	Kickstarter raised over US$600,000; cancelled and refunded in 2018
SixenseVR SDK	2015	Software development kit	Released with the Sixense Core API and five demos; supported the Razer Hydra
MakeVR	2017	3D modeling application	Released on Viveport for the HTC Vive at US$19.99
Full-Presence Platform	2018	Enterprise 6DOF tracking platform	Used in VRSim's SimSpray training simulator

Technology

Sixense's tracking uses magnetic fields generated by a base station, so it does not need a line of sight between the sensors and the base. Sixense stated that the STEM would track six degrees of freedom with 3 mm positional accuracy and 2 degrees of rotational precision at under 10 ms latency. Environmental distortion, which Sixense described as "bending", was one of the problems the 2014 STEM redesign was meant to reduce. See Electromagnetic tracking for the general technique.

See also

• Razer Hydra
• Sixense STEM
• Electromagnetic tracking
• Motion controller