Intersense InterTrax 2

December 2014

I got my hands on an Intersense InterTrax 2 head tracker a while back but just got around now to using it. I compared how it worked within WorldViz Vizard against a HillCrest FSM-9 on a Virtual Research V8 HMD. The HillCrest FSM-9 seemed to perform slightly better but not bad for the Intersense InterTrax being about 15 years older. The InterTrax wasn’t quite as smooth but otherwise worked well.

InterTrax 2 on V8

I used both headtrackers to pan around an Apache demo from WorldViz. You can see a screenshot below.

Apache Vizard

What can I say, otherwise the InterTrax 2 works like the InterTraxLC or the InertiaCubes. You have access to iServer and iDemo for modifying the sensor performance or emulating a mouse. You can also have the tracker use UDP as an interface which is useful. You can change update rates, gain, reset heading, etc within iServer. Vizard has it’s own plug-in for Intersense trackers and although it doesn’t list the InterTrax as a compatible tracker, it does in fact work.

That’s about it. If you come across an old InterTrax 2 on eBay don’t purchase it for more than $250 because a HillCrest FSM-9 works slightly better and costs the same. Credit to Intersense for getting that kind of tracker performance out of 15 year old MEMS sensors.