is razer always this bad?

Yes, Razer sucks and this is pretty normal for them. Just wait till you get to experience the cheap quality of their build, be very careful with your Hydra! I had two break while being shipped to me, and all 3 that I have had in my possession have had cosmetic damage on arrival. Razer makes cheap stuff.

I feel it's also important to differentiate that Sixense and Razer are not the same company, Sixense in my experience so far does great work! Hopefully going forward Sixense can get their technology into production with a company that cares a little more about quality.

Yeah I had problems with Razer as well.

I made a purchase and their website had an error during the transaction and the funds came out of my PayPal account but I had not received any order status from Razer nor was I able to obtain one from their website using my email address to log in(It said my account didn't exist).

I tried contacting Razer via email, web form and there was no response after 12 hours, the phone number Razer had provided PayPal was fake.

Razer support eventually replied via email and I told them to cancel the order the guy said he'll send a email to the warehouse and get back to me but said there was a possibility of it already being sent.

Not long after I received a automated shipping email and a tracking number for a express shipment

EDIT: I also mentioned in several emails to Razer support that the phone number they had associated with their PayPal account was fake and they just said they'll make a note of it.

Ugh. Sounds like they're not the best to deal with then...

I ordered a hydra from them, knowing that it was on back-order, which is fine, but then their pricing system lists the full price without the discount for the back-ordered item, and in the same email, the price with the discount from the original order.

Let's just hope I don't get charged the full price... XD

Meanwhile, I caught a glimpse of them being involved with a company called 'digitalriver' or something along those lines.

That name did not inspire confidence, because I once ordered a digital download game from Atari, which seems to have been using them for this as well.

They gave me a download which contained an installer that required a CD key to install, AND a version of SecuROM on top of that for good measure.

All well and good. DRM is annoying, but I can live with that in principle.
But of course the people at 'digital River' did not give me a CD key...
Contacting their sales team led me around in circles, with them first giving me a 'key' I already had. (Not a CD key, but clearly a SecuROM related code).

Atari technical support told me they couldn't do anything, but understood the problem, while the sales team from 'digital River' just kept behaving as if they had no idea what I was on about.

(If you're wondering how that got resolved, it didn't. I got around it using more dubious methods than trying to get the sales team to understand what they'd done...)

Why do I mention this? Merely because of catching sight of 'Digital River' mentioned in connection with Razer, and the fact that it's one of the worst experiences I've ever had buying something online.

As for build quality... Hmm... I'll have to wait and see on that one. If it's really that bad I may have to go back to experimenting with Wii remotes. (I own 5 after all... XD)

The device itself is bad... It's a technological issue, apparently.

I'm beginning to believe that motion sensing is not quite there yet as a technology.

On my razor hydra, I can get decent tracking within a certain area, just barely doable for games. But it's far from the dreams we have of knowing exactly where a person's hands are. How hard can it be to know where the hands are in relation to the head? Very damn hard apparently.

Yes... I can make a great user experience for certain things, gestures, etc. and you will never know that the razer hydra is a piece of crap... Is the Wii controller crap? What about leap motion?

If the company can get their act together they could build an actually good product. As it is, razer has not relegated responsibility to actual engineering or expert development, but they have apparently mandated things like game config UI's, etc. etc. It would be nice to have just a good product that works.

I've never had issues with Razer hardware or shipping, despite half a dozen products from them. Thanks for the info; I'll keep it in mind on future orders. I ordered my Hydra directly from Sixense; it arrived with no issues and operates normally. Not super-precise, but does what i need it to do... for now.

"darren" wrote:
The device itself is bad... It's a technological issue, apparently.

I'm beginning to believe that motion sensing is not quite there yet as a technology.

On my razor hydra, I can get decent tracking within a certain area, just barely doable for games. But it's far from the dreams we have of knowing exactly where a person's hands are. How hard can it be to know where the hands are in relation to the head? Very damn hard apparently.

Yes... I can make a great user experience for certain things, gestures, etc. and you will never know that the razer hydra is a piece of crap... Is the Wii controller crap? What about leap motion?

If the company can get their act together they could build an actually good product. As it is, razer has not relegated responsibility to actual engineering or expert development, but they have apparently mandated things like game config UI's, etc. etc. It would be nice to have just a good product that works.

That's... disappointing. Maybe the scheme I dreamt up a while back isn't so crazy after all...

I figured the most reliable motion tracking mechanism that's easy for a hobbyist to make is a rotary disk encoder. (the thing that used to be used in mice before optical tracking.) - Those are relatively accurate, though they sense rotational movement, not position.

However, that's not a huge problem for what I had in mind, which was a physical rig that you strap to your arms (and/or legs and torso, depending on how detailed you want to be...)

Assuming just an arm rig by itself, which stops at the wrist (so doesn't track hand movements), you would need to track wrist rotation, elbow rotation, and shoulder rotation in at least 2 axes.

But, combined with information on the length of the connecting frame, and a calibration routine to work out the starting and ending positions of the rotary encoders (they only give relative movement after all), I would expect to be able to track the position (and orientation) of the wrists and elbows with a pretty good level of accuracy.

- in terms of hardware for homebrew use, I even considered hacking some mice. (the problem being finding the old-fashioned kind), since they would contain the main required mechanics, and already have PC interfaces and drivers by default.

... Probably should build a device like that really, if only to see what kind of accuracy it can get, and any obvious user issues it might have...

I'm going to play with one of these this weekend, one thing I have noticed is-going to the sixsense forums the responses to questions etc is excellent. Razer...not so much.

And sixsense provides a version of their software for the controller which is light years beyond whats included by razer. So if someone reading this has one, and is unhappy, I'd suggest trying the software from sixsense, not the stuff Razer provided.

Oh look a response. I can ship it back (at my cost), and a couple weeks later they will deign to refund me.

"greywar777" wrote:
I'm going to play with one of these this weekend, one thing I have noticed is-going to the sixsense forums the responses to questions etc is excellent. Razer...not so much.

And sixsense provides a version of their software for the controller which is light years beyond whats included by razer. So if someone reading this has one, and is unhappy, I'd suggest trying the software from sixsense, not the stuff Razer provided.

That's an interesting issue...

I had to find sixsense's site just to get hold of the SDK... Razer seemed to be making an effort to make any of the development tools for it hard to find... XD

So an update and quick review. Razer-well obviously 0/10. The controller though...I'm going with a 8/10 so far. If it was wireless it would be 9/10 (and the original prototype was), 10/10 if it was more accurate. but that being said, 8/10 is a pretty good device. Its accurate enough, and pretty impressive. Build quality is better then what I expected from other reviews, and hey I bought a spare anyways....grr....