Comparing Inertial and Optical MoCap Technologies for Synthesis Control

This paper compares the use of two different technologies for controlling sound synthesis in real time: the infrared marker-based motion capture system OptiTrack and Xsens MVN, an inertial sensor-based motion capture suit. We present various quantitative comparisons between the data from the two systems and results from an experiment where a musician performed simple musical tasks with the two systems. Both systems are found to have their strengths and weaknesses, which we will present and discuss.