Sony is one of the few companies that could make something like XYN (/zin/), an integrated software and hardware solution designed to support the creation of spatial content, as well as Mocopi, a platform whose name is short for a mobile motion capture system.
XYN can accurately capture the real world and combine the content with a wide range of third-party tools to enable flexible creation in real time. At the recent Game Developers Conference, Sony announced the XYN platform was available for preorder, and now it’s shipping.
As part of the package, the Mocopi Professional Kit is now available for order, bringing a new standard of precision and flexibility to full-body motion capture for animation, gaming, VR, and live-streaming professionals. I got a good demo of the technology at the recent Game developers Conference from Thaisa Yamamura, head of XR business development at Sony Electronics in the U.S. Yamamura said the tech is available now for game developers and creators.
Building upon Sony’s innovative motion capture technology, the Mocopi Pro Kit introduces next-generation tracking fidelity with a 12-sensor system, real-time direct PC integration, and advanced camera data blending, enabling creators to push the boundaries of digital animation and virtual experiences.
- Professional Mode with 12 Sensors – Enhanced accuracy for fluid, high-fidelity motion capture.
- Direct PC Connection – Real-time tracking with the Sensor Data Receiver for Mocopi (PC dongle).
- Camera Blending – Merges external camera data with sensor tracking for superior precision.
- Offline Grounding Refinement – Reduces floating and sliding artifacts for more realistic foot placement.
- Broad Compatibility – Supports industry-standard platforms like Maya, Unity, Motion Builder, Unreal Engine, and VRChat.
In addition, Sony launched XYN Motion Studio on March 25. This motion capture and editing software is available on the Microsoft Store. The Mocopi Pro Kit started shipping on April 3.
The Mocopi Pro Kit is available now for $1,180, with individual components sold separately. As a limited-time offer, customers purchasing the full kit can save approximately $100.
And the company is targeting the products at game developers and other creators so they can use it to make spatial content — whether for games or futuristic 3D graphics for applications such as films, games or the metaverse — the latter is the much-hyped and now unutterable word for spatial computing applications. The idea is to capture the real world and reproduce it inside the creator’s artwork.
The XYN and Mocopi tools are platforms for making 3D CG (computer-generated) content, or rather platforms for making the metaverse.
One of the big advantages of the whole platform is that developers might not need a motion capture studio anymore. Most game developers can’t afford mocap studios, which have cameras that capture every movement on the mocap stage.
The XYN vision
XYN is part of an incubation center dubbed the XR Business Development Division at Sony. And it’s a three-part system involving mocap sensors on mobile, an XR head-mounted display and a spatial reality display. Developers can use this system to create cool digital technologies.
At both CES and GDC, Sony showed off examples of engineers using the headsets for digital twins, which are digital spaces that mirror something in the real world. The point is to perfect a design of a building or object in the digital world before going to the expense of building it in the real world.
It can also be used to design metaverse content, which is meant to be a destination for people to visit in virtual spaces, either for entertainment or enterprise purposes.
In this way, the XYN tech is a bridge between the different parts of Sony’s consumer, gaming and enterprise businesses. And it’s meant to make the act of creation easier when it comes to 3D spatial content. You can imagine game developers at PlayStation using the tools to create ever more realistic 3D spaces for gaming.
amamura said Sony Electronics was inspired to make the tools because it observed the expansion of the XR industry. It came up with the new XYN brand that was unveiled at CES, about a year after Sony Electronics announced it was making an XR headset for enterprise tech development. Sony and Siemens were showing off the Sony XR headset with their enterprise designs. I got to see Siemens’ demo of an enterprise design of a commercial aircraft during CES.
Now Sony is shipping a complete solution with the XR headset, a spatial reality display and the XYN platform with Mocopi mocap tools.
“XYN is a combination of hardware and software that helps creators to create content from the beginning until the end,” Yamamura said.
XYN is an integrated software and hardware solution designed to support the efficient creation of spatial content to generate high-definition assets by using proprietary algorithms and technology that capture the real world with stunning fidelity and accuracy, Yamamura said.
The idea is to produce a vivid spatial representation with an intuitive user experience, accelerate the developer’s creativity with a stunning sense of reality, combined with a wide range of third party tools to streamline the dev’s workflow, unleash your creativity with an uncompromising production environment and multiple ways to collaborate, she said.
With is progress in making tools for the XR industry, Sony saw the need to create more tools to help creators capture the environment around them and digitize it. That includes human motion, the environment and what the viewer sees on the XR headset.
XYN has three pillars: the spatial caption solution to create the environment, and the Z motion studio and Mocopi professional mode, and the XYN headset. Sony unveiled in January at CES the Mocopi Professional Mode and the Z Motion Studio — the combination of the hardware and the software.
How it works
Leveraging Sony’s unique imaging, sensing, and display technologies, XYN accurately captures real-world objects, human motion, and backgrounds, recreating them in virtual environments for 3D computer graphics (CG) production.
By supporting a wide range of third-party tools, it enables flexible workflows. As the fusion of real and virtual worlds accelerates and the demand for 3D CG production in film, animation, games, and industrial design continues to grow, XYN will support intuitive and efficient spatial content creation for a diverse range of creators. Through XYN, Sony will collaborate with creators to develop innovative content for the future together.
It’s pretty cool technology aimed at capturing live performances and digitizing them into metaverse spaces.
XYN motion studio
The tools include the XYN Motion Studio, which is a PC application which supports connection with 12 “mocopi” sensors and utilizes Sony’s proprietary algorithms for automatic motion interpolation and auto-tagging functions, that enhances the creative use of motion data. XYN Motion Studio runs on Windows PC and can be downloaded from the Microsoft Store.
It is available now. The mobile motion capture system Mocopi has been utilized by VTubers and Virtual Reality (VR) social platform users as well as creators in game, film, and animation production. The new XYN Motion Studio enhances precision through connections with 12 sensors via dedicated receivers (professional mode). Mocopi, short for mobile motion capture system, includes six sensors, and professional mode requires two sets of sensors.
The application also adds new functions for motion data, editing, making motion capture more affordable and accessible to creators across various genres.
The woman who demoed the Mocopi sensors for me at GDC wore 12 sensors instead of six for better accuracy. Each one is about the size of an Air tag. With the sensors, you can do motion capture wherever you are. It uses mirrorless cameras to capture the data. The sensors go on your arms, thighs, hands and feet.
The motion data transfers via Bluetooth into the system. The capture I saw in the demo was real time, where a woman with sensors moved around and the digital skeleton of the woman’s image moved at the same time. In addition to capturing data with Mocopi, Sony needed to find a way to edit the data and weave it seamlessly with the editing tools.
Sony is focusing on developers who want to customize their animations using a simple solution. Sony has also released a couple of case studies with game developers.
XYN costs $1,100, which includes two Mocopi sensors. It is shipping this month. Developers can use it for live projects, such as streaming live data to an Unreal project.
Another tool is the XYN Spatial capture solution, now in prototype form. XYN’s spatial capture solution will convert high-quality, photorealistic 3D CG assets from real-world objects and spaces using images captured by mirrorless cameras and proprietary algorithms.
Sony’s PlayStation division is separate in its operations from Sony Electronics, so it remains to be seen whether the game division will use the XYN tools. But much of XYN’s focus is on gaming, whether inside Sony or outside Sony.
Mocopi captured the movements of humans in one game, and it did a good job showing how humans express a lot of humor through their movements such as funny walks.
“When the team got together and we all put on suits, we really came up with new ideas. It was like brainstorming through physical action,” Yamamura said.
Additionally, a prototype for a mobile application that visualizes the shooting conditions of the mirrorless camera in realtime is also under development. This will streamline the 3D CG production workflow for films, games, virtual production, and the metaverse for objects such as props, items, and spatial backgrounds.
There’s also some hardware here. The XYN Headset is an immersive spatial content creation system equipped with high-quality 4K OLED microdisplays and video see-through function, optimized for intuitive creative work in spatial content creation. It will support various 3D production software, including pre-visualization and 3D character modeling, not only in the field of industrial design but also in entertainment, and a proof-of-concept experiment using the prototype is underway with Sony Pictures Animation.
Productivity gains
One of the advantages of Mocopi over other phone-based solutions is that it works in real time and is both easy to use and accurate.
It’s not clear how many sets of the platform that a single game studio would need to buy. It depends on the size of the company, how many people are on the animation team, and what their needs are for previsualization of movements. Filmmakers are using it as well, Yamamura said.
“We think that productivity enhancement makes it really affordable from that perspective,” Yamamura said.
Developers may spend $1,180 per set, but the hope is they can save production costs — perhaps $1,000 a month. That makes it more affordable in the long run. Sony XYN has a collaboration with Sony Pictures Animation and it has created a case study with them.
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