The HTC Vive’s motion controllers are revolutionary, but sometimes you just want to feel the real thing when you’re swinging a bat, shooting a gun, or swinging a sword. We don’t condone using dangerous objects when in VR, but the Vive Tracker will allow facsimiles of those objects to be tracked just like the Vive motion controllers.

Revealed at CES 2017, the Vive Tracker works in the same way that the headset itself does. The Vive’s lighthouse sensors project infrared light and the Vive Tracker uses that light to calculate their position in the play area. The Tracker is a little bigger than a hockey puck and boasts the same sensor fidelity as the Vive’s headset.

Third-party developers have a free hand to developer controllers using the HTC Vive Tracker, and some are already experimenting with VR-capable rifles, and real-life objects players can manipulate without leaving the headset. I’m eager to see what new controllers are available for the HTC Vive in the near future.