In the creation of the film Avatar, director James Cameron invented a system called Simul-cam. It allowed him to see the video output of the cameras, in real time, but with the human actors digitally altered to look like the alien creatures whom they were playing.

Motus, a commercial version of the system, will be manufactured by gaming hardware company Razer, and should work on any home PC. It is expected to be available for purchase as of early next year, for under $161.

Users of the Motus system hold two Sixense electromagnetic motion-sensitive controllers (like the Wii controllers), and see their environment through a virtual camera – just like the environments of existing video games and animations are already seen. In this system, however, they can look around their virtual world simply by moving one of the controllers, as if it were a camcorder.