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[Azrael]

Some highlights from the article. Sounds like Eyetoy 2 will probably be bundled with PS3.

http://www.gamespy.com/articles/584/584744p1.html

Imagine that you creep up to the corner of an alley. Then, when you want to peek around the corner, instead of strafing your character over you could just move your head and literally 'peek.' Dr. Marks showed a demo of a street scene where he moved his head to look down a street and then moved it back to duck around cover as the bullets flew.

Unfortunately, head-tracking technology uses up about 20% of the CPU with the current generation of game platforms. No first-person game developer would want to do that. But in he next generation of hardware, the processors are many times more powerful and the drain on system resources is much more trivial. Expect to see some cool things!

But the next generation of camera interfaces can measure the actual distance to objects using infra-red pulses. And they're extremely precise. They're able to trace the exact contour of any shape, and they can track it as it moves toward or away from the camera. This changes everything!

Hold up, he hasn't even started. Cameras with this kind of resolution can do real-time motion capture. So, you can dance in front of the camera, and all of your movements can be tracked and then applied to a digital model rendered on the screen. In his next demo, Dr. Marks moved around and on the screen a skeletal version of himself moved to match. He'd wave his arms and the skeleton would do the same. Physics was built into the simulation, so when he punched his arms forward, the skeleton punched, and it could hit objects around the virtual room. Because the camera was tracking distances, it could actually track where he was in a 3D space -- standing in certain spots triggered certain actions, for instance. The Eye-Toy's motion tracking looks pretty primitive in comparison. Imagine the gaming possibilities of this kind of interface! You'd literally be, full body, involved in the on-screen action, stepping into another character.

 

[bitwise]

Imagine that you creep up to the corner of an alley. Then, when you want to peek around the corner, instead of strafing your character over you could just move your head and literally 'peek.' Dr. Marks showed a demo of a street scene where he moved his head to look down a street and then moved it back to duck around cover as the bullets flew.

I don't want to play a game where moving my head accidentally is going to screw with the camera

that would be irritating. would you have to sit still the whole time?

 

[Elios83]

Really interesting indeed.
Nintendo could be making a big mistake thinking that Sony & MS will only offer revamped graphics with their future consoles....

 

[GDJustin]

Really interesting indeed.
Nintendo could be making a big mistake thinking that Sony will only offer revamped graphics with their future consoles....

Fixed

MS is just along for the ride.

 

[thorns]

The head tracking is really useful in flight simulation kind of games, since you can look around easily by moving your head slightly and such , similar to a real pilot. In fact there's a company founded around that idea.. http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/

edit: here's a video of it: http://media.naturalpoint.com/video/6dof/vector-commercial-640x480-1mbBitRate.wmv

 

[kaching]

Great Article! I'd love to see video of this presentation!

Unfortunately, head-tracking technology uses up about 20% of the CPU with the current generation of game platforms. No first-person game developer would want to do that. But in he next generation of hardware, the processors are many times more powerful and the drain on system resources is much more trivial. Expect to see some cool things!

Sounds like a great excuse to be sure to include PS2 EE+GS chip in PS3: Backward compatability and dedicated Eyetoy support

'Course, not all of this sounds like its being primed for start of next gen...

By the end of the next console generation, per-pixel distance-measurement cameras will be available at a consumer price point.

 

[Firest0rm]

If you turn your head then you wouldn't be able to see the screen tho.

 

[kaching]

What are you, the girl from Exorcist? You don't have to turn your head that much to get the effect they're talking about.

 

[TTP]

You don't have to turn it THAT much. Which aggravates the problem bitwise mentioned. And I tend to agree with his worres. I mean, I don't want to fuck up my virtual stealth strategy with a real sneeze.

 

[Hooker]

Haha, imagine sneezing

 

[Sumasshu]

*I will not believe the hype*

(I want to so badly though)

 

[M3wThr33]

1) Police 911, the Namco shooter already does this. Good enough to get a sequel or two.

2) I would have liked a way to look up and down in RE: Dead Aim without waiting for the bastard to get back up. Otherwise, with the dpad on the gun, Dead Aim is basically what they mean.

 

[Jonnyram]

What bothers me is that they released an EyeToy without any CPU power of its own. That was a crazy idea - they should have realised that noone would use it for anything good because of the CPU burden on the PS2. Hopefully EyeToy2 will have some kind of CPU in the peripheral itself.

 

[Andrew2]

The plot thickens. Check out this Sony invention patent that was made public last year...

http://tinyurl.com/2a6zn

 

[Foobar]

Amazing how an industry buzzword like "gimmick" has never attached itself to Eyetoy, it really deserves the label. Yeah, touchscreens and connectivity are gimmicks, but nodding head or waving your hands like a retard in front of a screen? Perfectly normal.

Oh well, whatever justifies the alcohol. Karoke Revolution with Eyetoy support can't be far off, right?

 

[Kiriku]

Amazing how an industry buzzword like "gimmick" has never attached itself to Eyetoy, it really deserves the label. Yeah, touchscreens and connectivity are gimmicks, but nodding head or waving your hands like a retard in front of a screen? Perfectly normal.

Oh well, whatever justifies the alcohol. Karoke Revolution with Eyetoy support can't be far off, right?

I thought SingStar (the game that's very similar to Karaoke Revolution) already had Eyetoy support?

 

[BuddyC]

Weren't there similiar reports regarding an infared EyeToy after E3 last year?

 

[Foobar]

I thought SingStar (the game that's very similar to Karaoke Revolution) already had Eyetoy support?

Hell if I know, I try to mentally block out garbage like that. Nightcaster? I don't believe it actually exists.

 

[Rhindle]

Amazing how an industry buzzword like "gimmick" has never attached itself to Eyetoy, it really deserves the label. Yeah, touchscreens and connectivity are gimmicks, but nodding head or waving your hands like a retard in front of a screen? Perfectly normal.

Oh well, whatever justifies the alcohol. Karoke Revolution with Eyetoy support can't be far off, right?

The current Eyetoy is totally gimmicky, but that's just because of the limitations of the device restrict you to gimmicky applications.

The next gen of optical recognition devices is going to be pretty amazing, with a big increase in sensitivity and a huge improvement in the interpretive algorithms. I think there is a good chance that it will be THE thing that makes gaming a mainstream item.

 

[Andrew2]

^^^Theres a difference between gimmick and innovation. The NDS was neither a gimmick nor innovation,but an alternative to doing something. To get what I mean,touchscreen technology in games isn't something new. In fact SEGA have used a touchscreen interface for several of thier arcade games.

Now when you look at you at say the Eye Toy,it was a innovation. True webcam games have existed before the Eye Toy,but the ET wasn't about that. Eye Toy was all about introducing a new way of human-machine interface aside from just controllers,but unfortunately in its currently state, developers only it as a means of making casual party games when in fact alot of innovative ways to play games can come from the Eye Toy.

One thing I do say though,I'm glad Richard Marks and Sony is continuing thier work on changing the way we see games.

 

[Mr_Furious]

interesting...

 

[kaching]

What bothers me is that they released an EyeToy without any CPU power of its own. That was a crazy idea - they should have realised that noone would use it for anything good because of the CPU burden on the PS2. Hopefully EyeToy2 will have some kind of CPU in the peripheral itself.

It's done alright for what is so far, and I don't think the CPU overhead is that bad for all tasks put to it if they can manage a piece of software like Antigrav with it. Certainly for v.2 it'll be nice if they can give it its own dedicated CPU cycles, but, even if that happened in v.1, I don't think you would have seen the world rushing to Eyetoy-enable everything overnight. There's obviously a lot of R&D to be done here to figure out what makes sense for implementation in or extension of existing game types, as well as how it enables new game experiences.

Amazing how an industry buzzword like "gimmick" has never attached itself to Eyetoy, it really deserves the label. Yeah, touchscreens and connectivity are gimmicks, but nodding head or waving your hands like a retard in front of a screen? Perfectly normal.

Might have something to do with the fact that there weren't nearly as many attempts to overhype Eyetoy, hence the lesser amount of backlash. It's unfortunate that "gimmick" would be a word associated with any of these technologies and similarly unfortunate that you can't seem to break the cycle of pettiness.