Old Discussion Thread for all 3 motion controllers

[Squilliam]

What the heck is that 2nd connector called EXT?

Tommy McClain

Something for extra accessories and/or plugging the upchuck into the Wand?

 

[(((interference)))]

I think that's partly because Sony (as usual) break up their features into fragments/silos: PSEye and Move, whereas MS lumps all the natural interfaces under one Natal umbrella. There are features in PSEye that are really sophisticated and out already (controller-free stuff demoed by the Milo concept video), but it's counted out when people just look at Move.

Sony am stupid.

Once they start breaking up their own stuff, they are already inferior. e.g., the Move pricing includes a PSEye, which has its own family of possibilities and software (including the free EyeCreate), compared to Wii.

[size=-2]I have a feeling someone in Sony marketing work(s) for their competition. They under-sell their engineers' hard work. They make their products look a lot smaller than what they really are.[/size]

An interesting article that talks about just this:
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/03/how-sony-lost-its-way/

Take “Bravia Link“, the streaming media box that Sony decided to sell as a $US200 aftermarket option for its televisions while Sony’s competitors were integrating similar services right into the TV. Worse, Sony sells the PlayStation 3. Why not integrate the streaming service into that, adding value to the PS3 and buy-in of its customers?

Sony released the first e-ink reader years before the Kindle – in Japan only. And it was nearly impossible to load your own content onto it. And it took years to get a solid online library and store together. According to estimates from Forrester Research, Sony had only sold about 50,000 of its Readers before Amazon entered the game with the Kindle.

Netbooks were hot – so Sony built a netbook twice as expensive as its competitors with little performance difference then let it fade away in the market after spending millions on its launch campaign.

Sony seems to suffer from its own vastness and mutilple business divisions all doing their own thing (much like GM) which leads to a lack of focus.
The software companies- Apple, Google, MS seem to be better at bringing the different elements of their businesses together.

 

[(((interference)))]

Something for extra accessories and/or plugging the upchuck into the Wand?

It's obviously for the Memory Stick reader add-on

 

[patsu]

An interesting article that talks about just this:
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/03/how-sony-lost-its-way/

Sony seems to suffer from its own vastness and mutilple business divisions all doing their own thing (much like GM) which leads to a lack of focus.
The software companies- Apple, Google, MS seem to be better at bringing the different elements of their businesses together.

Alas, yes. For the record, Sony is bringing Bravia Link to PS3. I believe Sony COO mentioned it in an interview. Belated, yes. Coming, yes.

What I mentioned above is completely within SCE though. They scoped down their natural interface work and had people associate/attribute the features to PS3. But when people discuss hot topics like gaming natural interfaces, they will just use words like "Natal", "Wii" to describe the types of input. SIXAXIS, PSEye and PSMove are merely point products in the grand scheme of things. Whereas PS3 "does everything" in a very generic sense, there is no unique notion of next-gen input on PS3 (Wii is synonymous to motion control). It will make justifying for their controller price more difficult to understand. All the PSMove technical advantages will be lost in the noises.

Sony claims that they have many years of experiences working with motion control, but it's really mostly PSEye and SIXAXIS. Unless they highlight PSEye capabilities and benefits to the end users directly, they will appear to be copying/lagging behind Nintendo Wii to the consumers at large.

It's obviously for the Memory Stick reader add-on

Probably something mundane.

They have a patent on extending Move with new sensors though (like how Wiimote becomes Wiimote+).

 

[patsu]

Move Diary #2:
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010/03/11/playstation-move-developer-diary-2/

...featuring Zindagi Games.


That ping pong game, and the Move sword game look more and more interesting (Demon's Soooooouuuulssss !).

 

[chris100]

http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/20100311_354095.html

One SPE is used for supporting PS Move.

If four Move controller are connected,there is also one SPE usage only but the latency can be longer.

(Looks like one spe is dedicated for PS move?)

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

People thought the Wand would be precise and fast back then, too.

Can we PLEASE be a little responsible with the things we say? We should all know by now that the "Wand" is precise AND fast. The tech demos can be found in numerous places. Any games that show anything else is obviously a coding issue. In other words, please try to be fair and accurate with your words.

 

[Danalys]

Anything using the libraries it has in common with the Wii for gesture recognition is going to have those problems. You can't interpret a gesture until it's done.

As mentioned before, anything using one to one is going to take some radically new AI. Personally I'd use evolution based routines to find an AI that could block strikes coming in at any angle. The sort of stuff they use to figure out how dinosaurs walked.

That animation system from Force Unleashed, GTA4 and Backbreaker could be used I guess.

 

[DemoCoder]

I played with the Move today at GDC, it's pretty awesome. What's weird is that I felt some latency between my action and the game, but the onscreen video showing augmented reality of the Move wander transformed into something else tracked *perfectly*, it didn't get out of sync for one second, was silky smooth. So it's weird that it can sense motions with very high accuracy, and paint over the wand to make it look like a tennis racket, yet I still felt like the game itself was sluggish sometimes. Could be a problem with the game.

 

[Danalys]

Well it's one frame of lag at the least, so you could be sensitive to that when playing motion games. Seeing yourself on screen could diminish that feeling for psychological reasons.

 

[LightHeaven]

In the pointer's defense, in this video it looks really good: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/gdc-10-socom-4/63019

So i guess it was just someone bad at the game playing before.

 

[Brad Grenz]

In the pointer's defense, in this video it looks really good: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/gdc-10-socom-4/63019

So i guess it was just someone bad at the game playing before.

Yeah, people who don't really know what lag is should probably refrain from complaining about it.

 

[Danalys]

Was just thinking about price issues. You only need the controller and camera for most of the games, and they'll pack in with a game that'll only need one, probably the Eyetoy like mini game collection. Then like with Wii play they could offer another controller as a pack in with a different game, probably Sports champions. Could even pack in the Sub controller with Socom 4.

 

[patsu]

I played with the Move today at GDC, it's pretty awesome. What's weird is that I felt some latency between my action and the game, but the onscreen video showing augmented reality of the Move wander transformed into something else tracked *perfectly*, it didn't get out of sync for one second, was silky smooth. So it's weird that it can sense motions with very high accuracy, and paint over the wand to make it look like a tennis racket, yet I still felt like the game itself was sluggish sometimes. Could be a problem with the game.

Holy crap, I want to be excited, but I don't understand what you're saying; especially this part:
"What's weird is that I felt some latency between my action and the game, but the onscreen video showing augmented reality of the Move wander transformed into something else tracked *perfectly*, it didn't get out of sync for one second, was silky smooth."

How in the world did you feel the latency and yet saw no latency ? 29th Feb 2010 is already over.

EDIT: Interview with Scott Rohde on PS Move:
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/11/sony-scott-rohde-interview-on-playstation-move/

Would you say there's a corporate mandate for teams to explore motion control implementation?

It's something that's interesting about Sony that's perhaps different from other publishers is that we really allow creativity to run its course. Everything from the way a studio is run, to the types of games that are developed. I don't think you'd see a game like Heavy Rain come out of too many places. Even a game like LittleBigPlanet when it was originally conceived -- it took some guts to really get it out there.

Same thing with the motion controller. There are certain groups within Worldwide Studios that are head over heels in love with the idea of creating new motion-controlled games and bringing new audiences in. Others are focused on: "Hey, we're focused on bringing you the next great sequel for the next great game." Corporate mandate? No. But a lot of people are jumping on board because they're excited about it.

Sports Champions reminds us a lot of another collection of sports games on a competing platform. Who's behind that title?

That's a new studio we work with, within San Diego Studios, and that's a perfect example of us acquiring a new resource to build this specifically for us.

A new team that hasn't worked with Sony until the Move controller?

That's correct.

 

[DemoCoder]

What I meant was, while the onscreen video they show of yourself tracked perfectly, it felt like it was "happening in the past" by about 1-2 frames, maybe more. That is, the augmented reality tracking of the polygonal tennis rack perfectly (and i mean PERFECTLY) tracked the image of the onscreen video of myself playing, it was the actual position of my real body in the recent past. Thus, perfect tracking of every movement, but the feeling that you were playing the game with 150ms ping.

 

[patsu]

Playstation Move requires 1-2 MB of System Memory

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/11/playstation-move-requires-1-2-mb-of-system-memory/

Sony's GDC panel "Introducing the PlayStation Motion Controller was exactly that: An introduction to the newly named Move peripheral. David Coombes, Kirk Bender and Anton Mikhailov showcased a number of impressive tech demos, many of which demonstrated the Move's incredible precision and low latency. One of the most impressive demos showcased full body tracking using an on-screen body puppet, not unlike one of Project Natal's tech demos.

Body tracking is made possible by combining the Move and PS3's head tracking capability. According to the presentation, the PS3 can also detect faces, going so far as to identify individuals through face contour and feature detection. The software will be able to recognize gender, age, smiles and when eyes open and close.

Coombes explained that all the calculations necessary to handle image processing are done by the Cell CPU, which apparently excels at the doing floating point calculations. The raw data can be processed incredibly quickly by the PS3, taking "under a frame" to translate to a game experience. And while Mikhailov didn't reveal how much of the CPU's overall power the Move controller requires, he did reveal that the memory demands are truly "insignificant" -- 1-2 MB of system memory.

No fair. They showed the PS Eye technologies to the developers and not the consumers. Can't blame us (read: me) for trolling Sony. It's all old tricks to PSEye, but the seamless integration of PSEye and the motion controllers is very very important to Sony's natural interface system. They need to drive it home with mind blowing software and more exposure.

 

[patsu]

What I meant was, while the onscreen video they show of yourself tracked perfectly, it felt like it was "happening in the past" by about 1-2 frames, maybe more. That is, the augmented reality tracking of the polygonal tennis rack perfectly (and i mean PERFECTLY) tracked the image of the onscreen video of myself playing, it was the actual position of my real body in the recent past. Thus, perfect tracking of every movement, but the feeling that you were playing the game with 150ms ping.

Question. Did you realize this while you're playing actively. Or did you see the lag by watching a recording of you playing (i.e., the You on TV and the You in the real-life were out of sync from the recorder's perspective) ?

 

[LightHeaven]

Yeah, people who don't really know what lag is should probably refrain from complaining about it.

I wasn't complaining about lag, i was complaining because in the other video the guy just couldn't point to where he was supposed to, same thing the woman in the move party on stage demo... It's not my fault that sony went all the trouble for making a press conference, just to put people who can't play their games on stage... It gave a really bad impression about the tech, even thought it was totally undue

But now, after a day of impressions and interviews the impression i have is a lot more positive, specially with the sony devs caring to explain all the details... Now it just seem that the troubles are a lot more due to the early stage of the games rather than something wrong wit the control itself.

 

[LightHeaven]

What I meant was, while the onscreen video they show of yourself tracked perfectly, it felt like it was "happening in the past" by about 1-2 frames, maybe more. That is, the augmented reality tracking of the polygonal tennis rack perfectly (and i mean PERFECTLY) tracked the image of the onscreen video of myself playing, it was the actual position of my real body in the recent past. Thus, perfect tracking of every movement, but the feeling that you were playing the game with 150ms ping.

That's probably due the latency the game has itself... If it really was that low, its actually a sign that the controller induced no latency at all.

But that made think about something: Being a single core, single threaded console, with the majority of games being much simpler than what the hardware could take... How does the "baseline" lag for a game just to run on Wii compares with a Ps3 game?

It could be an advantage for wii, if even with less precision, the reduced game delay could somewhat compensate it.

 

[patsu]

As long as the games handle well (fast and intuitive), I don't think it matters at all.

Wiimote+ has some shortfalls. e.g., frequent need for explicit recalibration, pointing out of screen will pause application. Those are larger issues for Nintendo to work on.

Also, I don't think people are talking about precision difference when comparing with Wiimote+. The latter has true 1-to-1 mapping too. It's the Absolute Positioning that differentiates PS Move from Wiimote+ better. But Wii has more polished software, a huge established base, much much better marketing and execution.