PlayStation Camera: What are the benefits?

The twitch and ustream streaming features combined with the playroom app have entirely justified the existence of the PS4 camera by themself.

Those two combined features are the reason the camera has been sold out pretty much everywhere since launch. People have been streaming their own online shows using twitch and the playroom and this has proven super popular for a lot of players, particularly in the US.

I sometimes go to the twitch streaming app and lose myself in a stream of some Japanese youngsters just chilling and chatting with westerners on their camera. It's quite fascinating to watch and see how popular this kind of activity has become.

I believe the above is the reason they even gave time at their E3 conference to announce new features for the playroom, as so many people aren't really using it for what it was intended for; rather it has involved into a home streaming "broadcast yourself" type of app for PS4 users.

In this regard i think it's proven more valuable to the avergae gamer than Kinect imho, as I rarely see people online expressing contempt at the PS4 camera, whereas prior to MS making the Kinectless XBone announcement, Kinect was seen as the source of all MS' Xbox woes.

Concerning the technology, I think the PS camera is fine just being a cheap little thing useable for a handful of apps and PS4 services. I don't want nor need a camera device to be central to my PS4 gaming/usage, the way Kinect is with the Xbox1. The PS4 camera will get more valuable with the release of Morpheus, and I think it was wise for Sony to get as many out there in the wild prior to Morpheus' release, as the headset alone will bear considerable cost. Had Sony waited and tried to flog a more advanced camera alongside Morpheus, it could have made the entire package too expensive to have a hope of reaching mainstream adoption.
 
I'm not sure if supporting existing webcams is such a good idea. I don't know that you can make a universal camera driver for it, and whenever you do something with the tracking of the DualShock 4 LED or Move controller, you're going to have to explain why some camera's work and others don't, etc.
I can agree with that, but I don't see why supporting the existing PSEye camera owned by every Move owner is a bad idea.

Also, they chose to include Move tech into the Dual Shock, including tracking who is holding which controller so that you get the right split screen view (though so far the LED matching the color of the highlighted game character has proven more useful for my son and his friends when they play for instance Lego games).
Very niche of little importance and achievable with PSEye.

Finally, you are also factually wrong, in that the Move is actually supported...
I know it's supported by the system, but not by Sony. What games have they announced?
...and Just Dance 2014 supports it for playing the game
Okay, there's one title, a cross-gen port of an existing Move-enabled game. Is that really going to make PS4? Was the new camera essential to enabling that where PSEye wouldn't have? (Especially accepting it doesn't use the ball tracking! :oops: :p)

I expect the next LBP will support he PS4's features pretty much fully.
Which doesn't change the argument at all. Why create a new stereoscopic camera where it's not used, and then not provide any software, and not announce any software at E3, when there's an existing camera that can do everything the limited existing camera functions require? Perhaps MM's next title will finally showcase the idea, but presently there's no good argument for Sony's moves. With everything shown and done thus far, they shouldn't have bothered with the new camera until there was something that needed it. Nothing presently does - PSEye would suffice.
 
Ok, I can agree with Shifty on his arguement that Sony could have just supported the PSEye on PS4.

Would have saved me £50 anwyay.
 
Probably true. The camera is nothing when compared to the capability of Kinect (either of them). I like the idea of DriveClub using it to show a picture of your nearest competitor, but that's about it for the moment. Nothing much until VR.

It's a good job they didn't pack it into every box, because Sony would have been competing with a device they can't win against. I got the impression that they wanted to include it until the uproar against Microsoft.

It's doing a pretty good job of competing with Kinect even without it being bundled because Playroom /Game broadcasting has been the best thing to come from the 2 cameras so far this generation.
 
Forgot that Octodad also supports Move, and that's a recently released title. I haven't tried it yet but apparently the Move controls make a lot of sense.

Move's Augmented reality stuff suffered a lot from the single camera having to optimise for both visual quality and bulb detection.
 
Ok, I can agree with Shifty on his argument that Sony could have just supported the PSEye on PS4.

Would have saved me £50 anwyay.

The old PS Eye was very bad for augmented reality features that involved the Move controller. Tracking the Move controller would benefit greatly from a completely different contrast that uses very little exposure time, very different from what would give a good camera feed.

The new camera solves this by being able to use one camera for tracking the Move, and the other for displaying the realtime feed of you and your livingroom. Although the image is still not great (the camera's are very cheap still, imho), it's a huge improvement. The old one looked terrible already with the 720p computer generated graphics standing out far too much against the realtime feed, but with a 1080p feed on a modern, larger screen TV it would have looked downright disgusting.

This is also the main reason for the two camera's as far as I've understood it - not so much that it can see in 3D, but that it can track the LED (on both the DS4 and the Move) with separate exposure settings from the displayed camera feed.

It really, really broke the augmented reality stuff at times. I think I still have some proof, in case you forgot (though the computer graphics here are bad too ;) ):

57173_172558126087612_6381119_o.jpg


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EDIT: found someone playing Octodad with two move controllers. Think I'll have to try this as well, looks like pure chaos (note: the game apparently deliberately makes you want to feel how difficult it is to control those tentacles, apparently it's worse with the analog sticks, possibly ;) )

 
The old PS Eye was very bad for augmented reality features that involved the Move controller. Tracking the Move controller would benefit greatly from a completely different contrast that uses very little exposure time, very different from what would give a good camera feed.
It's not about PSEye being the technical equal,. but the more business savvy choice.

The new camera solves this by being able to use one camera for tracking the Move,
In the...two games? that use it on PS4? Move's presence on PS4 is virtually nil, ergo the camera's performance for Move tracking is unimportant. The use of the camera at present and for the following year based on reveals is as a camera, for which PSEye would be perfectly functional.

If you want to argue the sense and importance of having a new camera for PS4 at launch, you need to describe why it's necessary for the vast majority of functions actually being asked of it. Move doesn't enter into the equation because Move isn't being significantly supported/represented - it's a non-issue for the vast majority of people using the camera.

Alternatively, you could argue that waiting two years to produce a new camera wouldn't result in a better product and so Sony may as well release it now.
 
You're absolutely right, I haven't needed the tracking outside of the Playroom.

I'm just being devil's advocate.
 
That's because devs lack imagination :yep2:
Possibly but it goes to show PS4 could have lived without a new camera. And I presume in so doing, when the camera is needed in 2015 it could be even better in low-light conditions, possibly higher framerate at HD res.
 
Possibly but it goes to show PS4 could have lived without a new camera. And I presume in so doing, when the camera is needed in 2015 it could be even better in low-light conditions, possibly higher framerate at HD res.

Like I said, it's also used to track which player is holding which controller. This is an SDK level feature.

If they think it helps, they could still more easily release a higher spec version of their camera than just support any webcam out there.

Another feature of the new camera versus the old by the way is that the audio mics are better spaced out (like in the original Kinect). This helps with tracking where the audio comes from. Not saying that's working really well now, but hey.

Anyway, as someone for whom Move and PS Eye were pretty much essential parts of the PS3 last gen, it makes total sense to have that available again from day one this gen, in an improved format. I'm also willing to bet that it's useful for developers who are developing a game that will have been in development for longer than just today.

Speaking of which - Singstar for PS4 coming later this year:

https://www.singstar.com/singstar/news/Trailer.html
 
OT, but where is BUZZ??!!!!!

Dead, probably. But I could certainly see a new version being very successful combined with camera streaming. In that sense I like that the Playroom update includes setting polls and such for your viewers.

I was browsing the Playstation store because my colleague sitting right in front of me bought a Playstation 4 yesterda, and noticed that Sports Friends was released for PS4 as well, and that supports the Move controller as well. Of course not in a way that actually needs the camera, but hey. ;)
 
Some more PS Camera uses that I came across in Eurogamer comments on a new shooter that doesn't use the Move controler, but does use the DS4 gyro (two different people):

"Personally I'm already happy with my camera just because it allows me to look around on war-thunder just by moving my head, like 'trackir' on PC."

"And just to add... I regularly have a couple of mates round to play local co-op games and its kinda handy how the camera logs everyone in without having to scroll through various profiles."
 
Some more PS Camera uses that I came across in Eurogamer comments......
"Personally I'm already happy with my camera just because it allows me to look around on war-thunder just by moving my head, like 'trackir' on PC."

That seems a touch hyperbolic has anyone who has used TrackIR compared the head tracking to PS Camera? I have a hard time believing it's TrackIR grade accurate.
 
That seems a touch hyperbolic has anyone who has used TrackIR compared the head tracking to PS Camera? I have a hard time believing it's TrackIR grade accurate.

As long as you have decent light, the dual camera setup should do well for this. GT5 had this too, and at the right distance with normal light it worked ok, but it was a bit too limited and the game could only spare the required memory in Arcade mode, which I almost never use.
 
2 off-the-shelf high speed RGB sensors from OmniVision the OV9713 & Image processing unit OV580 that's being used in other products like the HP Sprout & will also be the chip used in SMI's Eye tracking IP that will be found in smartphones, tablets , PCs & other devices. Even the depth sensing is being done by something that's already in the console the GPU. the only unique parts being created for the PS4 camera is the PCB ,USB3 connection & housing.

Why is that an advantage? Simple a cheaper price & better use of resources.

Where MS spent resources on special parts for Kinect's depth sensing Sony just left head room in it's GPU for compute tasks. So if there is nothing being done with the cameras there isn't much lost on the PS4 end & depth isn't always going to be needed so the cheaper price makes it an impulse buy for the simple things that it can be used for. With the parts being used in other products the price will go even lower & the camera could became a standard part of the PS4 without making the price go up too much in the long run.




The camera is sold mostly at around $44 now a price that seem reasonable for people who just want to do simple things like live broadcasting , head tracking , face scans & so on, but PlayStation 4 Camera still face the same problem as Kinect 2.0 there isn't any software that's showing it's worth beyond basic functions.
 
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