Eyetoy looks into the future

[London Geezer]

IGN Article on Eyetoy

January 28, 2004 - It's rare that a peripheral will have solid sales so the fact that the EyeToy has sold two million units in Europe is downright amazing. Add up 400,00 units sold in America and more being made all the time and Sony estimates that four million PS2 webcams will have been shipped by the end of its fiscal year, March 31.


Expect much more to be developed for this little device. According to a recent L.A. Times interview with Richard Marks, the developer of the EyeToy, a dancing game will be coming out in the spring. Players will move their arms in sync with the music. Sony's website has programming tools for the EyeToy and they've been downloaded 1,000 times so far, giving hope that other developers will be finding new uses for the EyeToy for upcoming games.

All of this is welcome news to Marks, who has had the idea for the webcam device ever since he first saw the PS2 in development back in 1998. "I hope EyeToy will go the route of the microphone and will just become part of the platform," says Marks. "In the future, games might even recognize the color of your shirt, or whether you smile, and incorporate that into the game."

Pretty interesting. Looking forward to see what will happen in the future with this and other features. Who knows, maybe a camera will come by defauls with new consoles? There is so much potential, especially once high resolution cameras and recognition programs are used in conjunction with games.
Controller have never been a "natural" way to control games, i always felt they were a sort of interim medium, good enough until a real control method was invented.
I think eye-movement recognition will become important in the not-so-near future. We will only have to stand in front of the display, with a camera tracking our eye movements and recognising what we want to do in the game. I think there is already some R&D going on with regards to this. Not for games, of course, but the idea exists already.

Also emotional recognition would be interesting. A software would be able to recognise our emotional status by analysing our facial tension and expressions, changing the application's difficulty, speed, music and overall involvement accordingly... Think, a psychological horror game where the game itself recognises and changes colour palette, music, environments and character's movements according to what we "feel". (Of course it wouldn't work with those people who don't show emotions on their faces...)

Loads of potential...

 

[rabidrabbit]

Eye movement recognition. What if you are cock-eyed (is that the right word for if you eyes look at slightly different directions? I looked it at dictionary, but it sounds funny ) Or if you are wearing glasses.
Would it still work well.

Also, I would think it'd put a lot of stress to one's eyes.
When Iook at the TV while playing agame, my eyes wander quite a lot, and quite fast. In eye movement recognition technology, wouldn't you have to stare at the screen quite focused and intensively, so that the cursor or whatever you're controlling wouldn't hop wildly around the screen.
And how would more than two axis movement be implemented?

 

[London Geezer]

Eye movement recognition. What if you are cock-eyed (is that the right word for if you eyes look at slightly different directions? I looked it at dictionary, but it sounds funny ) Or if you are wearing glasses.
Would it still work well.

Also, I would think it'd put a lot of stress to one's eyes.
When Iook at the TV while playing agame, my eyes wander quite a lot, and quite fast. In eye movement recognition technology, wouldn't you have to stare at the screen quite focused and intensively, so that the cursor or whatever you're controlling wouldn't hop wildly around the screen.
And how would more than two axis movement be implemented?

I'm no expert, but there are researchers working into this, and the eye wondering thing isn't that much of a problem. To select something you wouldn't need to stare at it for 5 seconds , the software would pick up the "signals" straight away. The eye wondering is recognised and "filtered" by the software.
The glasses and... errr... the cock-eyed issues are something i'm not exactly sure about with regards to the implementation.
As i said i only read a few things on research that has nothing to do with games, but the potential IS there for development...
Don't ask for links cause i have no idea where i read this....

 

[Dio]

If the military still fly planes with sticks, then they are the best way of doing it. They have the money to adopt better control methods if they provide a significant advantage in combat.

Note that even the US military has gone a little cold on eye-tracking given that the Russian helmet-sight system (which doesn't use it) works just about as well.

 

[London Geezer]

If the military still fly planes with sticks, then they are the best way of doing it. They have the money to adopt better control methods if they provide a significant advantage in combat.

Needless to say, if something goes wrong on a plane, then people get a slight and immediate feeling of....... DEATH.

If something goes wrong in a house while playing a game, all you get is frustration, much like today...

Bit of an over-the-top example....

 

[V3]

If the military still fly planes with sticks, then they are the best way of doing it.

I agree, you get better control with flight stick when playing flight sims. Its more fun too. But that's flying a plane though. For a car, wheels still preferable than flight sticks. Also I think flight stick are hard to play game like Beatmania.

That's why I suggest more specialised controller for next genre, preferably with better force feedback too, where it applies.

 

[Guden Oden]

Where did this silly idea about eye-controlled movement come from? The piece of text London-Boy posted says nothing of the sort.

The Eyetoy camera isn't of high enough quality anyway to pick up eye movements reliably unless the user sits very close to it, so I don't think anyone has anything to worry about in this regard. Just forget the idea altogether.

I want a user interface that controls like the gloves Keanu Reeves use in the movie "Johnny Mnemonic". That was some cool shit, IMO. Or was it Pierce Brosnan (???) in "Lawnmower Man"? Hm, I can't quite remember. Actually, I think both movies had 3D-like VR-interfaces...

Anyway. Cool.

 

[London Geezer]

Where did this silly idea about eye-controlled movement come from? The piece of text London-Boy posted says nothing of the sort.

The Eyetoy camera isn't of high enough quality anyway to pick up eye movements reliably unless the user sits very close to it, so I don't think anyone has anything to worry about in this regard. Just forget the idea altogether.

I want a user interface that controls like the gloves Keanu Reeves use in the movie "Johnny Mnemonic". That was some cool shit, IMO. Or was it Pierce Brosnan (???) in "Lawnmower Man"? Hm, I can't quite remember. Actually, I think both movies had 3D-like VR-interfaces...

Anyway. Cool.

The eye movement thing was my "In the future i'd like to see something like that implemented" thought. Never did i say Eyetoy is good enough for that, it's all in my first post, look it up

Gloves would be cool too, shame Johnny Mnemonic was such a big piece of $h|t