Nintendo Wii camera possibilities?

[roland]

Hello

Just signed up to see if someone could answer my question, since I guess more technic savy people are hanging out here.

I am not saying that this is what Nintendo is doing, I just would like someone to tell me if this would be possible.

The Eyetoy was neat and quite a hit in europe, but limited since it could only detect motion on a 2d plane correct?

Now let's say Nintendo would release a camera for the Wii, wouldn't it be possible to do a basic scan of your room with the controller? If you put the Remote in one corner and press a button so the Wii can save the position information and you would repeat this process with the other 3 corners, the floor and maybe the ceiling, shouldn't the Wii be able to construct a basic 3d scan of your room?

If this would work than balls could bounce off your walls and also get smaller or bigger accordingly (depth) since it knows the position difference between the back wall and the tv? now Let's say it puts some sort of tennis rack ontop of the controller (since it transfers 3d position info to the Wii) to let you play some sort of crazy 3d tennis in your room on your television?

Really just looking for someone to tell me if this would be possible,
thanks

 

[pc999]

I am not sure what you mean but see if it is what it is in my sig, under Eyetoy/ Agmented reality, if it is that then I think it will be more dependent of performance than anything else.

(of curse you will will need a cemera with the wii, but not necessary the thing with the FHC as it shouldnt be precisse enought anyway (not the FHC, but us))

 

[ChryZ]

Roland, dude ... did you missed the memo? There is no Wii, it never happened ... please change the topic name to Revolution or short Rev. Thanks.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Interesting idea to measure out volumes. It'd definitely be a possbility, but I don't know how much use that'd ever see. That would affect your playing area based on where you were located, and wouldn't accomodate furniture unless you went and measured all that too. How many games could you make from having a realistic room space modelled in the Rev, that couldn't be played just as well with an artifical room space that's the same for all players? I think Wii is (should be wii are ) best kept sticking to it's Revmote interactivity as I can't see where EyeToy like extras would extend gameplay, though they may want to join the videochat bandwagon like the other two consoles.

While on the subject, I think one of the best improvements for EyeToy would be background removal, taking a grab with no-one in the frame and then subtracting that from the player-present image

 

[pc999]

That would affect your playing area based on where you were located, and wouldn't accomodate furniture unless you went and measured all that too. How many games could you make from having a realistic room space modelled in the Rev, that couldn't be played just as well with an artifical room space that's the same for all players?

Meybe not for our rooms but for creating new maps or models, one could do a bit like if one is carving them on the the air.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That'd be a cool idea. You could have some virtual clay and like ZBrush shape it with the controller. Wouldn't need a camera though.

 

[cthellis42]

I would tend to say "no" for two reasons: The EyeToy's first and foremost use is as a control mechanism, and Revolution already has that in their controller so they'd hardly want to confuse the issue, and secondly they are already concerned with security and safety of their young users (and the perception of security and safety to their parents), and wouldn't be too keen on attaching a device that could be taken advantage of. (Especially with the press and politicians the way they are right now. I'm sure they'd rather MS and Sony take the heat from all the negative news articles of kids getting molested through Live or abused through a simply webcam...)

If a game wants to use positional data cleverly, there are other ways to get it. Digital cameras are pretty common, after all.

 

[dubyateeeff]

If a game wants to use positional data cleverly, there are other ways to get it. Digital cameras are pretty common, after all.

Sonar baby! Bats do it, why not us?

Couldnt a camera judge the distance by how long time it takes for new pixelinformation to be available. Say it could shine "light" (of some sort) and then measure how long time it takes for the "light" being reflected and picked up by the camera sensors.

How does scientist decide distance when using hubble images?

Are you talking about many cameras positioned to be able to judge distance btw?

 

[pc999]

I they are already concerned with security and safety of their young users (and the perception of security and safety to their parents), and wouldn't be too keen on attaching a device that could be taken advantage of.

They could just tie the use of the camera to parental controls.

 

[nintenho]

You never actually see your room on the TV though, right? Because eye toy uses 1/3 of the processing power to see what is moving.

 

[cthellis42]

They could just tie the use of the camera to parental controls.

Something always slips through. AND they'd maintain distance from the inevitable problems that will come from the PS3's EyeToy use. Parents seldom know how to operate the "parental controls" to begin with, so N's safer off on the sidelines without calling extra attention to it.

And while "why would concerned parents buy that peripheral to begin with?" Well... they wouldn't. But then that's all the more reason why I don't see Nintendo bothering with development in that direction. (And they wouldn't want to add on a 3rd party one unless it's "done right.")

They have more than enough of their own unique angles to flesh out first. Maybe after a few years they'll take another look.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

You never actually see your room on the TV though, right?

In most EyeToy games the player and background are visible. Isolating the player and having them appear in game without the background is a very intensive task.

 

[Guden Oden]

Couldnt a camera judge the distance by how long time it takes for new pixelinformation to be available.

Sorry, no way in hell that's going to be possible (using consumer tech anyway). Light travels at nearly 300k kilometers/s, with the average room being a couple meters wide/deep, we're talking fractions of a billionth of a second in travel time. No way it's going to be possible to measure on such small timescales.

How does scientist decide distance when using hubble images?

Parallaxing, most likely. Ie, you photo a star at one extreme of the earth's orbit and then again on the opposite side of the orbit. Then you measure how much the star moved against the background to find out the distance.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Parallaxing, most likely. Ie, you photo a star at one extreme of the earth's orbit and then again on the opposite side of the orbit. Then you measure how much the star moved against the background to find out the distance.

IT's also worth noting that however they do it, firstly the measurement is in lightyears, not millimetres/centimetres as a webcam would need, and secondly no-one can prove their measurements wrong either. If they're out by 5,000 light years, we won't know!

 

[roland]

I am not sure what you mean but see if it is what it is in my sig, under Eyetoy/ Agmented reality, if it is that then I think it will be more dependent of performance than anything else.

(of curse you will will need a cemera with the wii, but not necessary the thing with the FHC as it shouldnt be precisse enought anyway (not the FHC, but us))

Looked at the video in your sig and it's sort of what I mean. The car staff is of course too advanced, but is there anyreason why something like the thing with the flower shouldn't work?

He certainly has some sort of remote in his hand that does exactly what the wii remote does, transfer location data that a computer synchs with a 3d object.

A lot of people have come up with crazy ideas that would require other technology, but if you think about it this would just be a creative way to use what the wii already offers. the camera really wouldn't have to do anything except filming and displaying yourself and your room. the rest is all just 3d stuff that comes from the predefined position data and the active flow of location data from the remote.

furniture is a bit of a problem, but I guess it doesn't have to be completely accurate to work and like somebody already said they could also easily just use a predefined box/cube space.

Should they add a camera do create something like a 3d mario paint thing that lets you paint 3d objects in your room, it certainly should be of a higher quality than the eyetoy, which is dead cheap considering that you get the cam and play 3 for 50 euros in europe.

 

[roland]

In most EyeToy games the player and background are visible. Isolating the player and having them appear in game without the background is a very intensive task.

yep, unless you happen to have a bluescreen in your living room that's not going to happen.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Looked at the video in your sig and it's sort of what I mean. The car staff is of course too advanced, but is there anyreason why something like the thing with the flower shouldn't work?

Yep, the flower thing is doable. Controlling objects that way is what I think most people are hoping for from Wii. As to integrating such objects into a living room from a webcam, I can't see much reason as a game. I'd have thought the objects would exist in a game world where they have something to interact with. Might make for interesting video conferencing with virtual props though

yep, unless you happen to have a bluescreen in your living room that's not going to happen.

Sony (pretty sure it was Sony) showcased a technology for removing backdrops. If you grab an image of the scenery then you can compare that with an image of that scene with new additions (player), work out what's the scenery and what's different, and only show the different stuff. It was very effective, processor demanding, but should be something well suited to Cell so might make it's way into PS3 along with other image-based augmented reality techniques.