One of Sony's most aggressively expressed talking points about the Move is that it detects movement in the Z-plane — the plane that defines a player's distance from the vertical slice of air defined by the front of his or her TV better than any other motion controller, including the Wii Remote. The Remote, when pointed at a TV and moved forward and back, can be used to determine its range in the Z-plane, but Marks emphasized the Move's ability to be detected in the Z-plane at all times and with 60-frames-per-second precision based on the Eye's detection of the position and relative size of the Move's sphere.
"When you want the absolute best tracking, you have to have the absolute best position tracking, which is the camera for us," he said. If the sphere is ever obstructed, like when a player might through their hand back while holding a Move, the controller's motion sensors kick in to approximate the position of the Move, a technique that is similar to what can be accomplished with the Wii Remote's add-on, the MotionPlus.
But what's the big deal with detecting movement in the z-plane, with detecting more than just movement of a wand controller up and down (y-plane) or side to side (x-plane)?
The answer was partially provided in Marks' latest Minority-Report-style Move demo, which he would refer to throughout our conversation.
"You can punch in Z," Marks said."The Wii does that and we do it too. But what we were just doing while I was moving the camera around and flying, the only way to do that is Z."
And what of games? "If you want to place something in the 3D world; if you want to reach into the 3D world and manipulate. .. maybe I can grab things. (Fellow Move researcher) Anton Mikhailov wants to make a game where there's things like eggs that you have to pick up softly and other things you have to pick up with ammo triggered to them. I want to make a game where I'm a Greek god and I have to smash these little evil guys and the good guys I have to pick up carefully and safely.
"Reaching into the world like that, there's no way to do that if it's (only) 2D."