PlayStation Camera: What are the benefits?

[Shifty Geezer]

Games like Just dance can't be broken because the game is playing you & keeping score lol. if you trick the game into giving you a high score without doing anything you're the one losing because you didn't have fun dancing.

If you're not required to match the dance moves and can succeed standing still, the game isn't a game but a dance video. For those who care, it needs to track you well and report accurately on how well you did so you can do better and feel good when you improve. If you can move like a stiff dad yet score like a bendy diva, it's a broken input mechanic. A game is required to give a score feedback (or whatever mechanic) based on user input - that's what defines it as a game.

Given DrJay24's post, PSCam might be accurate enough in most cases but, where it fails to get good input, gives a high score rather than a low so the tech doesn't disappoint. ("I totally nailed that move! Why'd I get a miss?") But it sounds like the game can also run in conditions where it's not able to do it's job, rather than say, "sorry, I'm not going to work in these conditions." We had the same with Kinect that simply wasn't up to the task some times. If the conditions are rare enough though, it'd just be a bug rather than a design flaw.

 

[Arwin]

To be fair, the Just Dance games don't have a great track record (lol). The Dance Party games from the Singstar publisher did a far better job tracking than any of their games did on Playstation or Wii.

 

[onQ]

If you're not required to match the dance moves and can succeed standing still, the game isn't a game but a dance video. For those who care, it needs to track you well and report accurately on how well you did so you can do better and feel good when you improve. If you can move like a stiff dad yet score like a bendy diva, it's a broken input mechanic. A game is required to give a score feedback (or whatever mechanic) based on user input - that's what defines it as a game.

Given DrJay24's post, PSCam might be accurate enough in most cases but, where it fails to get good input, gives a high score rather than a low so the tech doesn't disappoint. ("I totally nailed that move! Why'd I get a miss?") But it sounds like the game can also run in conditions where it's not able to do it's job, rather than say, "sorry, I'm not going to work in these conditions." We had the same with Kinect that simply wasn't up to the task some times. If the conditions are rare enough though, it'd just be a bug rather than a design flaw.

That's really the big difference with Kinect being a active depth sensor & PS4 Camera being a passive, Kinect has it's own lighting (IR) while PS4 Camera depends on the lighting from your TV, Sun or light bulb. Even though it's really sensitive & can work in really low lighting there can still be problems caused by different setups. In the right setup the PS4 Camera could out perform Kinect but in most situations Kinect is going to work better because it don't really have to worry about human error as much.

If you know about lighting & how cameras deal with the lighting & backgrounds you can even get PS-Eye to track you almost perfectly (not depth)

The problem is a dev can not be sure of how other people will have their gaming setup so they can't make this perfect game for the PS4 Camera because even if it's perfect for them it's going to have problems in other setups. the only thing that they can be sure of is the lighting coming from the TV & even then they never know how big or small someone's TV is going to be or what type of TV they will have & where the camera will be setup.

They could have made people go through hell setting up the camera for Just Dance so it only give you a score if you do the move right & on time but making the tracking forgiving was the best choice for that game.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Where are those gifs from? I'm doubtful they were created without use of a green screen behind the player, or a very unlikely room setup.

 

[onQ]

Where are those gifs from? I'm doubtful they were created without use of a green screen behind the player, or a very unlikely room setup.

It's me & no I'm not using a green screen I tried it with a small green screen covering a big picture of me I had on the wall that was off to the side to keep it from picking up the picture. but the green screen was not directly behind me & it was far from the ideal setup I was fighting next to a bed & I had a small dresser behind me that I let the curtains hang over to keep it out of the camera.

The guy who made the game sent me this video years ago. you can see for yourself that the tracking is really good.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Oh, I see you're talking about the skeleton tracking and not the image extraction. Looking closely, your gifs have the same visual artefacts. I hope you recognise that demonstrates skeletons tracking isn't all that hot. If it was, they could clip to the skeleton instead of doing a dodgy background removal. I expect the skeleton tracking (as it is) is as prone to spazzing out as Kinect 1, and this game just filters the input nicely. You see a little of that with his arms not moving sometimes (across his body) and the skeleton not matching his silhouette very accurately at times, and that's in an ideal situation. When the player environment is less ideal with a little more clutter and less contrast between scenery and player, it can be fairly inaccurate (hence the need for a 2D image background removal without clipping to skeleton shape).

In simple terms regards accuracy in normal people's homes

EyeToy < PSEye < Kinect << usable without frequent, significant errors < Kinect 2 <<< Actually very good (Move just after calibration).

 

[onQ]

Oh, I see you're talking about the skeleton tracking and not the image extraction. Looking closely, your gifs have the same visual artefacts. I hope you recognise that demonstrates skeletons tracking isn't all that hot. If it was, they could clip to the skeleton instead of doing a dodgy background removal. I expect the skeleton tracking (as it is) is as prone to spazzing out as Kinect 1, and this game just filters the input nicely. You see a little of that with his arms not moving sometimes (across his body) and the skeleton not matching his silhouette very accurately at times, and that's in an ideal situation. When the player environment is less ideal with a little more clutter and less contrast between scenery and player, it can be fairly inaccurate (hence the need for a 2D image background removal without clipping to skeleton shape).

In simple terms regards accuracy in normal people's homes

EyeToy < PSEye < Kinect << usable without frequent, significant errors < Kinect 2 <<< Actually very good (Move just after calibration).

I'm not completely sure of what you're talking about to be honest. I was just saying that if Just Dance wanted to be about accuracy they could have made everyone go through a setup process making sure they had a usable setup & it would only accept dance moves that closely matched what was on screen. Just Dance is like I don't care that you got the camera pointed at just the top of your body & that bright light in the background I'm just gonna let you have fun & believe that you did a good job.