Digital Foundry: Obviously stereo 3D has been really big at E3 this year and the potential with Move is sensational in terms of the handling of objects within 3D space.
Richard Marks: Our team has been really focused on the Move only so far but some of the game teams have been combining 3D and Move. Just last week we got a 3DTV into our area, just because we were coming to E3 and we wanted to make some new demonstrations. It's really, really crazy how it feels when you combine Move with the 3D television. Most of the games for 3D so far are "flying through" games and that's a really strong 3D feeling but another kind of experience is a diorama experience.
So there's like a virtual diorama or dollhouse. With the Move you can actually reach into that wherever you want and move around, it's such a compelling feeling. It feels like it's right there. Then we tried that same demonstration with a 2D display and it's really hard. Shadows can help you...
Digital Foundry: You can move your light sources about in 3D and still know where your objects are in 3D space. With 2D you really need the shadow directly beneath the object to figure out depth.
Richard Marks: We've done things like attach a light to the Move, so the lighting changes as you move the controller. Not only do you get the shadows, but the light moves with it. There are a lot of tricks that people will come up with in how to give a more 3D feeling with only a 2D display, but 3D really is like a Holy Grail. The ultimate demonstration which I didn't have time to complete last week is to combine the head-tracking and the Move with 3D. It's like a holographic experience. Now you can look around, now you can look behind things, reach in there, grab that.
...
Digital Foundry: It must be pretty easy to get basic game concepts up and running quickly if so much of the game data is derived directly from the user.
Richard Marks: Right, and we have another tool from the dev support team that broadcasts the data across the network from the Move, so you can send it to a PC. You can wrap a prototype on PC, or Flash or anything like that and still use the Move.
Our artists actually have a plug-in for Maya where they can do some content creation things in Maya in 3D. We actually have a new demo here for content creation... [starts using Move demo on a nearby PS3]. This is like a 3D modelling demonstration. You can spin this object like a lathe and I can carve away on it. So for content creation, you have the tool in one hand and the object in the other. It's super-natural what you do with it. You don't have to think. This is what our artists are excited about.
Spatial input on a PC is a little bit tricky. For effectiveness they can flip into 2D and have 2D views for everything but for "naturalness" Maya isn't super-intuitive though it is effective. With content creation for the average person, this kind of UI can be used by any one but a complex modelling package... not many people can use that.
