PlayStation Move technology thread

[Shifty Geezer]

The major advantage is not having a silly looking controller. Move has demonstrated pixel-perfect precision and responsiveness, so there was nothing to be gained in that respect.

 

[patsu]

Will ultrasonic sensor be laggy ? Bats seem to do well evading birds.

I was told ultrasonic sensors can be very precise. I believe at that time, we speculated that it does not require line of sight.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Will ultrasonic sensor be laggy ? Bats seem to do well evading birds.

Speed of light versus speed of sound. In relative terms, ultrasonics is a million times more laggy.

I was told ultrasonic sensors can be very precise.

Yes, but no more so than Move, evidentally, and at added cost and complexity for a robust solution.

 

[catisfit]

Thanks for the answer guys.

Yeah, speed of sound is a lot slower than speed of light, but over a 4m trip it would have no impact.

I was dubious about the claimed "sub-millimetre" accuracy of the Move if it used a visual only solution, but clearly it works and if it's cheaper without u/s then no point making it more expensive!

 

[Angelcurio]

Its been a long time since the last time i posted here (now i normally lurk withouth login in).

I really want to know how moves track the position you are aiming on the tv. I mean you have your PS eye camera, but how does the console know the size of your tv? or that instead of aiming on the tv, you are aiming on the wall, etc?

 

[TheWretched]

I don't think there is a "1:1" mapping at all. Just like a computer mouse, it probably is relative to where you are pointing it.

 

[Danalys]

That's easily calibrated for like with a light gun or the Wii remote. With Move you could accurately triangulate the position of the corners of the TV.

 

[patsu]

Aren't you a developer, Angelcurio ?

I suppose during calibration, the PS3 will ask you to point at various on-screen objects to gauge your position and TV size ?

 

[V3]

With the Eyetoy, you don't really drag a cursor around like a mouse or Wiimote. I am sure PSEye will have an easier time tracking that bulb for 1:1, plus they are other stuff from the Move controller too that will help.

I just don't think 1:1 will make much difference to gameplay in the end. I am more interested in how much Sony will try to get Kinect functionality through PSEye, we know they have similar technology in their lab that they demoed long time ago. I mean prior to PS3 release we were discussing how we should be able to control PS3 menus via Eyetoy, that should be easily reliasable this time around.

 

[ShadowRunner]

Thanks for the answer guys.

Yeah, speed of sound is a lot slower than speed of light, but over a 4m trip it would have no impact.

I was dubious about the claimed "sub-millimetre" accuracy of the Move if it used a visual only solution, but clearly it works and if it's cheaper without u/s then no point making it more expensive!

The sub-millimetre accuracy is only in reference to the x/y positioning i believe. z positioning is accurate to a couple of centremeters i think. The ultrasonic sensor was for detecting the z depth, and would have likely been much more accurate. Most likely they felt the visual method was suffiecient in terms of accuracy and scrapped the ultrasonic sensor to reduce cost and complexity. No point in having submillimetre z accuracy if the end result doesnt effect the game much. x/y accuracy is much more important.

 

[_phil_]

z positioning is accurate to a couple of centremeters i think

Obviously it gets better the closer to the camera and worse the farther.

 

[onQ]

I made this video the other night to prove to someone that the Playstation Eye could track at 120FPS and it got me thinking couldn't Sony just add a IR emitter & a lense cap that only let in IR light to make the Playstation Eye do just about the same thing as Kinect only faster?

because I did this with just the Playstation Eye tracking my hand by seeing the refections of the light coming from my laptop screen.

then I also broke open a old floppy disk and took the little black disc out of it and used it to cover the Playstation Eye lens & did the same thing using a remote to shine IR on my fingers.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

then I also broke open a old floppy disk and took the little black disc out of it and used it to cover the Playstation Eye lens & did the same thing using a remote to shine IR on my fingers.

Very impressive, and a clever idea. Yes, providing an IR emitter and filter for PSEye could work. However, I dare say at this point that the thing stopping Sony will be patents. Kinect uses a random noise pattern which is patented. Other system already exist with ordered pattern projections.

 

[onQ]

Very impressive, and a clever idea. Yes, providing an IR emitter and filter for PSEye could work. However, I dare say at this point that the thing stopping Sony will be patents. Kinect uses a random noise pattern which is patented. Other system already exist with ordered pattern projections.

yeah I think the patents would be the thing that stop them from using this idea.

it also worked with me just putting the PlayStation Eye below my TV and just using the refections from the TV but you have to turn the lights off if you're not using the black cap that only let IR in.

 

[Arwin]

Didn't we also discuss at some point if the colored light from the Move controller could be used? I'm sort of expecting we'll get a stereo camera to do the work in the future though and in the meantime Sony may well consider their progress in upper-body tracking along with two Move controllers to be sufficient.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

it also worked with me just putting the PlayStation Eye below my TV and just using the refections from the TV but you have to turn the lights off if you're not using the black cap that only let IR in.

Presumably you're using light intensity to determine distance? The problem there is different material absorbing more or less light, such that dark coloured surfaces will appear further away. How do you get round this?

 

[onQ]

Presumably you're using light intensity to determine distance? The problem there is different material absorbing more or less light, such that dark coloured surfaces will appear further away. How do you get round this?

I don't know I only tried it with my hands, but that is the same problem with Kinect because some materials don't reflect IR light.

 

[TheWretched]

Well, if we are only talking of hand tracking, then materials shouldn't be much of a problem... as skin is... well skin^^ But that's not worth much, I guess, as hand tracking itself... I don't know if it's really useful without the rest.

Sony (and many others) already do face tracking in some games (demoed GT5 using it already). I ask myself, why face tracking is "so much easier" than fingers. Is it, because they can change shape?

If Sony does indeed plan a 3D camera for PS3 or PS4 in the future, they can easily implement a system akin to Natal... but they would still be dependent on good enough lighting.

 

[onQ]

Well, if we are only talking of hand tracking, then materials shouldn't be much of a problem... as skin is... well skin^^ But that's not worth much, I guess, as hand tracking itself... I don't know if it's really useful without the rest.

Sony (and many others) already do face tracking in some games (demoed GT5 using it already). I ask myself, why face tracking is "so much easier" than fingers. Is it, because they can change shape?

If Sony does indeed plan a 3D camera for PS3 or PS4 in the future, they can easily implement a system akin to Natal... but they would still be dependent on good enough lighting.

not if the camera has a IR emitter. even the video I made was done in the dark only using the light from my laptop.

 

[Arwin]

not if the camera has a IR emitter. even the video I made was done in the dark only using the light from my laptop.

As I said, I'm almost 100% sure they'd use a dual camera system so they can at least get stereo vision. Just look at a game like Start-the-Party or EyePet. If you play that in 3D, and then it can also show a videofeed of yourself in 3D at the same time, you almost have the complete interactive virtual world experience - or if you don't include collisions, you can at the very least make it look that way.

They could also in that case build in an option to filter only infra-red for instance (either through hardware or software) to help with depth perception/bad lighting conditions, but newer lenses may be good enough by that time to do with just two proper 'regular' cameras.