PS3 Extras : Are devs using them?

[DeanA]

Well then, how do you personally feel about the gyros enabled controller? Can you see yourself impletmenting it into any games in the far future?

It's a pretty neat controller.. I've not tried a 'Wiimote' (or whatever it's called), so it's difficult to compare against that.. but I can imagine lots of titles using it.

As far as implementing it into a game.. well, I'm not on a games team - I'm in an internal technology group. So, I escape that particular problem..

Dean

 

[London Geezer]

I welcome the motion sensors in controllers, it really is a breath of fresh air, especially when it comes to racing games, it will make controlling the cars so much more realistic, much closer to a racing wheel than the silly control pads ever were. And FPS, what a change that will make, precision was always a huge issue for me and millions others, if implemented right, this will be as precise (even MORE precise) as mouse/KB.

Thumbs up to Sony and Nintendo for listening to us.

 

[Titanio]

How could it work in a FPS? It doesn't really have any sense of where exactly you're pointing at the screen? Could it figure out from relative motion, or..?

 

[London Geezer]

How could it work in a FPS? It doesn't really have any sense of where exactly you're pointing at the screen? Could it figure out from relative motion, or..?

A thumb sticks is very low precision because it's so small, it's difficult to judge movements. With the range of movements available to the new controllers, it could be much more precise, if implemented well obviously.
I am a little concerned about the fact that the minimum movement will result in a movement of screen, but i guess that's where the sensitivity settings will help.
There is a lot of potential to give players much more precision than the silly thumbsticks.

 

[rabidrabbit]

Auto cenetering in a gyro controller would be impossible, right?
That could be overcome with a button like R1 though, the 6 axis gyro would register your movement only when you press R1 at the same time, when you release R1 it would be centered.
Or if the vertical and horizontal axis were not used, it could center when the controller is within the "dead zone" (level).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

If the six degrees are taken literally in a mathematical sense this should be possible. Six should be enough for all possible orientations (rotation and translation) in 3d space.

I'm pretty sure he just misrepresented the info. As far as Phil is concerned it provides left, right, forward, backward, clockwise and anticlockwise motion sensing as it were, making 6 DOF in his mind. You can sum a DOF as a range really, and the the tilt provides 3, Pitch, Yaw and Roll.

PStill wondering what sort of movements it can sense though. Tilting the controller is one, lifting and lowering vertically is two, but would it also detect accelaration of you move the thing quickly from left to right without tilting, keeping it horizontal ?

Imagine you're holding it in you hands parallel to the floor. Pitch is (let's see if I get these right , well, imagine there's a pole running up through the controller so it's fixed and only rotates about that pole. That's pitch, rotating the controller so one hand is forward from resting position and the other back. Yaw is tipping the controller so it's front is either down or up in realtion to it's back. Roll is tipping the left or right side. Each motion is equivalent to a direction on an analogue thumbstick, so Roll is like X direction, Yaw is like Y direction, and Pitch is like twisting the thumbstick.

Well then, how do you personally feel about the gyros enabled controller? Can you see yourself impletmenting it into any games in the far future?

I imagine it'll be a doddle to add. Just like the analogue sticks provide a signal in the range of -1 to +1 for how far in each direction it's positioned, devs will have access to another 3 values for Pitch, Yaw and Roll. How they implement it is down to them. Mapping camera motion to this instead of the Right stick would allow camera movement without having to take you right hand away from the action buttons, so that could be an easy and useful upgrade. Other than that it's down to the devs how to use it, just like mapping the sticks to actions.

I'd really like to know though if they're using accelerometers that can measure motion as well as rotation. If that's the case, moving the controller left, right, up, down etc would be another 3 axis of control, so it really would be 6 DOF. That'd be great for my sister who always throws the controller around to control platform characters. If throwing the controller actually made the character jump, it'd be a very intuitive system for her. You could measure button ress for an intended jump, and amount of motion for how high to jump. Only, that'd have to be an optional control scheme because I do not jiggle the controller around like a madman when playing games and don't want to have to start

 

[Danalys]

so i'm thinking you could use pitch and roll basically how you use an analog stick now. there'd be a dead zone of near to level so you could use that for fps aiming but it would be the same principal as the sticks already used. it might just be like having a longer stick giving you more accuracy. the accelerators wouldn't be good for sustained directions so you couldn't use them for moving around so much. but jumping and ducking could be used. on the vertical axis. just move the pad down then the character stays down until you move the pad up again. you'd have to be careful to make sure people wouldn't always go into a jump straight out of a duck tho.

actually it might be more intuative to use yaw for turning side to side and pitch for looking up and down. just center it at where ever they were pointing the controller at first or recenter when it isn't moving much.

 

[Chandler]

I'd really like to know though if they're using accelerometers that can measure motion as well as rotation.

I would too, if that is the case, it can do an amazing amount more. But I remain skeptical as technology like that wouldn't come cheap at all. If you could move the controller I could imagine using the controller as a boxing glove for a boxing game, welll, it would be better suited for Wii for sure cause of the handle. The downfall between the Wii and the DS3 would be the precision as Wii using infrared(?) is much more precise.

 

[MrWibble]

Fairly useless comment this, but for what it's worth the first I knew that HDD was standard and the controller would have tilt, was the morning after the Sony Conference when I woke up and checked the thread on it here.

You might be surprised how little some of us devs know!

As another tech person (rather than being on a games team) it likewise doesn't affect me too much - I'm looking forward to trying out the controller, but otherwise the announcements are only nice for me as a potential customer, not as a developer.

If I *was* on a game team, I'd certainly be looking to use the HDD to help load times - with it being standard, I'd hope everyone will do that and we'll have nice zippy games. I think we should all be glad that's standard - I always felt MS had shot themselves in the foot by making it optional - much like Sony did last gen with HDD and even network on the earlier PS2s.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

From the Eurogamer coverage it sound like upward motion can be read, so linear motion is available as well as rotational motion. But you're right, that sounds costly and I'd like confirmation first.

 

[MrWibble]

From the Eurogamer coverage it sound like upward motion can be read, so linear motion is available as well as rotational motion. But you're right, that sounds costly and I'd like confirmation first.

Every bit of info I've seen from Sony says it does have acceleration as well as rotation. Maybe that's not confirmation for you, but I've seen nothing to suggest it *doesn't* have these.

 

[hey69]

KEn gave us clues when he mentioned the 4D area isnt it..

btw, he gets old ... he was so proud showing his new controller on stage ... so cute

 

[chris1515]

Interview of Incog about the controller

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=64446

Dylan Jobe: It was real easy - Sony did a fantastic job about making it very seamless. I think case in point - we got our hands on the final controller... God, was it Sunday night? I think it was Sunday night, the final controller. So we brought source code with us, tuned the dynamics, it was pretty easy. WarHawk is a game that's tailor-made for this controller, so it was a real easy transition for us.

 

[mckmas8808]

Every bit of info I've seen from Sony says it does have acceleration as well as rotation. Maybe that's not confirmation for you, but I've seen nothing to suggest it *doesn't* have these.

So Shifty after reading this what do you think?

 

[Fafalada]

If I *was* on a game team, I'd certainly be looking to use the HDD to help load times - with it being standard, I'd hope everyone will do that and we'll have nice zippy games.

To be fair, given that the optical drive is barely double the speed of PS2 drive we'll really Need that HDD. But I'll still wait until I know the final HDD usage guidelines until I make guesses as to how much it will benefit load times.
Clearly the nonsense that Square pulled on PS2 will not cut it this time.

But yea, it's definately a very good thing it's there, for one, it will make big difference with the way Korean devs approach the machine. MS pretty much shoot that market down with their choice of SKUs.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So Shifty after reading this what do you think?

Optimistic, but nothing's certain. Two HDMI slots, three Gigabit ports, and 6 USB ports proves that I'll wait and see what appears on the shelves.

Still, from a tech point, it seems 3D positioning and rotation similar to Wiimote is possible, without the sensors too. I don't expect it to be accurate but there's incredible things done with MEMS these days so maybe I'll be surprised? Best news though, if true, my sister's waving the controller around to jump the Bandicoot will actually amount to something. And if EyeToy can detect when a race-gamer is sitting up to look over the hill no a 2D screen (you know we all do it ) and adjust the camera suitably, they could add some very intuitive extra niceties that work with natural player actions.

 

[MrWibble]

I imagine getting accurate positional information would be tricky, and it's maybe even not that desirable to pick up very subtle movements. It probably just needs to be good enough to pick up more violent motions - and maybe even then, limit itself to ones that are distinct and identifiable, rather than respond to every last movment.

I'm just thinking of how I normally play games - I tend to be sprawled out on the sofa, and being kind of a fidget, I'm always moving about from one side to the other. I'll also switch hands with the controller while I pick up a drink (I'm kind of ambidextrous, so if a game doesn't require both hands on the controls at all times, I sometimes just play with either hand...) Either I'll have to get into the habit of actually pausing before I make any drastic phyiscal movement, or my game character will fall to his death whenever the cushions on the sofa need adjustment

However I am generally looking forward to seeing what people do with the controller - I think any kind of additional input, that is more natural to people than pressing buttons, is probably a good thing. Both the Nintendo controller and the PS3 controller strike me as good (though actually quite different) concepts.

 

[ERP]

To be fair, given that the optical drive is barely double the speed of PS2 drive we'll really Need that HDD. But I'll still wait until I know the final HDD usage guidelines until I make guesses as to how much it will benefit load times.
Clearly the nonsense that Square pulled on PS2 will not cut it this time.

But yea, it's definately a very good thing it's there, for one, it will make big difference with the way Korean devs approach the machine. MS pretty much shoot that market down with their choice of SKUs.

I think the choice of optical drive (and its performance) meant they needed to include the HDD.
I agree it'll be interesting to see what the guidelines are.
So here's a little snuippet I got off an MS rep a couple of years ago, the two components that most affected xbox's price late in it's life time were the HD and the memory, which is likely why it's an optional addon this time, and why they were so retiscent to announce 512mb until Sony did.

 

[INKster]

To be fair, given that the optical drive is barely double the speed of PS2 drive we'll really Need that HDD. But I'll still wait until I know the final HDD usage guidelines until I make guesses as to how much it will benefit load times.
Clearly the nonsense that Square pulled on PS2 will not cut it this time.

But yea, it's definately a very good thing it's there, for one, it will make big difference with the way Korean devs approach the machine. MS pretty much shoot that market down with their choice of SKUs.

I think PS2 DVD drives were rated for x2 speed.

PS3 drives are rated for x8 DVD, x24 CD, x2 Blu-ray and x2 SACD, according to their own documentation (page 3):

http://presscenter.playstation.com/Content/detailslots/1339/PS3 US FINAL - PS3 Lttrhead.doc


Since Sony has already said that all PS3 games will be released in Blu-ray BD-ROM format right from the start (unlike PS2 games, divided between CD and DVD), the greater areal density of that optical medium will certainly help loading times, IMHO.

 

[PeterT]

the greater areal density of that optical medium will certainly help loading times, IMHO.

I think you fail to take the extreme difference in the amount of RAM to fill into account. (If you are comparing to PS2 in that comment) I'm very happy the HDD is standard, without it loading times from 2xBR could have been ugly.