mckmas8808
Legend
These are some of the thing that I can really see Sony going now that the Nintendo controller has been revealed. While reading about the demos keep in mind that this stuff was shown in Feburary of this year and that Sony did show something like the following at E3. So don't be surprised when Sony shows stuff in next year the closely resembles things that Nintendo will be doing on the Revolution. The following demos were performed by Dr. Richard Marks, one of the creators of the Eye-Toy and he talks about new directions in interface design.
Some neat stuff huh? A little PSP stuff too just for chucks. Looks like Sony will have some Nintendo like stuff heading into the next-gen future including the PSP. My biggest point in this thread topic is to discuss from the above demos what else we can think of to further video game development. The first thing that I thought of was Fight Night 3. Can you imagine fighting the computer controlled Bernard Hopkins or with your real hands? OMG next-gen will be great.
Oh and the second reason that I posted this is the show that Nintendo is not the only innovators of video game technology. I'm tired of seeing Nintendo iz teh inn0vators, $ony and M$ are not. They all are doing big things for videogames.
Head Tracking: Head-tracking works with the current Eye-Toy, and it's been successfully applied to Eye-Toy: AntiGrav, where you'd move your head and arms to steer a snowboarder. But there are other applications, as well. One demo was of a 3D instant replay: Dr. Marks brought up a freeze-frame of a soccer match. Then, as he moved his head back and forth, the scene rotated accordingly, showing the action from multiple angles like in The Matrix and swinging the camera around with his head in real-time.
This technology could be very cool when applied to first-person shooters. Imagine that you creep up to the corner of an alley. Then, when you want to peek around the corner, instead of strafing your character over you could just move your head and literally 'peek.' Dr. Marks showed a demo of a street scene where he moved his head to look down a street and then moved it back to duck around cover as the bullets flew.
Unfortunately, head-tracking technology uses up about 20% of the CPU with the current generation of game platforms. No first-person game developer would want to do that. But in he next generation of hardware, the processors are many times more powerful and the drain on system resources is much more trivial. Expect to see some cool things!
The 'Minority Report' Demo: Okay, most of us saw the movie. Tom Cruise put on special gloves and then played with a computer interface by literally dragging and dropping folders and manipulating data with his hands. Guess what? The technology is just about there, and even though it's still rooted to a TV screen, at least you don't need the goofy gloves.
The secret is in "retro-reflective" material. This material takes low light (say, the dim LED on the front of the Eye-Toy camera) and reflects 100% of it back at the lens. The upshot is that the camera can track specific objects with nearly pixel-perfect accuracy. Dr. Marks picked up a small rubber doohickey that he held in his hand coated with a retro-reflective surface. Then, he opened up an on-screen photo gallery. Using the device, he could reach around the screen to select individual photos. He could "grab" them by squeezing the device (the demo made a satisfying 'click!') and drag them around the screen. He could even grab them and then rotate them. The rotation was a little dodgy (sometimes it took two tries), but it worked, and it worked using technology that's pretty much available to consumers today.
Future Cameras and "Per-Pixel Distance Measurement." I didn't really 'get' this technology until Dr. Marks showed the demo. Here's the deal: current camera interfaces (like the Eye-Toy) can track movement. You wave your arms in front of the camera, and it can track the waving motion. But if someone stands behind you and jumps around, it'll track that motion, as well. And if you stand in all black against a black background, forget it: no matter how much you move, the camera can't see you.
Sure, that's cool. But once the camera knows how close or far away you are, it opens up other possibilities, specifically in the way that digital objects interact with the real world depicted on the screen. In another demo, Dr. Marks held up a wand that attracted butterflies that swirled around it on the screen. As he moved the wand, the butterflies flew to chase it. But then, when he passed the wand behind his back, the butterflies on the screen flew behind him. It really looked like they were flying around him. The illusion was much more complete than you can get with today's technology.
Hold up, he hasn't even started. Cameras with this kind of resolution can do real-time motion capture. So, you can dance in front of the camera, and all of your movements can be tracked and then applied to a digital model rendered on the screen. In his next demo, Dr. Marks moved around and on the screen a skeletal version of himself moved to match. He'd wave his arms and the skeleton would do the same. Physics was built into the simulation, so when he punched his arms forward, the skeleton punched, and it could hit objects around the virtual room. Because the camera was tracking distances, it could actually track where he was in a 3D space -- standing in certain spots triggered certain actions, for instance. The Eye-Toy's motion tracking looks pretty primitive in comparison. Imagine the gaming possibilities of this kind of interface! You'd literally be, full body, involved in the on-screen action, stepping into another character. Lastly, he showed a Matrix-style bullet-dodging game, in which the player physically leaned in various directions to avoid bullets coming at his on-screen character.
New Interfaces for Handhelds.
Adding a camera to a handheld can open up tons of possibilities. Dr. Marks, who used the PSP in all his examples, is particularly excited about the idea of using a handheld as a "lens" to view the world. In other words, stick a camera on top of the PSP facing out, then look "through" it (at your screen) at the real world but with digital stuff overlaid on top of it.
His example completely blew me away. Imagine being able to set a retro-reflective marker onto your coffee table, something that the game can track. Now, you point the camera at it and look through your game console screen and 3D characters could be imaged right on top of the real-time picture of your coffee table. Characters in a fighting game, for example, could be squaring off on your furniture. You could stand up, move around, and look at the battle from different angles: the characters would all be rendered appropriately. In a multiplayer game, you could have several players standing around the coffee table all looking at different views of the same 3D combat.
Some neat stuff huh? A little PSP stuff too just for chucks. Looks like Sony will have some Nintendo like stuff heading into the next-gen future including the PSP. My biggest point in this thread topic is to discuss from the above demos what else we can think of to further video game development. The first thing that I thought of was Fight Night 3. Can you imagine fighting the computer controlled Bernard Hopkins or with your real hands? OMG next-gen will be great.
Oh and the second reason that I posted this is the show that Nintendo is not the only innovators of video game technology. I'm tired of seeing Nintendo iz teh inn0vators, $ony and M$ are not. They all are doing big things for videogames.
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