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[JasoNsider]

A couple people I know attended a small conference during E3 that I believe was entitled "Gaming’s New Look: The Importance of Interface." At the meeting there was a man who headed up research for the Eye-Toy. Supposedly he demonstrated an infrared version of the Eye-Toy camera that could somehow calculate depth in a scene. To demonstrate, he stood in front of the camera, whereby his 3D mesh was projected on screen. He promptly walked towards a virtual ball and kicked it and it reacted appropriately.

Did any of you guys get to attend this conference? If so, could you provide further details about what was shown/said? I'm trying to write a detailed article that would really benefit from this information

Either way, it sounds ridiculously cool. It's too bad I couldn't be there to see it for myself.

 

[pcostabel]

I saw it at Sony's developer conference. As you say, it's an experimental EyeToy camera that uses infrared sensors to retrieve depth information from the scene. There weren't many details, but they showed a video of Richard Marks (the EyeToy creator) waving in front of the camera. Instead of displaying his image, the video showed a three dimensional rendering of his body, (something similar to those pin boxes where you can leave the impression of your hand). It was basically a Z-buffer of the image. He demonstrated how using this camera he could appear in front of the virtual objects in the scene.
The possibilities for this technology are even greater than the original EyeToy: you could literally replace a character model with your body and interact with the objects in the game using the exact same technique of traditional games (i.e. collision detection). The whole image recognition part could be completely skipped, making this camera much more useable for game interaction.
Sony has already stated that they will include this technology in the PS3. I'm sure Microsoft and Nintendo will follow suit.

 

[JasoNsider]

It just so happens that I'm working on a Nintendo related article with this information.

So could the person essentially walk towards and away from the camera as well and have that register on screen? Also, do you happen to have any sources that state Sony will be using this technology in the next generation of consoles?

Thanks a lot for the information, pcostabel. Your help is greatly appreciated. Anybody else see this thing?

 

[pcostabel]

Yes, the camera knows the distance from the screen of each pixel in the image, so it can tell
exactly where in space you are.

Here are some links for EyeToy in PS3:

http://www.ferrago.com/story/2547
http://www.ps3world.com/
http://www.popcultureshock.com/news.php?id=368
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=53853

It's all over the place. Just google it.

 

[Lord Error]

I think the new Harmonix's game is using much simpler trick to deduce the distance from your body to the TV screen - the size of your head! Apparently, in their hoverboard game, you can lean forward to speed up, and lean back to slow down.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

I thought infrared was just a... color spectrum our eyes can't natively see. What does that have to do with depth detection?

 

[pcostabel]

I thought infrared was just a... color spectrum our eyes can't natively see. What does that have to do with depth detection?

The camera has an infrared light that uses to detect the distance of an object in the same way a radar works.

 

[Ghost]

thats pretty damn clever

 

[Panajev2001a]

Sony is doing some pretty nice and innovative things, good for them and for us gamers .