Playstation Move – 3D Tracker

In the end of 2006, Sony was already talking about it. Now they’ve finally made a demonstration at GDC of their upcoming 3D tracker, named Playstation Move :

Tt has gyroscopes, accelerometers, magnetometer for high rate updates and the Playstation Eye webcam watches the glowing sphere to recalibrate the position at each frame. It should also have two distinct elements, ala Wiimote & Nunchuck.

Develop-Online has more specs :

Features
“The latency for the Playstation Move is under one frame” – Scott Rohde, vice president of product development, SCEA.

PlayStation®Move motion controller
Three-axis gyroscope
Three-axis accelerometer
Terrestrial megnetic field sensor
Colour-changing sphere for Playstation Eye tracking
Bluetooth® technology
Vibration feedback

PlayStation®Move sub-controller
Built-in lithium-ion rechargeable battery
Bluetooth® technology
2 DUALSHOCK® or SIXAXIS® Wireless Controller replacement capability.

PlayStation® Eye
Built-in four-capsule microphone array
Echo cancellation
Background noise suppression

Price
“Under $100” (£47)

I’ve been able to test a pre-version and must admit I was really impressed with the reactivity and precision of that device. As you can see, it can also be used for nice AR applications :

Yes, it’s much better than a Wiimote since it’s a real, absolute 6DOF tracker (as long as the camera sees the sphere) . Ok with the Wiimotion plus it’s getting better.

Contrary to the wiimote, which has an embedded camera that sees the infrared dots, the camera is now on your TV looking at the device.

They both have the same occlusion problem, meaning that if the camera doesn’t see the marker, the inertial data will rapidly drift to become useless. This can happen is someone stands in front of you or if the device is behind you.

It’s a good start for VR games, especially if you can stick one to your head !

And as the PS3 is supposed to support stereoscopic displays soon, this will get exciting

( Especially if, as the rumour says, Killzone 3 uses the Move and is S3D compliant !!!)