It’s the Vision 2009 tradeshow in Stuttgart, Germany this week, and Sony was on hand showing off some funky new tech making use of its cameras. It’s a Minority Report style panel that responds to every gesture and lets you juggle windows around with simple flicks. It’s so smooth, we wish we could have this instead of the Motion Control wand for the PS3!
The Sony display was cobbled together in conjunction with a Swiss software company, Atracsys. Using hyper sensitive cameras linked to a PC, you’re able to pop up windows and swing them around at speed, minimising, expanding and all without touching, unlike the smudgy Microsoft Surface.
It’s aimed at hospital operating theatres, where doctors can’t use regular computing gear for hygiene reasons, but we see a much broader use for it: never mind Project Natal, if Sony started surreptitiously popping this into TVs, you could roll through channels with a wave, or even move different picture in picture channels around next to each other.
As you can see in the video, it’s fast and responsive when it comes to hand movements, although the face detection games look much less futuristic, or fun. Of course, there’s no date when this Sony experiment meets its mainstream destiny, but it’s nice to dream, isn’t it? Hit up the video by giving the play button a good thump and, be sure to skip to 0:29 for the good stuff.
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Sorry, folks, but this is far too little, far too late, and not even associated with their gaming enterprise. Microsoft’s Surface computing is years ahead of what they’ve got here and, to boot, has had very usable SDKs in the hands of developers for years. (never mind the fact that consumers aren’t using it yet) Even Windows 7 has full native multi-touch built in and support for apps. As for topping Natal with a facial recognition & tracking demo? Please. This is like comparing someone’s homemade cardboard box “car” with an actual working vehicle. Natal does full 3D body motion capture and makes it readily usable by game developers. Doesn’t take much to go code what they demoed here using a $5 webcam. I understand optimism & hope for Sony, but this is beyond wishful thinking.
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