Pre-emptive Sony News thread.

[Nique]

Instead, they thing that motion control is THE FUTURE and thus should be treated as the ideal control scheme

"You mean you have to use your hands?" "That's like a baby's toy!"

[Jagos]

Originally Posted by NonCon

I'd be totally cool with motion control if it was only an optional supplemental thing. Kinda like controlling arrows in that PS3 game I forgot the name of.

Heavenly Sword. The greatest movie since Metal Gear Solid One.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Originally Posted by Krylo

Heavenly Sword.

And aiming it into their crotches and asses NEVER gets old.

And I'd be ok with it if they'd wait until they were much closer to 1:1 than they are now, and could read forward, backward, left/right, rotations, etc. and translate them all EXACTLY to the screen, as opposed to this half assed shit that makes winning in most games merely a measure over who can spaz harder.

I'd buy a fighting game with a pair of gloves, anklets, and maybe a vest, that could perfectly read my movement. That'd be pretty sweet, and also a good work out.

I'm not going to buy a fighting game where I just hold a pair of dildos and spaz my arms as hard as possible to win, though. That's retardiculous.

To achieve this 4 motion detect pillars in a sensor skeleton is required. Movies and game designers use this ALL the time. We have the tech and could use it for real.

If your willing to pay $1000 dollars for the pillars and gear not to mention the semi custom fit sensor skeleton.

What companies are trying to do is find a cheaper way to make this work and meet 1:1 without all of that gear.

Sadly right now that isn't possible, period. And won't be possible for another 50 years or so.

Most of us will be dead/too weak to play them.

[Krylo]

Originally Posted by Kyanbu The Legend

To achieve this 4 motion detect pillars in a sensor skeleton is required. Movies and game designers use this ALL the time. We have the tech and could use it for real.

If your willing to pay $1000 dollars for the pillars and gear not to mention the semi custom fit sensor skeleton.

What companies are trying to do is find a cheaper way to make this work and meet 1:1 without all of that gear.

Sadly right now that isn't possible, period. And won't be possible for another 50 years or so.

Most of us will be dead/too weak to play them.

Exactly.

Which is why they shouldn't do it for 50 years.

Also I plan on living to 80+. I will totally be alive for it.

[BitVyper]

Originally Posted by Krylo

Exactly.

Which is why they shouldn't do it for 50 years.

Also I plan on living to 80+. I will totally be alive for it.

Yeah, but you'll be too crotchety to try it. Damn kids with their hover boards, and their 1:1 motion controls...

[Nique]

I plan on living forever.

Whether it be rejuvenating my once aging body with a magical 'fountain-of-youth- like serum, or existing in a 'Matrix' style computer as conscious data, I will be playing video games into eternity.

[Sithdarth]

Yes: Because technology, oddly enough, progresses--even in the realm of gyroscopes, light reading, and motion detection--regardless of video games.

They're trying to build things with tech that isn't there yet, and it's, amazingly enough, not turning out all that well.

Yeah except for where this ignores several key factors:

1) Sensitivity range. We've got gyroscopes and accelerometers that can handle pretty much any section of the range of sensitivity you need to do 1:1 motion control. Problem is we don't have one that can do the whole range. Worse yet the ones on the sensitive side of things tend to be fragile as well as expensive. Worse yet that isn't really going to change because the people that need them are doing scientific research and will drop 10 grand on a single piece of lab equipment without blinking. Since they only need them for those minuscule movements there is also no need to make them any stronger and so nothing much has really changed. They get smaller and more sensitive but their range remains just as limited and they get more fragile simply because its easier to make them that way and no one needs anything different.

2) Integration. Ask anyone that has ever done any sort of engineering or prototyping. Sometimes you get lucky and parts that don't meet your specs exactly come together into an awesome product. Sometimes the best parts ever simply will not work together no matter what you do. There may be power flow issues, heat issues, cross talk, interference, space issues, etc. Doing a 1:1 motion controller isn't just about waiting for the parts to have the right specs. You have to work at putting it together right and figuring out how everything is going to work together. This can be done now with crappy components and not later. It gives relatively crappy products but it also gives invaluable experience that can be built on later. As much as you might dislike it a lot of figuring out what does and doesn't work is discovered in going commercial. You can focus group and test all you want but nothing puts it to the test like putting it in the hands of millions of idiots at the same time and watching what happens. That has to happen now or later and regardless of the technology in the future the first attempts are going to suck at least a little. I'd rather it happen now so when we do get the right technology they can skip the crap and give us something good.

3) Programing. There is a shit ton of it behind any controller and more so behind motion control. You can just sit a bunch of coders down and tell them to spit out the code and expect it to be great. Ok it happens sometimes maybe but most code builds and evolves from crappy code. We've got awesome physics engines for games partly because of better hardware and partly because people have been coding and building from the code of crappy physics engines for what like a decade now. Irrespective of the ability of the available technology if we started from scratch today and tried to code a physics engine it would comparatively suck. Again its a case of do it now so you can do it right later and get as much feed back as possible to figure out what works and what people really want.

4) Collisions. Probably the biggest problem and why we won't see true 1:1 in everything before we get into Matrix style gaming. Having your sword follow your sweep perfectly is awesome and all but the one small problem is that when it hits something in the game there is nothing stopping your movement. Further if it gets pushed back there is no way to force your hands back. There has to be some inherent give in the controls to account for this. Force feedback can only do so much and most of that would be way more bulky than you'd want to deal with for something like sword play.

There is of course the other part where most people play video games to do things they can't do in real life. So tying their success directly to actually being able to duck and jump or swing a sword is going to turn them off. Maybe it works for you but I'd definitely not call that the majority. Certainly having it be an option where viable would be totally awesome but most of the time people would want an assist. Basically we don't need to be moving forward toward 1:1 as much as we need to be moving away from the current seemingly random flailing of most fast paced games to something more like Wii Bowling, Wii Golf, or any of the more sedate sports. We need to work out what works and what doesn't to produce a control scheme that feels natural and 1:1 without actually forcing the players to be Olympic level fencers. In short we don't actually need a hardware change as much as we need greater experience and fine tuning in the software. There is probably a way to get what we have working in a passable enjoyable manner but that can only come through experience. To paraphrase Edison he didn't so much discover a way to make a light bulb as discover a hell of a lot of ways not to make one. Even after that someone still came up and bested him later with an even better one.

I guess the overall meaning here is putting off for tomorrow the technological research that could be done today is both stupid and potentially harmful later. To draw and interesting parallel it is sort of what happened with solar power. We knew it was possible and we had passable solar cells decades ago. We also knew that the inverters that converted the DC to AC where about as big a problem in terms of system cost as the panels themselves. Certainly we knew as panel technology improved inverter technology would start to become a handicap unless it improved. Yet no one really worked that hard on it. Everyone focused most of their energy on the panels and continue to do so even now. The end result is that we have panels that could easily do the job but the inverters required are starting to become the majority of the cost of the system because the problem was ignored and shoved aside in favor of waiting for better panels. Now that they're hear we've got almost the exact opposite of the original problem. Technological progress needs to happen on all the pieces of the puzzle at the same time or it tends to happen a lot slower than it otherwise could.

[Krylo]

Originally Posted by Sithdarth

1) Sensitivity range. We've got gyroscopes and accelerometers that can handle pretty much any section of the range of sensitivity you need to do 1:1 motion control. Problem is we don't have one that can do the whole range. Worse yet the ones on the sensitive side of things tend to be fragile as well as expensive. Worse yet that isn't really going to change because the people that need them are doing scientific research and will drop 10 grand on a single piece of lab equipment without blinking. Since they only need them for those minuscule movements there is also no need to make them any stronger and so nothing much has really changed. They get smaller and more sensitive but their range remains just as limited and they get more fragile simply because its easier to make them that way and no one needs anything different.

Don't buy they won't change/get better.

That's like saying 9 mils should still cost a few thousand a pop because the only people who needed them back when they were military grade hardware was the military and they were willing to drop a few thousand.

They will get cheaper as the production is refined and becomes cheaper. The production will continue to be refined and become cheaper as long as anyone is buying it, because refining production and making it cheaper is what producers do.

Further, the movie industry requires very close to 1:1 motion capture, and they require it to be durable, and the smaller and easier it is to use the better.

May not be using gyroscopes, but gyroscopes aren't the only way to do it, obviously.

2) Integration. Ask anyone that has ever done any sort of engineering or prototyping. Sometimes you get lucky and parts that don't meet your specs exactly come together into an awesome product. Sometimes the best parts ever simply will not work together no matter what you do. There may be power flow issues, heat issues, cross talk, interference, space issues, etc. Doing a 1:1 motion controller isn't just about waiting for the parts to have the right specs. You have to work at putting it together right and figuring out how everything is going to work together. This can be done now with crappy components and not later. It gives relatively crappy products but it also gives invaluable experience that can be built on later. As much as you might dislike it a lot of figuring out what does and doesn't work is discovered in going commercial. You can focus group and test all you want but nothing puts it to the test like putting it in the hands of millions of idiots at the same time and watching what happens. That has to happen now or later and regardless of the technology in the future the first attempts are going to suck at least a little. I'd rather it happen now so when we do get the right technology they can skip the crap and give us something good.

Already commercial in the movie and game industries (in MAKING games).

3) Programing. There is a shit ton of it behind any controller and more so behind motion control. You can just sit a bunch of coders down and tell them to spit out the code and expect it to be great. Ok it happens sometimes maybe but most code builds and evolves from crappy code. We've got awesome physics engines for games partly because of better hardware and partly because people have been coding and building from the code of crappy physics engines for what like a decade now. Irrespective of the ability of the available technology if we started from scratch today and tried to code a physics engine it would comparatively suck. Again its a case of do it now so you can do it right later and get as much feed back as possible to figure out what works and what people really want.

Valid, but I'd rather play an NES game, crappy (relatively speaking) programming and all, with a solid controller/control scheme, than on a Wii with solid programming and a shitty controller/control scheme.

4) Collisions. Probably the biggest problem and why we won't see true 1:1 in everything before we get into Matrix style gaming. Having your sword follow your sweep perfectly is awesome and all but the one small problem is that when it hits something in the game there is nothing stopping your movement. Further if it gets pushed back there is no way to force your hands back. There has to be some inherent give in the controls to account for this. Force feedback can only do so much and most of that would be way more bulky than you'd want to deal with for something like sword play.

Yeah, nothing that can be done for this.

Oh well.

We need to work out what works and what doesn't to produce a control scheme that feels natural and 1:1 without actually forcing the players to be Olympic level fencers.

Just wanted to comment on this quick:

No one is expected to be at Viswanathan Anand's skill to play computer chess, yet it still exists.

1:1 fencing would, in no way, require someone to be an Olympic level fencer. You would simply program the AI to be at lower levels, and with current computing power you probably couldn't make the AI as good as an Olympic fencer anyway. There'd always be logic exploits and what not.

In short we don't actually need a hardware change as much as we need greater experience and fine tuning in the software.

I think we need both.

I guess the overall meaning here is putting off for tomorrow the technological research that could be done today is both stupid and potentially harmful later. To draw and interesting parallel it is sort of what happened with solar power. We knew it was possible and we had passable solar cells decades ago. We also knew that the inverters that converted the DC to AC where about as big a problem in terms of system cost as the panels themselves. Certainly we knew as panel technology improved inverter technology would start to become a handicap unless it improved. Yet no one really worked that hard on it. Everyone focused most of their energy on the panels and continue to do so even now. The end result is that we have panels that could easily do the job but the inverters required are starting to become the majority of the cost of the system because the problem was ignored and shoved aside in favor of waiting for better panels. Now that they're hear we've got almost the exact opposite of the original problem. Technological progress needs to happen on all the pieces of the puzzle at the same time or it tends to happen a lot slower than it otherwise could.

Not really valid to the discussion.

No one is going to die because we put off making the Wii 2 until we have better/cheaper motion capture tech.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

But it's good that they are trying this because they are trying to make this tech work. They are pushing for it which means more time and effort will be put into mastering it. If they continue we may see 1:1 on a cheap control set up in less then 15 years.

So yeah good news for PS5 and Zii2.

[Mirai Gen]

Yeah, nothing that can be done for this.

Oh well.

Feedback/collision is pretty much the main reason I'm okay with the Wii being a casual market. Cause getting anything else out of it is trying to swim upstream.