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Taking the Wii Controller to the Next Level

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the stuff-to-play-with dept.

funfail writes "It's a Wii without the $250 console. It's virtual Pong and so much more. Any object is now an input device, even your fingers. Camspace is a pure software solution that allows nearly any ordinary PC webcam (95% are supported) to track up to four objects — even as small as 5mm — in real-time and with very high accuracy and reliability (Windows only). Techcrunch has an in-depth article and a video." Very neat idea, but it appears that it is in a limited beta only, and source doesn't appear likely.

12 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. Its Multitouch for the masses! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    set one of these up pointing at your computer screen... and have it track your fingers.

    1. Re:Its Multitouch for the masses! by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Interesting

      What? Multitouch without lining the pockets of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs? Blasphemer! Communist! Why, that's downright un-American! Put him in Gitmo! ;)

      The question is: okay, so we know it will be free as in beer, and that they will have Windows first, then Mac and Linux later. But what about free as in speech? This is all in software -- so will they be releasing this under an open source license? And if not, why?

      --
      My blog
    2. Re:Its Multitouch for the masses! by gyepi · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This should be combined with the head-tracking solution by Johnny Chung Lee (your head is the object which is recognized) - low cost 3D first person shooters!

      --
      Attitudes make the difference between Space and Time: we want to MAX our temporal, and MIN our spatial extension.
  2. Re:Nice tech, but latency? by JustKidding · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I can see some applications for this in 3D modeling, where latency isn't really an issue. The solitaire game at 2:10 has some scary similarities with Minority Report.

  3. Re:WIndows Only by stormguard2099 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    they say osx support and linux support are in the works to follow pretty soon right there on the website

    --
    http://greenobyl.com/ please.... think of the children!!
  4. does it run on linux? by mehemiah · · Score: 2, Interesting

    does it run on linux? mac? no? well, I'll just continue playing my Wii.

  5. Re:It's.. by angus_rg · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It won't work in real people's houses, because people will walk past and curtains will flutter in the wind! If it works as said, it tracks object motion, no motion. Technology is out there for facial recognition. Tracking wouldn't be that hard, assuming it doesn't kill the CPU.

    It will never get any decent games! It's a glorified Key mapper, no one needs to support it:
    Users can then program the emulation based on the game they want to control and the object(s) they want to control the game with.
  6. Oh stop whining by msaver · · Score: 5, Interesting

    CmdrTaco wasn't whining that the source isn't available, but he seemed disappointed the code won't be freely available. He wasn't accusing the author of immoral licensing practices.

    And why shouldn't he be disappointed? it'd be fun to play with.

    My first thought was "neat... can I play with this code?" and I'm sure my reaction wasn't unique.

  7. Re:Nice tech, but latency? by pherthyl · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yeah the video is hard to believe. I've done lots of work with image processing using webcams and they're usually pretty crap. You can get 30fps max, and then usually only at 320x240. If the lighting conditions aren't good, your framerate will drop (or everything goes unusably dark if you disable the automatic aperture adjustment).

    They show some latency, but overall the motion is incredibly smooth. Based on my experience that's impossible, but I'd love to be proven wrong. Gotta try that out.

  8. Re:Patent infringement ? by Theoboley · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Also, the webcam + game thing isn't anything new. I remember buying a webcam back in 1999 and it had games as such included on it like this. you sit in the little outline it has on the screen and move your arms around to pop bubbles... or whatever have you. Nothing new. Sony has no grounds for a lawsuit, as it had happened LONG before their eyetoy was ever released.

    --
    Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try
  9. Pitch, acceleration, etc by HalAtWork · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Besides, the webcam may have a hard time tracking Z-axis direction, pitch, and acceleration in the same manner that the Wii provides. Perhaps if they let you track Wiimotes with this device it could yield greater accuracy, but then you are right about the latency issue. A neat trick, but for hard core games it won't do the trick.

    --
    Twinstiq, game news
  10. OpenCV, anyone? by schweini · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ages ago, Intel was nice enough to opensource their rather impressive computer vision library called OpenCV, which AFAIK would do the heavy lifting for programs like these. What i find strange is that i have yet to see a neat open source program that uses OpenCV - even though i think there's even a python binding to the library (but sadly no perl bindings). Anyone know of a neat biometrics software package, or computer vision in general, that is open source?