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Taking the Wii Controller to the Next Level
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.
Sweet! At the next level my Wii controller gets henchmen and has a ThAC0 of 11, and 98 Hit points! I think we will be ready to defeat the Play station which is only level 3!
20th century Marxism is not progress...
set one of these up pointing at your computer screen... and have it track your fingers.
nevertheless, very interesting! Really cool.
This certainly seems to be a very nice software, but the main issue with using webcams as input devices is the latency. Your average webcam can take quite some time between what it's filming and what the PC is actually getting at the other end. And this is a very bad thing when it comes to gaming. You can even see the latency in their video at around 1:30 when they have the players and the PC screen in the same frame.
Nice for simple games I guess, but for serious gaming it would require special cameras with low latency.
EOM
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
People have been writing webcam tracking software for ages, some is actually open source and there's even phonecam tracking software but this the first hopeful sign I've seen for something more fun than some stupid logitech wobbly eyebrowes and a moustache!
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Free Playstation 3, XBox 360 and Nintendo Wii
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
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!!
But, man, this one has the best user interface I've seen, by far. And the other ones are either specific motion tracking games or are otherwise specific to some small part of the problem... plugins for particular applications, and the like.
I suspect there will be an open source clone out within six months though... possibly based on Intel's open source computer vision library.
interesting.
my first thought was a black jumper, black glove, bright, UV dots at key joints and fingers with four of those webcams and some clever software, and hey presto - instant real time telemetry system.
hook it up to a remote arm and you have one nifty method of control. (seen the movie FX2?)
This is one of those very annoying parts of the whole Open Source Movement, the whining. Good Idea, no source = whine.
Code it yourself, and give your work away. Stop whining, please. It doesn't do the community any good when you whine.
Seriously, if the code isn't open and it isn't going to be, start your own, and stop whining. It would be so much better if we stopped whining and posting the whines to slashdot and started to code.
One of the side benefits of this (coding a good idea like this) would be that no company would dare release beta code, if it knew that the OSS version was on the way.
Now, get back to coding!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
So... this has nothing to do with the Wii or a controller for that matter. It's video recognition software.
GJ.
Massive lawsuits coming from Sony for infringement of all patents they managed to get granted regarding the Eye Toy in :
5 seconds...
4...
3...
2...
1...
Take of every lawyer !
For Great Justice !
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What this is doing is basically the same than the PS2 EyeToy... Maybe with a better accuracy (but, well, the hardware is more recent).
I wonder What Sony will think about that... I guess their patent lawyers will be ready to jump on the case...
For Information, EyeToy Antigrav tracks
- both arms for character's arms movements
- head movements for the character direction change
- jump/duck to make the character do the same things...
I concluded this was a hoax as soon as they said it was reliable AND runs on Windows.
As a guy who likes the open source movement, I'm well aware how those who think they love freedom really want to push rules onto other people.
Open source = good
close source = good
freedom = good
being forced to open or close one's source = bad
I wanna see you play boxing with a 3 fps webcam.
Maybe it's just me, but when one looks closely at the video, it doesn't seem that the camera isn't even point at the objects that are being used as controls. Is it possible to down load the software? I'd like to try it for myself before getting to excited.
this would be quite interesting to use for audio applications. have it control various knobs on some VSTs. maybe have it lock onto a guitar, so the effects and distortion actually change based on how you hold the guitar?
also, it would be a perfect interface for a VST theremin.
-I only code in BASIC.-
I don't really see what people are griping about in terms of source, but I suppose it depends on what they're looking for. Having the software open-source would be great (but unlikely). What I'd really like to see though would be an openly available SDK so that people can take advantage of the software.
does it run on linux? mac? no? well, I'll just continue playing my Wii.
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.
actually, it's the same thing, only you use the camera as the controller.
Add a couple accelerometers and bluetooth to any regular webcam, and you got yourself a wiimote.
entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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.
Actually, think it through:
Replace the sensor bar with a camera array. Put the infrared LEDs on the controller, and use a filter to cut out visible light, to avoid picking up irrelevant background events. Provide the console with the necessary computational resources to work out the complete 3D motion of the controller from this. It would give you much more detailed motion sensing.
Problems: calibration will be a nightmare. And just as with the Wii at present, once the camera loses sight of the infrared source, you're reduced to dead reckoning with the accelerometers.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
This will be the same as when people used to play random games with DDR mats. It's great fun for about an hour or so, but if you actually want to finish anything, it's back to the keyboard.
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
Hmm... no details on latency / throughput.
Could this be done with AR Toolkit style glyphs as well?
And, of course, distance FROM the camera is not captured in either case.
The Bible: Historically verifiable fact from an observers point of view
If this thing can track my cat, I want to make a desktop toy out of it ...
I'm pretty sure the first webcam I ever bought came with some cheesy games like kick the massively laggy soccer ball. The only thing that the eyeToy should be able patent is the ability to read the cards from that CCG and other game specific applications. I doubt this hack extends into that realm.
This is very cool technology, but imho it is a bit inflated to claim it is "the next level" beyond the Wiimote. First of all, you have to keep the objects in view of and facing the webcam at all times. If anything blocks them, or if you are tilting them away from the camera in any way, you lose control. Another big issue which has been mentioned already is latency. Also the CPU (or GPU?) cost of image analysis is very high compared to interpreting a stream of numbers from a few accelerometers, which may not be an issue on PC's but it would be on the Wii. Finally, the Wiimote has a lot more to offer than simple motion tracking: The controllers have a built-in IR camera for pointing to the screen with rotation, there is a speaker and vibration function built-in, you can use it as a remote control to turn the Wii on and off and finally you can add attachments such as the classic gamepad, or the nunchuck.
this is a EARLY beta ... I'd love to see it work.
The PS2 camera that did something similar only worked well under perfect lighting and even then had some problems.
I'll wait to see this. cool if it works though.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Processing.org is an open souce scripting language. It seems like it should be high performance since it's just a thin layer on top of gcc. One of the things it seems like it should do well is allow people to write image processing algorithms like those demonstrated in the video. Processing will do the ugly work of grabbing the framebuffer from a web cam and then gives you access to a good mix of image processsing helper functions. There also looks to be an active and helpful user base on their forum. I haven't gotten around to actually trying it out yet, but it's pretty high on my priority list. I'm sure I could find some interesting uses for it if it turns out to be as easy to use as I think it is.
Hobby Robotics
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
It's all about the Wiibrator, baby.
this get incorporated into pr0n?
Now I can play VIRTUAL Hide The Sausage!
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It is video recognition software used to implement a controler, so you could eventually play wii type games.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
...with very high accuracy and reliability (Windows only)
In a related story, Camspace also offers speakers with unmatched audio fidelity and dynamic range (only for use in a vacuum)
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that's not entirely true. The infrared sensor on the wiimote is a 1024x768 black and white cmos camera, with an ir filter on it. It also has an on board chip to do the feature extraction to figure out the position of the IR blobs, there is no way to extract the actual image data without opening the controller and taking the output from the camera directly.
This technology relies on color for tracking different objects. It would be quite a feat to do that with IR I think. In IR all you would have at best would be what we could call "grayscale". Add to that variations in the intensity of IR light that will come up as your led moves* around and you have not much to hang on to. Especially, like you point out, when the danger exists that you leave the camera's eyesight and throw off the entire tracking thing at which point you would need very powerful algorithms (can you even imagine 4 of these very hard to track objects disappear and reappear? I'm not saying impossible, but very hard)
Furthermore, visible-light sources also emit IR: you are going to need quite a filter to keep both sunlight IR and incandescent lightbulb IR out of there while allowing that frequency of just your IR led in. Remember you want to be able to track 4 LEDs with different frequencies...
Then your "off the shelve" value just disappears.
Otherwise your "array of cams" is a very good idea and perhaps (imho) the best solution would be to use 2 color and 1 IR cam and have your objects tracked in both. Furthermore the stereoscopic data will allow for much better Z-axis handling than what CamSpace does (probably looking at size of object). Again, nifty ideas but they just are no match to the "use any webcam you want" paradigm!
PS: If this thing works in "real circumstances" i.e: not in a controlled light environment, they are on to something.
*(don't forget it has an angle with a more intense center and more faded sides)
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hey,
we've gotten a few reports of this and one screen shot. if anyone does see an ad for a mail order bride, please send me a screen shot if ya can, but also paste me the click-thru URL.
thanks - address to send it to is hemos @ well, the website you're on.org
Yeah, I'm that guy.
I've seen a bunch that tend to do between 22-35fps at 640x480. I guess the resolution would determine how small of a 'tracked' object you could use, but what do you need really high FPS/resolution for?
High resolution=tracking smaller details, but most are probably going to be not too hard...
At 30fps, that's about one frame every 33 milliseconds, which is a decent enough refresh for a lot of inputs, and less than some people get as a ping in online gaming.
More amazing technologies out of the world's hi-tech leader ;)
And let me know when they make a controller that grants musical taste to these people.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
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?
I don't mean the technology so much, but if you watch the video, I think it is obvious the technology works.
Are they really using "WEBCAMS" though? I mean look past the game and look at the images of THEM. They show full frame full motion video of themselves in the background playing in realtime. I've never used a webcam that looks ANTYHING like that.
So I think that little webcam ontop of the screen is just for looks, but the technology is coming I guess.
Finally, I can battle darth vader and show him who's teh master. ;)
Damn, now I need to buy straps for my hands.