Alright, Digital Foundry has had a good look at the PS Move, and the first article on it is here (I'll post some tidbits, but the whole thing is a great read):
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-playstation-move-article
Sony research and development guru Anton Mikhailov takes point on much of the technical data imparted at the briefing. Straight away he's talking about the "dreaded lag". Yesterday, at the main event, latency with Move was defined as being under one frame - a state of affairs that seems almost unbelievable, putting the motion controller on equal footing with the DualShock 3 and Sixaxis. It turns out that getting the lowest possible latency was one of the team's primary objectives.
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"One big issue with EyeToy we always tried to tackle was lighting. If you have low-light conditions, you can't see the user and you can't track him very well. That's why the spheres are illuminated: you can work in pitch-black conditions. Second thing: it's robust. It goes back to precision: if the interface isn't precise, the user starts to blame the interface and we don't want that.
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Move also takes care of the basics. When I spoke with Kudo Tsunoda at gamescom last year, I was surprised that you couldn't point with Project Natal. As Anton Mikhailov powers up one of his myriad tech demos, it's clear that Move does pretty much everything a developer or gamer could want from it. Armed with twin wands, he's pointing as you would with a light gun or laser pen.
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The next part of the demonstration is exceptionally cool. A puppet is created on-screen that is accurately mimicking Mikhailov's movements. By using a combination of inputs from the Move controllers, combined with head-tracking and what must be some level of interpolation, the demo is entering Project Natal territory. Move is seemingly tracking the entire upper body. Um, wow.
Mikhailov's views on full body motion processing as seen in Natal are intriguing and are difficult to argue with. While Microsoft's controller can scan the entire body well, the bottom line is that a hell of a lot of crucial control information comes from our fingers. Factoring them out is a big gamble to take on something as important as a controller.
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"The tracking precision is in the order of millimetres. The tracking distance is about 10 feet from the camera; we have a very wide range," he shares. "The camera's field of view is 75 degrees so you can easily fit one player comfortably and two players as well.
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The Move R&D team often talk about "augmented reality", which is essentially the idea of having a video feed on-screen and adding game elements overlaid onto the captured video. In the case of the best game I saw running yesterday, Move Party, various implements are grafted onto your hand depending on the mini-game you're currently playing. As your attention is on the screen, not your hand, the Move controller essentially transforms into whatever the game developer wants.
It's a really neat trick. If you've seen EyePet you have some idea of how in-game graphics can be transposed into the "real life" world, but with Move this takes on an extra dimension as you're holding the items directly and have a one-to-one relationship with them on-screen.
"You really have to feel it to feel why it's different," says Mikhailov. "A lot people think tracking is tracking. It's more precise. So what? It's the same. When you feel how one-to-one and connected it is to your hand, it's a very different experience. It actually feels like you're in the game as opposed to controlling an avatar in the game."
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"PlayStation Eye can identify individuals based on their facial characteristics. It does this by recognising characteristics like face contours, the position of the eyes, nose, mouth and eyebrows in real-time," he reveals. "It can determine the degree of smiling, the gender, the age. It doesn't give a numeric age - fortunately! It can tell if you're a child or an adult. It can detect whether your eyes are open or closed.
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Part of the frustration with the games played at the launch event was the fact that little of this groundbreaking tech was being used at all. Motion Fighter was - for me - a real missed opportunity. Its gesture-based control system felt laggy and Wii-like. Quite why that style of gameplay was chosen when Move is capable of full body motion-tracking left me both dismayed and bewildered.
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"When you go out of camera view, the inertial sensors can be used to keep track of the controller. Wii MotionPlus has similar sensors and it loses tracking after a while," observes Anton Mikhailov.
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What this does mean, however, is that all Move games require calibration, a system that isn't required on the more pick-up-and-play Wii. According to the Sony team, you simply stand (or sit) in front of the camera, press a button once and that's it. But last night, calibration proved to be far more intrusive.
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"There are different kinds of calibration," Anton Mikhailov responds. "There's system-level calibration. That's what defines the user environment and checks the lighting. It does general sphere calibration and image calibration etc. The thing you were seeing for sports games is actually calibrating to your body size.
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But the right people at Sony are clearly having some great ideas, which hopefully we'll see translated into stronger games than many of those seen so far.
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The thinking is there, the hardware is there. Now it's just a case of getting the games right.
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So it seems Sony haven't actually showcased much of what the Move can really do. Now we can just hope that some developers start using it all the way!
