Both Wii and this suck compared to this.

http://media.gear.ign.com/articles/855/855511/vid_2303903.html

Very nice looks like some developers are not so lazy these guys are doing some good work -

This system is using a 60hz IR camera not unlike the ps3eye PLUS they have also added a pulsed IR light source to illuminate anything near the camera so it appear brighter - It's not really a 3D camera at all (marketing talk) though it's a usefull system - i have used an IR distance sensing system myself in the past so i know exactly how this technique works. (the comment about measuring the time of travel of the pulse is actually incorrect or a misunderstanding on the marketing guys part)

A simple RGB camera is capable of similar things - the key is high speed image processing and face/hand recognition software. The old playstation2 eye apparently came out with several games which reacted/detected your movements via camera. Ps2 really lacked sufficient processing power to achieve complex processing and tracking. A more powerfull system like PS3 or whatever 3DB are using is going to be far more capable.

You can get some simple PS3 eye games today. They look interesting though in my opinion they are pretty crap compared to what 3db systems are doing or what could be done with superior recognition/tracking software.

Hope to see some better stuff like this soon - these guys can make a fortune with this type of interactive gameing.

This shows there are better ways to play games than those stupid thumbstick controllers.

See that is just it, with 4 SPUs and 1 always claimed by the system you are down to 2 SPUs left. At that point there isn't enough power left to handle a full game, but that is moot considering the price of the Toshiba system. I fully appreciate the abilities of this system but its simply no where near a mass market price point.

As for the voice recognition, I want to point out something I've pointed out to many others on this site and is actually quite applicable to the Toshiba technology as well. Hardware usage numbers provided by researchers and developers cannot be extrapolated to mean anything beyond exactly what they say. For all we know they could have the memory bus completely maxed out while only utilizing a single SPU (its not hard) and that would mean even with a billion SPUs all but that one are worthless, so unless you personally have hands on with the system and know detailed system usage info its pretty unreliable to assume anything beyond what is explicitly stated.... which is that the Toshiba solution requires 4 SPUs provided that its the only thing running on the system and you can recognize lots of voices with a single SPU provided its the only thing running on the system. Thats all you can deduce from that, at best its a bare minimum of what they require.

Yeah, I actually read up on it before my last post a little a bit and its a fairly impressive piece of technology, I'm impressed by what they've done although I do think their is room for a lot more and I hope they continue down that path. And I absolutely think that in the future this technology will be the way things go for that reason, but right now it simply is not a viable solution with the current consoles for economic reasons, among others.

Again I'm aware that this software can run on the PS3, but running software like this on the system is a long way off from implementing it into a full working game as I've said. Games today are demanding in all aspects of development, there have already been optimisation issues with several PS3 games during development. By the time you task those 4 SPUs to this software the dev team will be trying to decide if they should cut their physics engine or their AI.

I absolutely agree that most devs are lazy but they aren't so lazy that they don't like the idea of making money. I think it is more than reasonable to look at this situation and come to the conclusion that devs have never done it because of the enormous hurdle of marketing a gaming peripheral. Selling a peripheral to most gamers has long been considered a suckers game and Nintendo's recent success in that department with the zapper and the balance board in Japan are exceptions that have spurred some interest in whether or not things have changed.

Now I don't think devs are going to do a 180 so fast that they think they might be able to convince folks into buying a $4k head tracking peripheral but I can defeinitely see a few of them trying to implement the technology through use of the Wii-Mote methodology and the Eye. Which is precisely why I think it is somewhat silly to bring up the Toshiba tech in a discussion about head tracking during this generation. Its absolutely a cool tech, but not something we will see this generation on consoles.

Full 3D tracking of the target is not strictly required, with the lateral and vertical measurements being exact you only need an aproximation of the depth. The Vertical/Lateral is easy enough considering the format the data is provided in, and the distance can be aproximated more than satisfactorily with a rough estimate of the average width of a person's face being used as the assumed distance between the points. This is precisely what is seen in this video, as many of the folks on this site have seen. As I pointed out in my last post you aren't likely to turn your head so truthfully I don't think it will be an issue for any of these methods.

I will say that I do agree the technology is simple, and that is why it is an ideal solution for this generation.

You will get no arguments here, I think there are quite a few things that could be done that aren't and there is no doubt that developers are fearful of the unknown but its worth noting this is because this is an industry where a large investment in a game that flops can have catastrophic repercussions for that developer.

Final Word:

I realise that you like this Toshiba system, and I admit I do as well. But it has several issues preventing it from being a product for this generation, among those reasons are the following: The software is not available for licensing due to it not being developed as a modular engine and it will need work before it can be licensed, even if it were turned into an engine that a developer could license it is simply eats too many system resources to be viable as a gaming application in its current incarnation on any console, its pricetag is far from something consumers will even consider, even at a reasonable price people will expect a healthy supply of games to utilize with the peripheral (this is one of the major downfalls of peripherals BTW) which will require a sizeable push on their part to get developers to license their engine and that of course goes back to their fear of new things, etc...In short, the Toshiba solution is dead in the water this generation.

Both the Eye is and Wii-Mote would be served a kindness to be considered even neutered versions of the Toshiba technology. And as I've said already, the biggest reason the Wii-Mote methodology is the best available right now is because not only is it simple, but its extremely affordable and has multiple uses for every Wii-Owner and not just Wii-Owners who plan on playing a card-game or have $4k lying about. Affordability and multiple uses are a huge plus for any peripheral.

This is a great example of what is to come next gen and precisely why the cameras are in fact better when designed for this sort of thing. But until this sort of peripheral is in widespread use by users of a console its not going to get much dev attention and that applies to all of the solutions discussed so far.

Which is why I think this is a next-generation feature, because it will have to be integrated from day 1.

I agree.

Bloom Blox Wii will use head tracking but it's just a quick add on thing and the PS3 eye using head tracking is not much more than Eye Toy 2 ..just a "neat o" thing for now but not much will come out of it this gen. While the tech maybe here there needs to be an entire strategy and marketing and developers on board for things like this to actually take off.

Z cam like Matt said in the video won't go anywhere until Nintendo or Sony or MS or even all 3 pick this up next gen of systems just not current Gen.

Off topic whoever this leo guy in your sig who said that..tell him he is an idiot.

Thanks for the excelent/intelligent reply Sqrl it's not often these threads raise the bar so high.
In regards to using 4 or 5 SPU's to simply do voice/or image processing - it's a significant sacrifice. The RSX runs on seperate buss to Cell so RSX performance will still be 100% free.
Note SPU's are often dynamically allocated little jobs to do rather then reserving them exclusivly for one task.
Depending on what other task's your game is doing t 1 or 2 SPU's is still quite sufficent to provide all the sound and graphics necessary to operate a complex video game. Machines like old-Xbox and Wii and PS2 are quite capable of games with far less capable processors. A single SPU is over 4* the processing speed of any of these machines cpu's.
I would hope that we dont have to wait for an 8th generation of consoles to get some of these advanced interfaces in games. Mabey some independent developers will rize to the task and lead the way if the big games companies won't.