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CES 2009: Mgestyk hoping you'll chuck your controller
We'd like to fault Mgestyk for their painfully edgy misspelling of a well-known actual word, but as a bunch of guys who spell Joystick with a "q", we're cautious about getting into a pot-kettle situation. Instead we'll talk about Mgestyk, a hands-free controller (or, more accurately, a controller-free controller) that we spotted on the CES show floor.With Mgestyk, a specially-designed camera tracks the player's movements with surprising accuracy, and without the perfect lighting required by an EyeToy or Xbox Vision camera (in fact, we're told the camera can work in complete darkness). Also, unlike the other cam controllers, Mgestyk has the ability to detect depth. The possibilities are intriguing, but, as you can see in the video above, the technology isn't perfect yet (lag, it would seem, continues to be an issue). We're rooting for our Brothers in Misspelling, but we're not sure we're looking at a Wii-killer just yet.
Mgestyk Fusion: the Force is 6-degrees strong with this one
Everyone and their grandma loves the Wii. But even Nintendo's new dual-axis MotionPlus struggles in 3D space due to limitations presented by the sensor bar. Mgestyk thinks it can do better by marrying its interesting gesture processing technology to the sensor data received from devices like the Wiimote. Mgestyk Fusion replaces the sensor bar with a 3D camera and image processing to translate yaw, pitch, roll, forward/back, right/left, and up/down motions from the Wiimote connected to a PC over Bluetooth. Sure, it seemed to work reasonably well at slaying clones in the video, but we're more interested to see how it holds up to the live scrutiny of a public demo when it makes an appearance at the Montreal International Games Summit next week. Until then, you'll have to feed your awkward, down-in-the-basement, lightsabering fantasies with the clip posted after the break.
Mgestyk system promises gesture control on the cheap
As we've seen, it's not exactly all that difficult for someone with the necessary skills to whip up their own gesture-based control system, but the folks at upstart Mgestyk Technologies seem to think they've got something a bit more notable on their hands, and they're actually planning on selling it to the general public. While the complete details are a bit light at the moment, their system apparently makes use of nothing more than an "affordable 3D camera" and some custom software to capture even small hand gestures, which seems to work at least reasonably well in the video after the break -- though we doubt many gamers will be quick to ditch their Razer or SteelSeries mouse. What's more, while Mgestyk already has a waiting list going, they aren't making any promises about an actual release date just yet, or a price for that matter, with them only saying that it'll be "in the range of a high-end webcam."
