Snapped! Xbox 360 camera caught on camera

We received some exclusive images this morning of the "Xbox Live Camera Demo Station" at Microsoft's recent XFEST event, held in Bellevue, Washington last month. Our tipster sent in shots and descriptions from the three different demos on display at the event: "Xbox Live Camera Video Chat", facial mapping software from digimask, even a tank game that incorporates video into the game! More below the fold.

[Thanks, anonymous benefactor!]

"One use was for general video chat via the Dashboard. You can see how the camera digitizes the image and create a real time cell-style 'drawn' version. Kind of an interesting effect, most impressive was just the video quality and refresh rate."

"Another slick use was with a piece of software called Digimask. With Digimask the user takes a head-on and profile shot of their face then, using some basic icons, defines the characteristics of their head."

"Things like wearing a baseball cap, having a pony tail, long hair, basic shape features, etc.. Once you have a rough shape of your face the 360 spends a couple minutes processing it all and voila, instant in-game character of your own likeness."

"The whole process takes less than 5 minutes with very good results. You cannot see it animate in the photos but you can open and close the mouth, wiggle the ears, and move the rest of the face around in realtime."

"The last use they showed was a tank style game where you could see your opponent mapped onto the console of the tank. It's some wacky chick in the picture."

He said they didn't show off any features that used two cameras in tandem to analyze movement, Microsoft's so-called "Project Vision" and he said the release would most likely be fall "for some reason." It appears they've settled on the smaller camera as well, as opposed to the larger one we'd seen previously.

See also:
Xbox 360 camera eyes EyeToy?
Will the real 360 camera please stand up?
Official camera details emerge
Developer says Xbox 360 camera impresses
Dashboard update and webcam support rumored