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AiLive shows off its LiveMove 2 software for building MotionPlus and PlayStation Move gestures
If you've been following closely, there are really two sorts of input available to the PlayStation Move. The one that gets the most love and screen time is the camera-based, 3D meatspace tracking that the PlayStation Eye performs in conjunction with the fancy colored ball at the end of the PlayStation Move wand, but most of the actual gameplay we've seen is in truth much more similar to the Wii's MotionPlus than Sony might want to let on. The MotionPlus and PS Move have very similar configurations of gyroscopes and accelerometers, and actually use the same software from AiLive (co-creators of MotionPlus) for developing the gesture recognition that goes into games. We actually got to see the LiveMove 2 development environment in action, and it's pretty impressive: basically you tell a computer what gesture you want to perform (like "fist pump," for instance) and then perform a bunch of examples of that movement. LiveMove then figures out the range of allowable movement, and in playback mode shows you whether you're hitting the mark. AiLive showed us gestures as complicated as a Graffiti (of Palm OS yore) handwriting recognition in the air, built with just a few example movements from people back at their offices. So, this is great news for developers dealing with the significant complication of all these sensors, but at the same time we can't help but be a little disappointed. LiveMove 2 doesn't even use the PlayStation Eye, and as we mentioned in our hands-on impressions of PlayStation Move, we could really sense that a lot of our in-game actions were built from predefined gestures, not us interacting with the 3D environment in any "real" or physics-based way. It's great tech either way, but hopefully that's something that can be improved upon by launch or soon after. Check out a demo of LiveMove in action after the break.
LiveMove Pro to help Wii developers make livelier motion
AILive has announced the next version of their LiveMove software, called LiveMove Pro, a motion recognition tool for Wii development. According to AILive chairman Wei Yen, developers are flocking to the new software, apparently showing an interest in good controls for their dang games: "We expect most existing LiveMove 1.x users to license LiveMove Pro as well as a significant number of new users," he told Gamasutra.LiveMove Pro will allow developers to make games "that let players perform complicated motions tightly coupled to on-screen animations," if the completely unbiased AILive representative is to be believed. Anything to improve the occasionally iffy motion controls in Wii games is a-okay with us.
Wii's LiveMove could be building block for industry's future
We were skeptical about AiLive's motion-making development tool when it was announced earlier this month, but after seeing a tech demo of LiveMotion in action, we're convinced it can produce novel work. The problem is the price. At $2,500, LiveMotion is only attractive to a select crowd and excludes smaller parties who will likely turn to Microsoft's XNA project for a more affordable creative outlet.Nintendo should consider setting up a program, like XNA, that would invite indie game makers and hobbyists to explore Wii's ingenuity. The DS's success has shown that there's an interest, a market, for small quirky games -- it's what Jaffe was getting at; an era of churn'em-out hits. With Wii, Nintendo could p0wn this niche.
Wiimote + AI = Skynet?
AiLive, a company that focuses on developing artificial intelligence algorithms and software packages for games, has recently scored a partnership with Nintendo to develop the tool LiveMove. LiveMove is a development tool focused on making the Wiimote "learn" from player's movements. The goal is to make the development easier by allowing developers to program the Wiimote for more natural movements.According to the official site for LiveMove, the program, while using less than 5% of the Wii's CPU, can recognize up to forty different motions on up to eight Wiimotes at once. Pretty soon, we imagine through the use of this tool, the Wiimote will know how much salt we enjoy on our french fries and, even sooner, how much pressure to apply to human craniums for massive damage. Is Judgment Day coming?[Via 4cr]
