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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.
PlayStation Move requires 1-2 MB of system memory
Sony's GDC panel "Introducing the PlayStation Motion Controller was exactly that: An introduction to the newly named Move peripheral. David Coombes, Kirk Bender and Anton Mikhailov showcased a number of impressive tech demos, many of which demonstrated the Move's incredible precision and low latency. One of the most impressive demos showcased full body tracking using an on-screen body puppet, not unlike one of Project Natal's tech demos. Body tracking is made possible by combining the Move and PS3's head tracking capability. According to the presentation, the PS3 can also detect faces, going so far as to identify individuals through face contour and feature detection. The software will be able to recognize gender, age, smiles and when eyes open and close. Coombes explained that all the calculations necessary to handle image processing are done by the Cell CPU, which apparently excels at the doing floating point calculations. The raw data can be processed incredibly quickly by the PS3, taking "under a frame" to translate to a game experience. And while Mikhailov didn't reveal how much of the CPU's overall power the Move controller requires, he did reveal that the memory demands are truly "insignificant" -- 1-2 MB of system memory.
MotionPlus co-developer shows off with LiveMove 2 video
Nintendo may not have been totally forthcoming with third-party devs about its MotionPlus add-on, but no secrets (okay, maybe a few) were withheld from AiLive. As it turns out, said outfit actually collaborated with Nintendo in order to create the MotionPlus hardware, and it's extra kindly offering up LiveMove 2 "to help game developers take full advantage of its capabilities." According to the company, LiveMove 2 can slash up to half a year off of the time required to tie basic functionality of the device into a game, though we're obviously in no position to confirm / deny. For the small minority that cares more about how MotionPlus works rather than just accepting the fact that it does, check out the read link for a few geektastic vids.[Via NintendoWiiFanboy]
Wii MotionPlus co-developer demos tech in new video
Now that E3 is over and the secret's out, middleware maker and Wii MotionPlus co-developer AiLive is openly touting what its LiveMove 2 toolset is capable of when paired with Nintendo's upcoming add-on. The above video is meant to encourage developers to adopt LiveMove 2 for creating their MotionPlus-enabled games (they can use all the help they can get, considering they didn't find out about the Wii remote upgrade until we did) but, more than anything, it's encouraging us to dream of a 1:1 lightsaber fighting game.We bring that up because a good chunk of the video is devoted to showing one of AiLive's staff playing around with a "laser sword," demonstrating how it captures every subtle movement of the remote – the footage even shows how an on-screen "dummy" can be clocked with the sword's hilt. Impressive stuff, and we desperately hope LucasArts is taking notice.
