Video of New Research Conducted with PlayStation Eye

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Most of you probably already know about the launch of the PlayStation Eye, and hopefully you’re as excited as we are here in PlayStation R&D. By the time products launch, our contribution is usually long past, but this time we wanted to join the fun. So we thought we’d give you an exclusive first glimpse at some of our new research that uses PS Eye.

We grabbed our lab camcorder and filmed some tech demos created by newcomer Anton Mikhailov (he’s the guy playing games in the videos). Anton has been using PS Eye to let users add their own content into games. So far, he’s focused on simple, familiar games (like lunar lander and tank battle) that he can code for PS3 in a day or so. These games are pretty old school, but they become amazingly fun again when you get to add your own content. And when the PS3 adds physics to your content, things become even more fun! (why does everyone keep mentioning Little Big Planet?)

Check out the videos. We filmed them without cuts so you could see how easy it is to add your own content.

Note that these are tech demos, not products. We just wanted to let you see one of our crazy ideas of how the PS Eye might be used in the future. Anton or I will be answering questions, so let us know what you think!

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329 Comments

6 Author Replies

  • Mwahahaha, this looks amazing. Great to see you guys having fun with it, that’s the key to making a good product.

    Can you post some more videos? Also, what’s the likelihood of something like this being posted as a download on the PSN? Just something simple that we at home can play around and tinker with.

  • dude thats awesome! anyone that doesn’t think this is cool is biased

  • BTW, I think a cool innovation would be a printable keyboard. Think about it, a keyboard layout is printed out and all people have to do is put their eye on the eye of judgement stand and align the paper with the eye like how the game board for eye of judgement is aligned. I think somthing like that is very possible and would be better to use than using the playstation controller to type on the web browser or when I send a message to friends.

  • THAT ROCKS. LBP just got a whole ton better (assuming of course that this functionality ends up part of LBP.)

    Let us scan our own drawings and items into the game and REALLY make user generated levels. Nice work guys! Thanks for sharing!

  • Remember yabasic on ps2? That was awesome – I remember making an asteroids game, a pong game, loads of stuff! I can see that using the eye in this way would lend very well to creating your own short games like the tank/moon lander above. I would love to see an updated ps3 yabasic with ps eye functions like this!! Or I could just go work for playstation r&d…

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  • yo I check out this site everyday on PS3 and I can’t see the videos but the technology you guys r working with is great keep it up

  • yo I check out this site everyday on my PS3 and I can’t see the videos but the technology you guys r working with is great keep it up

  • cool tech demos. I had no idea the ps eye was cable of doing that kind of stuff, i hope we see some content soon.

  • Cool, I hope some more PS Eye games get released soon including your little tech demos. Why not release them for free on the PSN?

    Beats waiting OVER 4 WEEKS for PS Eye games that got released in Europe.

  • Just put these on the store for a few dollars and I’d buy one or two of them…it’s really unique and fun stuff like this that makes a community. just flesh it out more and add more recognition for the objects that get scanned. It will easily be one of the most downloaded games on PSN…

    Customization customization customization–this is what will make PS3 stand out from other consoles.

    Keep going with these things guys–someone is bound to make a hit!!!

  • It would be awesome to make a fighting game. You could draw out all your characters and stuff, make their moves and then have way to set moves with certain buttons. Then you have a quick game. That would be fun. OR something like a 2D platformer. Draw your level and little character. Like an simpler LBP.

  • yo Richard Marks is there any passablete to add our self’s by using PlayStation Eye in the games to be like characters in anRPG game for simple.

  • Another last question:

    -You said you are going to be researching gestures etc, and that the CELL and Eye quality help a lot, but will you guys be revisiting old games and/or game ideas and taking advantage of the improvements?

    For example: Kinetica was awesome, except the fact that in order to get properly ‘framed’ in the game you had to be pretty far back, which is hard in most living rooms and apartments. The camera also though that every little speck from the video feed was me moving, when in fact it was not. The vents on my wall in my apartment, the shadow of a coke can, a penny on the carpet- anything that was slightly darker than everything else on the screen was picked up as a moving object.

    Will nuisances like these be resolved in future games due to the Eye quality? Reviews of EoJ cite difficulties with lighting akin to the EyeToy, and problems getting cards to read under typical lighting circumstances.

    Users shouldn’t be forced to get professional, or even ‘white’ lighting in their homes, nor should they need a big white backdrop or anything in order to play these games properly. So I hope you guys will be coming up with better ways of getting the Eye and software to recognize players and such, as well as doing thorough testing with different types of lighting and room situations, instead of just a blank white room.

    Thanks for this update again though!

  • Amazing. I too would love to see a bunch of these mini-games bundled and sold either through disc or, preferably, the PSN Store. A limited SDK would rock our worlds, for sure. Get that out and I will most likely buy that Eye!

  • I kinda had an idea like this for a while.
    Glad somebody out there realized it! hah…

    I just hope other developers out there will pick up the EYE possibilities and make something out of it as well!

    if not, well, I hope someone within Sony gets us some simple-fun on the PSN!

    Keep up the cool research and development!

    (ps: developed anything new with the 4-microphone-array system that’s on the ps eye yet? i’d love to see something really interesting work with that…)

  • I NEED ONE PSYey NOW!!!!

  • Well I guess I was thinking on to much of a grand scale.
    i was thinking Eye of Judgment meets RPG’s and FPS’s + pop in a SCEA character completely change a game short mini games like that.

  • Thx for the info Richard i did hope that with the EYETOY on PS2 that we would see games with movement tracking but it never happend well not in the FPS type anyway i do hope some developers get round to it this time since the tech and computation power is there i look forward to seeing how all this pans out in the future THX again for the inside info :D

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  • @ghamdikh1: We did some related work many moons ago. I like RPGs a lot myself, and we made a couple demos called “Medieval Chamber” and “Magic Spells”. I still hope something along these lines will make its way into a game.

    Medieval Chamber let you move a brightly colored hand-held object in 3D, and the movement was echoed by an on-screen sword or torch or flail. Magic Spells let you use a colored wand to cast spells by drawing the spell shape in the air in front of you.

    Video of these demos can be found at:
    http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/courses/ee380/040121-ee380-100.asx

    (go to minute 24:00 for Medieval Chamber and minute 35:00 for Magic Spells)

  • Sony, count me in. This is exactly the sort of thing you should be looking at doing with the technology. If the Tech guys can come up with something this cool in just a day, I can’t even begin to imagine the possibilities.

    I can imagine some kind of interaction with the eye toy, voice recognition and the sixaxis controller……… Total immersion in the gaming world.

    I also have to comment on how fickle we gamers can be at times. Last week, when 2.0 came out there was nothing short of vitriol on the boards. People were so disappointed that it didn’t do what they wanted and there were a lot of immature reactions. Personally, I think that 2.0 is great. I love remote play and I love the expanded customization possibilities. Here we are in a new week, and rightly so, everyone is stoked at how cool this tech demo is.

    We gamers just have to be patient. Sony will come good with games and with the features we want. Their problem is that they can be so inconsistent with their message at times. 2.0 was mishandled so badly, that it is not surprising people were disappointed. Here we have the other face of Sony – the one we all want to see, and deep deep down, the one we love.

  • You guys are onto something big here! Seeing this stuff is so freakin’ exciting!

  • hahaha thats so funny i keep watchin that last video it cracks me up :D

  • To this day I was trying to understand how the PS eye read those cards in the eye of judgment and now seeing this, I’m speechless. Bravo

  • Holy moses. Wow, I really hope something comes from this. Simply awesome. Anyone think the Smash Bros Brawl level creation aspect of the game came to be because of Little Big Planet? And that’s the reason it got delayed?

  • Saw the vid you linked to, real nice stuff, one thing that would really kill would be a fps that read your hand signals, such as you pulling a trigger, or giving a melee attack. Speaking of, a first person boxing game would be awesome, and with the ps eye, it would be much more accurate than that other first person boxing game on that other game console. Keep up the good work guys, you guys are full of talent.

  • Avatar photo

    @sixthsense: Whats picked up is represented in vector form with a texture, so technically you can just render the vector outlines without drawing the texture on top. In fact, you can fill and color it in any stylized way you want, ignoring the real world image all together and keeping only the abstract vector data. You can of course do a hybrid like in the tanks demo, and stylize a vector drawing based on the image you pick up.

    Come to think of it that would probably make my tank drawing look quite a bit nicer :)

  • This is awesome stuff you guys are doing!

    Heres an idea for you guys to think about…

    You gotta try to do something with music like “everyday shooter” but with the PSeye. Im sure you guys can think of something!

    Music + PSEye = Awesome

  • Just want to say: this looks almost too good to be true. It’s like science fiction made non-fiction. I mean, you’re doing stuff that is supposed to be NOT POSSIBLE. I’m so happy with my PS3 purchase…more and more since day one back in January. I’m still waiting to see when the potential for this system reaches its peak.

    Keep it up guys—patch this technology up and ship it out: we’ll be waiting eagerly.—-12

  • Hi!

    I am totally stoked for any new uses for my new Eye!

    This tech looks so interesting- I see great things in the future for the Eye!

    My girlfriend and I have been playing Eye of Judgement nonstop since we got it- and have had a ball making movies with Eyecreate-

    BUT I HAVE ONE QUESTION!

    I am trying to make stop motion animation with my snapshots in Eyecreate, like you guys demoed here in the blog (of some kids racing through the office)-

    Is there a way to decrease the default 2 second time designation for snapshots when placed into the Eyecreate timeline? Because 2 seconds make the animation of course very slow and choppy, you have to manually snip each clip and delete the excess for EVERY snapshot, it is very frustrating!

    Thanks for any help!

    I hope you have a movie making contest with our Eyecreate software!!

    {And if you guys could fix the echo in voice chat that would be great too!}

    thanks!

  • Just today, I came up with a brainstorm idea at my office. I discussed, with the Senior VP of our corporation about having each of five division offices purchasing a PS3 and a PlaystationEye to conduct conference calling. Along with an HDTV we would be able to simply and easily have video conference calls with all senior staff in attendance.

    Keep up the great research at Sony and start flexing the true muscle and innovation of the PS3 that us true Playstation Fans know is in the beautiful black console.

  • *gasp* That’s so simple yet mind blowing. I cannot wait to see the future of the PS Eye.

    I was a bit disappointed with the lack of software with the Eye Toy on the PS2, so I hope you guys keep at it and bring us some great software to work with. :)

    Good job!

  • By the way, the Senior VP liked the idea and wants to run a test between two offices to see how it works. Sony, that would be another six decks sold in the U.S.

    Well…gotta go play “The Darkness” cause Uncharted is coming out on Friday and I already bought Assasin’s Creed…have to fit that in somewhere….then there’s Ratchet and Clank….ummmm, seems like too many games and not enough time!Why are people complaining about a shortage of titles for the PS3.

  • Very impressive.

    Do you guys ever release research papers to the public?

    I’ve done similar real time image processing for large installations before not quite to that level. It’d be great if Sony allowed you to share some of your findings from this kind of work.

  • lol this is soooo cool. M

    aybe you guys can gather up a bunch of different games in such genre and release a PSN download title for the PS Eye to catch up with this Xmas ;)

    I wonder if you can make a digital-pet game, that lets you scan your own drawings and make it live and sound like a creature on the screen… maybe serve as a screensaver when PS3 stays idle for a while. That would be interesting as well!

  • you all rule! but in order for these little soldiers and and tanks to work they have to be on a blank piece of paper, right? are any of the things implemented here possible to make to the playstation store soon?

  • this looks great

  • This looks very impressive! Nice work.

    I really enjoy checking out these blogs, keep them coming!

  • I just wanted to take some time out of my usual daily grind, to drop by and see if there was any newly presented threads based on the ps3eye, because I have a lot to say about it, things I didn’t expect to hear myself saying about it, Initially my response to the new eye pre-purchase, was somewhat skeptical, as I bought the ps2 eyetoy years ago, and the support/fun factor died quickly, and also I was generally not that excited for ‘Eye of Judgement, it struck me as something I just wouldn’t really enjoy…

    BOY WAS I WRONG!, on soooo many levels it’s not even funny… and in this industry it’s rare to see ‘me’ saying I’m wrong, so you gotta’ know for a fact that what I’m saying is of significance to me, and probably other people similar to me. here’s a little story about how it went down.

    My kids, and Wife and I were out shopping for groceries and whatnot, and of course I was going to buy the ps3eye, because Sony provided us with the EyeCreate software free of charge, and I kinda’ was interested in the whole Stop motion thing for my artwork, and for the kids to have fun with, but upon finding it, we were presented with the choice of buying the ps3eye by itself, or the Eye of Judgement Game including the ps3Eye, and a stand/game board(cloth mat), and my wife who has recently been losing interest in games lately, decided it would make more sense to get the full package deal, which is unlike her, I was willing to settle for the eye alone, which was unlike me, I had literally little/no interest in a card based ps3eye game, but when the Woman does ‘thumbs up’ I’m not going to argue.
    So we got home, and we made dinner, ate, watched a family movie or two, put the kids to bed, and broke out the game+eye, while Instructional videos included in the game’s menus seemed a little confusing at first, after about 5mins or so, we had ‘somehow’ picked up the general idea of how the easygoing but complex game is played, and started playing it, and haven’t stopped, This game is awesome, it raises the bar on so many different levels, it raises the cam based videogame bar tenfold, it raises the bar on traditional collectors card based games, and introduces an excellent competitive edge by including the PSN online play. I have never been more pleasantly suprised by a game since … since, well I can’t remember as the only thing that is on my mind atm, is going back to play the game some more, and I’ve barely even gotten into the ‘reason’ I wanted the eye… (in short) The EyeCreate software is amazingly entertaining, and the files can easily be swapped to a pc for that ‘professional’ touch, heck you could even do 2d cell animations on paper, with eyecreate(ps3) with the stop motion feature(1 feature out of about 45), and edit them on pc.

    I just felt that, as a truly avid gamer, It was my duty to come to this blog, and let the other fans know, how amazingly suprising this game was.
    If anyone has the same approach to this game/peripheral as I did, you are doing the designers of this software/peripheral, the industry in general, and most of all yourself, an injustice, by missing out on it. Get out there and pick it up, you ‘will’ not be dissapointed.

    as for this particular blog topic, I wanted ask an important question about future projects of this nature+little big planet, as it’s important to a lot of aspiring, or admiring artists out there, that want to put their own work into games.

    Are there plans in place to moderate the user generated content, as to provide complete freedom to users without the calamity of the more potty-riffic comedians of the gaming community?
    I’m all for complete freedom with design, at whatever cost that may accompany, but I don’t want perverts ruining that experience for aspiring artists such as myself.?

  • Love it.
    Release it.
    It would be some new life to the PS Eye that is just hanging out in my house.

  • Is there any possibility that these tech demos are going to be incorporated in games that are in development? Are there any games in development that are incorporating these details? Or are these mere tech demos to show the capabilities of the ps eye? Because I would find it awesome if you make some games using this. I wouldn’t mind just having a lunar game on psn. I would buy it.

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  • this is great, i never seen something like this b4, this should make a great bunch of minigames.

  • This is cool, it would be nice if you can upload items in LBP using this tech

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  • I so want yawl’s jobs. Honestly I’m going to college right now to be a game programmer and its my goal to work at Sony’s R&D for the PS Eye. I sit here sometimes just wondering what cool stuff I’d do with the PS Eye.

    I’d also like to work on the team that works on firmware update as I geek out on that sort of stuff too lol.

    But seriously how fun must it be just coming up with ideas and trying them out? Count on reading my resume 3 years.

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