[games_access] GestureTek

[Barrie Ellis]

http://www.richterscale.org/index.php/weblog_articles/alternative_input_devices_at_e3/ 

"GestureTek 

My kids enjoy the EyeToy on the Sony PS2, and were overjoyed when I told them that there would be a similar piece of hardware coming from Microsoft at the end of the year. That's the Xbox Live Vision Camera. While no doubt there will be EyeToy-like games for the new Xbox camera, one thing that Microsoft has done differently is to license APIs and software from Canadian company GestureTek. 


GestureTek's technology will enable the Xbox 360's forthcoming Xbox Live Vision camera to perform a wide range of functions including face tracking, as demonstrated here by Francis MacDougall, co-founder of GestureTek.
Those APIs allow a camera embedded or attached to a device to be used as an alternate input device, detecting motion and location of objects as a form of input. In addition to the well-known hand-waving form of camera input, however, the GestureTek technology includes both face tracking (see photo above), as well as delta motion detection. For the latter, I was given a demonstration in which the camera in a camera phone could be used as the basis for a joystick for a mobile game. Simply tilting the phone in any direction would cause appropriate input and motion in the game, and it was all done detecting direction of tilt optically via the camera. 
More interesting was the suggestion that Microsoft was considering using the face-tracking technology as an input in games like "Halo 3," but in subtle ways, such as tracking a player's face to see if the player was trying to peek around a corner to see what might be there (and if you ever play FPS games, you will know that they require a certain amount of body English) and then simulating that action in the game. I am certainly looking forward to this and other innovative uses of visual input technology (www.gesturetek.com)." 
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