The extraordinary control
Technologies we have considered so far are
the basis for most of controllers till the last decade. During this time,
manufacturers started to introduce more advanced and strange equipments. As the
game controller was best played with the wheel, new game genes needed their own
controllers. Dance games like Dance Dance Revolution came with pressure mattess
to detect jumps and Beatmania series was best played with a keyboard and extra
which could rotate, while Steel Battalion went with a unique dual joystick and
a controller with 40 buttons and foot pedal. After that, Guitar Hero and Rock
Band created an abnormal type of joystick and the button layout was designed to
imitate the design of instruments.
PlayStation
2
All of them worked by using switches and
the mechanism similar to controllers before them, but enthusiastic players
early accumulated a number of awdward controllers. While they were very
interesting, everything began to change with the launch of EyeToy of Sony in
2003. Though it was not the first webcam for a game console, EyeToy was
originally developed as a interface for new users, which would realize
movements by players without any controllers they held.
EyeToy itself was quite simple, designed to
work under indoor light condition, but PlayStation 2 could execute gesture
detection on its video signals. By providing another option for joysticks,
EyeToy is the ancestor of mostly complex systems nowadays, such as Xbox Kinect.
Not long after EyeToy appeared, handheld
controllers have started to become more sophisticated. In 2005, Nintendo
announced that upcoming Wii handhell controller would include motion sensors,
Wii Remote. “This Wiimote” composed of an accelerometer can measure acceleration
in three axes, so it would recognize movements. Being built with a small ratio
on a single chip, the accelerometer had 3 weights arranged along perpendicular
axes, and each weight was suspended between two springs. When the controller
was about to increase the spead, inertia of weights make one or more weights
move, compress and expand springs holding it. The distance each weight moved
let the controller know the strength and direction of acceleration.
Raise barriers
Xbox
360
Wiimote had a skill to distinguish it from
temporary movement detection controllers like Sixaxis and Sony. Wii came with a
bar located on or oder the TV and had 3 infrared LEDs at each end. Using an
image sensor, Wii recognized the distance clearly between LEDs and use triangulation
to calculate its distance to the screen. By measuring the relative angle and
position of LEDs, Wiimote could calculate the direction of the screen correctly
to be used as a cursor in games.
The ability of Wiimote was a calculated
effort by Nintendo to provide support for new games which will appeal to a
wider audience range. They helped to improve normal and family game playing
through this handheld system and it was a part of the reason why Wii was sold
better than PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. While Xbox 360 was 6 year old already,
the appearance of Kinect helped to prolong its life, with the alternative
product which was not lauched before 2012 as people said. This new joystick
will be certainly stronger than its senior but there may be an improved version
of Kincect, as well as a good old-fashioned joystick.
Don’t look at the hand
Inside Kinect of Microsoft
It is not the first webcam for game
controllers, but Kinect of Microsoft is the most popular – sold 8 million units
in the first 60 days. Kinect uses 3 key technologies combined to enable it to
detect voice, face and movement. Voices are recorded by 4 microphones. By
comparing time which a sound comes to each microphone, Kinect can calculate the
angle at which it comes.
Kinect records normal videos by using a
color camera in the front panel, but there is an additional system to draw the
exact distance outline of objects in the room. Infrared LEDs is projected
through the filter to create a mapping of light points, which is collected by
an infrared camera (1). Kinect knows how light mapping looks like if it lies in
the plane, so Kinect will compare what it “sees” to find the distortion caused
by objects in many different depths.
Kinect processes outputs from video and
depth systems, and (2) provides Xbox with color videos and depth mapping of the
room. Software runs on the console to analyze it to identify objects, faces and
actions.
