Clever DSi Hidden Object Game Uses Ingenious 3D Technology

[dalek sec]

Does it also make your DS look like a Police Box? Because that would be cool.

This plus I might actually want to by a DSi now, I'm just holding onto my first gen DS at the moment.

 

[Roander]

That is pretty amazing, too bad I won't be buying a DSi anytime soon with the DS2 looming in the distance.

I can see this being adapted to the Natal or Arc so they will be able to follow you and then change the image on screen, rather than tracking the surroundings. Now that I think of it, that might be what Molyneux meant when he said Natal would be as revolutionary as the mouse... No, it just sounds cool.

I don't think Molyneux knew what he meant when he said that... didn't he say something similar about gestures in Black and White? This may be the coolest thing I've ever seen in a video game, though. If it works as well in real life as it did in that demo it makes up for every single "blow or yell into the microphone" gimmick that's been jammed into the DS's other games.

 

[Blanks]

the psp also has it's own camera game where you go around collecting monsters, too bad it wasn't released outside europe

 

[jamescorck]

: O That's real stereoscopic 3D! Without the glasses!! On a handheld!!!
...
I think my jaw is locked, gotta go to the doctors now.

 

[brunothepig]

Wow. Awesome. I could have sworn I was looking through into a box... And the way you don't see an "A", but the scenery creates it is really interesting. Maybe I should get a DSi, since my DS Phat has been refusing to recalibrate...

 

[CrystalShadow]

That's awesome. Reminds me of <url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw>this.

Yeah, Lee is awesome. I think his invention are better since it actually tacks your head instead of the movement the DSI.

True, but you can't expect a DS to have the same capabilities as a Wii. Unless the DS came with those goggles he used.

Come to think of it, the DS is doing it visually, isn't it? So this would totally be possible on Natal! I'm officially 30x more stoked for Natal!

Any webcam can do this, and functionally, it's the same concept that Lee was using with the Wii tracking system.

It's impossible to be entirely sure, but I suspect this is using face tracking. But since the camera on the DSi is part of it, that means moving your head, or moving the DSi will both cause a change in the apparent angles.

Assuming it isn't doing a more generic movement tracking, it's a matter of knowing the distance, position and orientation of a person's head relative to the displays.

It's actually easier on a handheld device like this than it would be on a console or PC because the camera has a fixed position relative to the screens, whereas a webcam (or natal, or even a system using the Wii remote as a basis) doesn't have a known and fixed relation to the screens being used, so you'd have to calibrate it every time (and recalibrate it if the camera or display was moved).

Edit:

: O That's real stereoscopic 3D! Without the glasses!! On a handheld!!!
...
I think my jaw is locked, gotta go to the doctors now.

Um, no. It isn't. It's a very convincing parallax effect, and it can be quite impressive because it responds to head movement, but there's no actual depth to the image.

 

[300lb. Samoan]

It's actually easier on a handheld device like this than it would be on a console or PC because the camera has a fixed position relative to the screens, whereas a webcam (or natal, or even a system using the Wii remote as a basis) doesn't have a known and fixed relation to the screens being used, so you'd have to calibrate it every time (and recalibrate it if the camera or display was moved).

I was going to say that the Natal is fixed and calibrated, but it occurs to me that it's only aware of the user space and not the display, so you're right. Perhaps a second generation of the device would add display awareness into the design to enable this kind of effect? Looking at it now it does seem that this is best suited to a handheld as the scale makes the effect much more convincing - for there to be any but the most subtle effect on a TV-size screen the user would have to be moving their whole body, which makes sense for the current gen of physical Kinect games, but not for the controller-plus-sensor games that I am anticipating.

 

[CrystalShadow]

It's actually easier on a handheld device like this than it would be on a console or PC because the camera has a fixed position relative to the screens, whereas a webcam (or natal, or even a system using the Wii remote as a basis) doesn't have a known and fixed relation to the screens being used, so you'd have to calibrate it every time (and recalibrate it if the camera or display was moved).

I was going to say that the Natal is fixed and calibrated, but it occurs to me that it's only aware of the user space and not the display, so you're right. Perhaps a second generation of the device would add display awareness into the design to enable this kind of effect? Looking at it now it does seem that this is best suited to a handheld as the scale makes the effect much more convincing - for there to be any but the most subtle effect on a TV-size screen the user would have to be moving their whole body, which makes sense for the current gen of physical Kinect games, but not for the controller-plus-sensor games that I am anticipating.

Indeed, the issues surrounding the method used hinder it's implementation somewhat for pretty much the reasons you've pointed out.

Hold 2 objects away from your face say a foot or so apart, and you see how much head motion you need to notice the effect.
Worse still, the magnitude of parallax effects get smaller the further you are from the screen. (although you can also track distance to the screen itself, for depth effects).
Suffice to say you'd need quite large movements to see anything at typical TV distances.
PC distances are somewhat less of a problem, but you'd probably still need to move quite far to really see much impact.

That may even be the biggest problem with the idea.

Because calibrating the screen position relative to the camera or sensor being used can be managed without too much hassle if you design the software well.

It is of course, possible to cheat, and vastly overdo the effect, but that has it's own drawbacks.