Mobitrends

One of my previous projects, VR-WEAR, died 2 years ago. Financing of the prototyping phase failed  - happens, was the crisis and anyways the prototype was still expensive and probably a bit to in advance… For those who don’t remember the idea was to create a set of virtual reality devices enabling strong engagement in video-games both enabling immersion and interaction with sensors monitoring facial expression, eyeballs motions and body language. We built proof of concepts of the headsets and the glove and bound the sensors to Second Life enhancing the avatars with their puppet masters body language.

This year at CES2011 are showing that the vision I had still lives – and we’re getting closer and closer :

1. Microsoft announced that “Avatar Kinect” is coming to the Xbox 360 and will apparently be a place where you can virtually hang out with your “friends” using the ability for Kinect to detect facial gestures like eyebrows, smiles, and laughs.
2. Sony unveiled a crazy 3D prototype of Head Mounted Display  with 720p OLED displays and 5.1 sounds (no price nor release date)

Thanks Sony Insider for this amazing video from CES – great memories!

Seems like Sony just applied for a patent of a next generation controler for its PS# that features 3D motion sensing, just like a WiiMote.

Game interface tracks the position of one or more game controllers in 3-dimensional space using hybrid video capture and ultrasonic tracking system

Looks a lot like a WiiMote to me, and if you watch the patent pictures the setup is also pretty similar. Apparently the ps3motes look like double lightsabers that can be split to be used one-hand or 2-hands. I guess everybody want to replace those complicated remotes with natural motion input devices!