Motion sensing to give Xbox 360 another possible lease of life.
Microsoft's Xbox 360 is a pretty popular console in the raging gaming industry right now, but it has been eclipsed in sales by a tiny little white box and stick - the Nintendo Wii.
Wii's accessible motion sensing (apart from making you look like an attention-starved person) tech means that practically everyone from kiddies to grannies can pick up a controller and start playing, something that the Xbox controller can't claim.
The answer? Buy a company that already does this funky motion-interactive tech - enter 3DV. It consists of a depth-sensing camera that can tell how close or far an object is from the lens, and perhaps the best feature of it is that it's not in colour.
Being monochrome might seem more restrictive than using 256MB of memory with Vista, but in reality it gives the camera the ability to recognise shapes clearly. You'll be able to open windows and scroll around on your PC (assuming they make it compatible) or use it with your Xbox.
Bill Gates reckons that this is a pretty neat piece of kit, something that you can use just as you would in real life. He used the example of a tennis game - just pick up your racket and play in front of the camera as normal, and your actions will be translated into gamespeak and shown on the screen.
This is a fascinating technology, but we're still wary of giving computers eyes - Skynet is just around the corner after all!
Head over to cnet to check out more information, and see a small video of the tech working.
Issue: 111 | April, 2010