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[Xbox-Scene]

GDC 06: New Xbox 360 Camera Details-- Posted by XanTium on March 23 21:44 EST
From xbox360.ign.com:

You know that extra USB port on the back of your 360? That's for the upcoming Xbox 360 camera, a handy little gadget that will rival Sony's innovative EyeToy. We got our hands on a brochure for game developers at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, Calif. today and are excited at what this little baby will do.

With a nine-foot cord, the camera will reach around large TVs. You'll be able to video chat over Xbox Live.
But the biggest and best feature will be gesture recognition. Basically, the camera is going to translate your movements in real life and input them in the game.
Also, the camera program will include XDK support for streaming video. The three-dimensional "face-in-game" for which the EyeToy is famous will be available "through middleware providers."

Here are the specs:
* USB 2.0 bus-powered device
* Smooth, near DV quality video: up to VGA 640x480 at 30 FPS
* High-def images: still photos up to SVGA 1280x980 (1.3 Mp)
* Manually adjustable variable focus: 2 feet to infinity
* Field of View: 43 degrees
* On board image processor
* Digital zoom, cropping
* Auto exposure, white balance, gamma correction, sharpness
* Long (~9 feet) cable to reach around large TVs
* Includes a headset for great audio.

Read More: xbox360.ign.com

[ibemonty2000]

This is sounding pretty sweet. Hopefully the quality is at least as good as this Webcam.

[Lizard King]

Translation - "through middleware providers." : We were told that the technology is out there to do this, we've seen it implemented, and hopefully more than 5 games will be able to use this.

heh.... Im kinda anxious to see gesture recognition, though I'm not holding my breath.

(woohoo...100th post)

This post has been edited by Lizard King: Mar 24 2006, 04:48 PM

[twistedsymphony]

QUOTE(Lizard King @ Mar 24 2006, 10:15 AM)

Translation - "through middleware providers." : We were told that the technology is out there to do this, we've seen it implemented, and hopefully more than 5 games will be able to use with as least as much accuracy as the PS/2.

heh.... Im kinda anxious to see gesture recognition, though I'm not holding my breath.

If you're even in Redmond stop by the MS visitors center, the first hallway is just screen after screen with webcams and motion trackers that do different things. Towards the end they have a game setup using this too. The coolest thing was a map demo where you could look at the campus map and zoom, pan, rotate, etc all with hand gestures (a la Minority Report). All of this is running on PCs but MS DOES know how to use the tech. If they really want support I'm sure you'll see one of the 1st or 2nd party dev teams brew something up.

This post has been edited by twistedsymphony: Mar 24 2006, 04:50 PM

[Lizard King]

Yeah TS...I've actually seen it - though not in person (training conference). It's just the "middleware" thing that struck me...kind of an odd thing to say, kind of like "hey, if noone supports this, it isn't our fault"

A friend of mine has the new(ish) Logitech cam with all the neat motion tracking software. It's fun.

This post has been edited by Lizard King: Mar 24 2006, 06:53 PM

[Potato_salad]

I saw a picture of the camera and I have it on my PC. Could someone tell me how to put pictures into mails.

[badbob001]

Isn't the "extra" port in the back of the xbox360 being used by those with the wifi adapter? I'm really curious how MS plans to support hddvd, camera, wifi, etc with just that one usb port in the back without resorting to running cables to the front ports. I guess they can come out with a tiny usb hub that looks like a miniature xbox360. That would be cute. A mini-me xbox360.

[Lizard King]

Well, the camera has a 9 foot cord, so I'm sure it is intended to be wired to the front - the PR writer is just trying to be clever.

If you need extra ports in the back, you can always add a hub. I know of an aftermarket company making a hub that will fit into the mounting holes for the network adapter, then the network adapter will piggyback off of that. However, it's not all rosy because you still have to use a power brick and that means another damn cord - they looked into hijakcing the power supply cord as well, but that would have tripled the cost of the unit.