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Playstation 4


deanb
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Yeah, they're actually concave, like a sane person might design.

 

After giving it some thought, I've decided the only thing I can imagine that could make this a day-one buy for me would be if The Last Guardian were a launch title.  Of course there's always the possibility that they could come up with something that I can't yet imagine, and blow me away with that, but I doubt it will happen.

 

Assuming that TLG is a launch title, pretty much the only thing that could dissuade me from a day one buy would be either if the price is ridiculous (read: more than about $400), or if it's got always-online DRM built into the system.

 

*Edit* - I take that back, I can imagine one other thing that would make it a day-one buy:  if the PS4 is actually a realistic (not uncanny valley) sex robot.  We all know Japan has been developing those for years.

Edited by TheMightyEthan
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That "Move" component on the controller, I don't see how that can be used for anything else but pointer control. The Move has a round orb so that when you swing, it still detects the light from the controller at various angles. With this, you tilt it about 45 degrees left or right and it would be obstructed.

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I don't think you'd be swinging a DS4 in the same way though. It's a slight annoyance as touchpad is pretty useable, but the Move component only adds cost at what'll likely be minimal use within games. But at least it strongly suggests Move will still be a thing come PS4, could see a bigger push with it since there's now an established userbase of it at start of console life.

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That "Move" component on the controller, I don't see how that can be used for anything else but pointer control. The Move has a round orb so that when you swing, it still detects the light from the controller at various angles. With this, you tilt it about 45 degrees left or right and it would be obstructed.

 

Pointer control is by far my favourite/only thing I like about motion control so that would be more than fine with me.

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That "Move" component on the controller, I don't see how that can be used for anything else but pointer control. The Move has a round orb so that when you swing, it still detects the light from the controller at various angles. With this, you tilt it about 45 degrees left or right and it would be obstructed.

 

Pointer control is by far my favourite/only thing I like about motion control so that would be more than fine with me.

 

Pointer control is great on the Wii but pretty bad on the Move.  There's way too much drift since it doesn't have an absolute reference for which direction you're pointing.  Like I've literally set the Move perfectly still on the table and I can see it drifting left on the TV.  It's not always that bad, but when it is it's really irritating.

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lol, that does remind me of the move pointer control. I'd forgotten as I've literally only used my move once (to play the demos it came with) there was one where you stacked objects on top of one another and by the top of the stack I was pointing my controller halfway across the room. Pretty unimpressive stuff.

 

I'm sure I've read that they're bringing out a new move camera on the PS4 though, so maybe that has some sort of wii sensor bar equivalent built in since the old one was basically the PS2 eyetoy, wasn't it? If it's purpose built for a new system hopefully they will have fixed that massive flaw.

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A second camera would allow it to more accurately place the position of the glowing ball, but the angle is still just measured by the accelerometers/magnetic-sensors in the controller, and that's what causes the drift.  A similar thing happens with Wii Motion Plus because it relies on the accelerometers too rather than the sensor bar.

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The Wii sensor bar can be replace by two tea lights so I'd hope Sony would have something a bit more technically accomplished in mind. Just a higher resolution camera would do, and given the leap from EyeToy to PS Eye I'd assume something like that would be coming/expected. 720p resolution or something. Given the Move orb is known size using stereo lenses wouldn't really accomplish anything extra unless they want to track people like Kinect but given Sony purposefully went with a controller based solution in the Move I can't see them shifting to something like that. The Move is a real-time match moving system, it works fine with single lense. All you need to know is the focal length of the camera in use (they make one model of camera, so easy enough done), and one measurement of an object in the scene, in this case the ball on the end of the Move controller. Higher resolution camera ups the amount that needs to be processed, but given the PS4 will be more powerful that's not an issue, while giving more data for the system to work with, allowing higher accuracy in position of the Move in 3D space since it'll know how relatively large or small it is. And as Ethan mentioned all the gubbins inside give direction and acceleration and such.

 

And for fun.

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Why not rely on the position of the ball for pointings?

 

Because there's no way to tell which way the ball is facing.  It's a sphere, so it looks the same from all angles.

 

Take these two scenarios:

 

YlZwB8x.png

 

ocX4W46.png

 

The EyeToy can only see the light ball on the end (well, it can see everything, but the only thing it's processing can understand is the ball), so to it they both look like this:

 

4fX4GJK.png

 

The PS3 then takes the orientation data from the Move's accelerometers and magnetic sensors, combines that with the position data from the EyeToy, and comes up with a solution for where you're pointing.  Those accelerometers and magnetic sensors aren't perfect though, there's some small amount of error, and in some cases those small errors can add up over time and cause drift, so the PS3 thinks you're pointing it in one direction when really you're pointing to the side of that. 

 

*Edit* - The drift has nothing to do with depth perception, the size thing works perfectly well for that (since the object is of known size, you can perfectly calculate distance based on apparent size), the problem is in the way the Move determines the direction you're pointing, which has nothing to do with the EyeToy.

 

*Edit 2* - Basically the Move is using rotational dead-reckoning to determine angle, and any time you're using dead-reckoning you're going to eventually get accumulated errors that give you a wrong solution.

Edited by TheMightyEthan
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The reason the Wii doesn't have this problem (with the standard pointing, it can have a similar problem when relying solely on MotionPlus like with Skyward Sword) is because it's not using the accelerometers to determine angle, just rotation speed.  It uses the sensor bar, an absolute reference point, to determine angle.  The sensor bar is essentially just two infrared LEDs, one at either end of the bar (which is why you can replace it with two candles if you so desire), and the Wiimote has an infrared camera in the end of it.  When you point the Wiimote at the TV it can see the sensor bar and based on where in its field of view the LEDs are it can tell where you're pointing.  So like if the LEDs are in the bottom-right of its field of view then it knows you're pointing at the top-left of the screen (with some correction based on whether you've told it the sensor bar is above or below the TV).  It can also judge how far away from the TV you are based on how far apart in its vision the two LEDs are (basically the same way the Move does, but reversed).  Since it's using an absolute reference point to determine angle there's no accumulated errors to cause drift.

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Yes, but why not instead of that rely on the position of the ball like Kinect does for your hand? When I'm aiming in a light-gun style game the ball moves (albeit in a smaller area than the TV or the camera's FOV). At least factor it into the calculations. Wonder if that is why the images of the alleged PS next gen controller have a long bar and not a shape with infinite axes of symmetry.

 

Thanks for the extra clarification on how wii mote works by the way.

Edited by Thursday Next
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