Sony held a bit of a rah-rah song-and-dance event in the UK yesterday that revealed a few more details about the company’s motion controller. It was absolute mustard. Chief among them: software for the new camera, the PlayStation Eye, will be able to “detect gender and even the age of the face, separate facial features such as the nose, eyes and ears, and even detect whether you’re smiling or not.”
Sony’s also providing a whole bunch of middleware to developers (provided you’re an “approved” developer) to make developing actual, compelling less a technical challenge than a creative one. That is, devs don’t have to spend weeks coding for menial input tasks.
Sony summed it up with this: ”We can provide you will all of the tech. We want you to provide us great games.” Fair enough, sir. (Though I, like others, much prefer the classic controller to all this motion control tomfoolery.)
And here’s a quick aside, science-style: Just how will the PlayStation Eye be able to determine gender of someone based on their face alone? This site breaks down the physical difference between male and female faces. Skeletal structure is the biggie, so I assume the software will come pre-loaded with mathematical models of male/femal forehead size, jaw shape, etc.
And if you’re not fascinated by that, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s so amazing that you’re able to determine that that left face is a woman’s, and the right one is a man’s. There’s no facial hair there to throw you off, the woman doesn’t have long, flowing hair like how women wear. No, your DNA just knows, instantly, that’s a female face.
To science!