2009 will be remembered as the E3 game event that embraced computer vision. Far from me-too answers to the Wii’s gestural controllers, we saw remarkably different visions of how computer tracking might work.

As expected, Sony had their own motion tracking system to unveil at their press conference. But unlike Microsoft’s 3D camera, Sony opted to build on their already-lovable PlayStation 3 Eye camera with wands with spheres. The controllers look ridiculous, and lack the magic of the Microsoft demos. But don’t dismiss them out of hand. (Sorry, there’s no way to write this story without lots of abstract puns.)

Much of what Microsoft showed was “conceptual” video – and some of the hands-on demonstrations had noticeable latency problems. Sony’s approach, meanwhile, was really quite literal in its demonstation. The tracking looks extremely accurate in 3D space, and latency appears to be minimal.

Above: Video of the press conference – check out how quick and accurate the tracking looks

Via Joystiq; see also Offworld’s excellent 5 Things You Need to Know about the Sony shindig

The other good news for people working as artists and not necessarily mass-market game developers is that you can start to play with these ideas right now. Whereas Microsoft seems to have “lost” the once publicly-available 3D camera SDK for their solution, Sony is using an off-the-shelf camera you can buy right now and doing the rest of the work in software. I really like the use of tangible interfaces with cameras, because you can get more predictable tracking results, and you get the tactile feedback of having something in your hands. (I’m not sure I’d be as excited as they are about having a glowing ball on the end, but maybe I need to channel my inner raver.)

Anyway, here’s my humble prediction: it doesn’t matter how cool the demo looks or what sweeping statements anyone makes. Gameplay alone matters, and that means that what has to happen next is dependent entirely on the tracking working reliably and quickly, and developers building smart stuff around it that works as games. The same, naturally, is true for anyone doing broader interaction design and live visuals.

Sony is also getting further into the augmented reality arena. They have a Tamigotchi/Nintendogs-style augmented reality pet simulator, EyePet, for the console (see Joystiq’s hands-on), plus Invizimals, an augmented reality title for the PS3. Of the two, Invizimals is the most interesting. It’s funny that they immediately design it for kids (too bad, as I can see some office antics with this sort of thing). It’s also evident just how hard designing an effective augmented reality game can be. I don’t think skepticism would be wildly out of place – it’s clear that there’s something powerful about the concept, but not clear just what it will be.

And I don’t need to remind you, if you haven’t joined our tangible interface virtual party Saturday, head to http://hackday.noisepages.com/ – ARToolkit augmented reality is very much on the plate of stuff we’d like to see people play with. (The other schemes we’re using, Trackmate and reacTIVision, are better suited to 2D tracking on a surface, though they’re very, very reliable for that task.)

I first saw Linger in Shadows on the Playstation Store Dashboard - the poster image was intriguing, and the game itself is only $2.99. Curious, I clicked through for more information…

Holy crap. It’s Interactive Art. On my Playstation.

The developers are Plastic, a Demoscene group from Poland. Gamespot UK reported on it earlier this year, writing that Sony actually approached these folks and got them hooked up with PS3 dev kits.

Looking to the product itself, I’ve found it to be visually engaging, as well as a bit confusing. Instructions are eschewed in favor of simple icons and a black-box approach: figure out what you’re doing by doing it. I personally love this sort of system, but I can see it being a turn-off for many. Someone involved must have known that, as they offer two modes: Linger, which is the interactive mode, and Watch, in which the demo plays out for you with no interaction necessary.

Could this be the start of the PS3 as a platform for Interactive Art? While it leaves much to be desired in the departments of openness and availability to artists/developers, it does have a fantastically huge userbase and great interface devices (controllers/guitars/drums/etc).

MediaCoder is a free do-everything, convert-everything audio and video batch processor. It relies on tools like ffmpeg behind the scenes, but supports multiple engines, lots of formats, and has a graphical front end. It works on Windows, and could be a good reason to virtualize Windows on Mac or Linux, and it also evidently works pretty well on Mac and Linux via WINE. (Haven’t tried that yet; see the download page for details.)

The best news from MediaCoder land is that a recent build has added support for AVCHD, the widely-used HD format. This is essential for those times you get media off someone’s hard drive-based player. The MediaCoder folks have a brief tutorial with screenshots on their site:

How to convert AVCHD with MediaCoder

If you have a preferred conversion method for AVCHD or other formats on your platform of choice, let us know. In the meantime, I’m finding I fire up MediaCoder almost every day.

Here’s a belated US Independence Day celebration, in a style Create Digital Motion readers are sure to appreciate: filled with the sounds of Sigur Ros, and lots of backwards slow motion. Nothing against John Phillip Sousa, of course. “Be kind to your friends in the swamp,” indeed. (What, am I the only person who knows those lyrics? I mean, aside from, bizarrely, the National Institutes of Health?)

But I expect you’ll enjoy some more chilled-out celebrations of the birth of America (as always, click through to our friends at Vimeo for HD):

The Fourth from Michael Brodner (AIM: Upstate14) on Vimeo.

Camera used:

Creator Michael Brodner writes “I shoot with a Sony HDR FX1. Got it about a year ago and love it. Although I think I like the "look" of the EX1 a little better.”

Related:

Casio Exilim EX-F1 in the Wild: Slow-Motion Invades the Mainstream

Slow Motion Pixels: Sony Smooth Slow Record Resolution Tested on HVR-V1P

If you’re confused by the Sony model numbers, these are all variations of the same basic camera we’re talking here. The HVR-V1P Jaymis uses is a PAL camera / not for US use (the US has the HVR-V1U). The HDR FX1 is likewise a “prosumer” model in the same approximate family. The EX1 Michael mentions is a higher-end Sony camera, in a difference range and currently with a street of about twice as much cash. (Yeah, that makes the FX1 look better all the time.)

During the high-definition wars, your feelings about new higher-capacity storage discs may have ranged from ambivalence to dread to simple disinterest. (Well, that’s how I felt, anyway.) But with Blu-ray triumphant comes this realization: "hey, brain, we’ve suddenly got increasingly-affordable ways of burning high-capacity media!" Drive upgrades on the PC side cost what DVD burners once did, and if you’re hooked up to a TV, the writer can be your player, too. (There’s already a Lite-On internal drive for around US$350, and I expect these prices will plummet as production ramps up.)

That’s burning, anyway — authoring is obviously essential.