Last night at the W San Francisco, XTR 3D showcased their 3D body motion game control software.  GDC’ers were able to play a number of popular games by simply standing in front of the computer and moving their bodies to play virtual drums, fly airplanes simply by moving their arms and shoot enemy combatants by pointing their hands directly at the screen! XTR 3D software reads your body and uses your movements to control the game, free of game controllers, Wii wands and keystrokes.

KEY POINTS:

XTR 3D Human Machine Interface (3D HMI), allows users to operate computers, play games and interact in virtual worlds using natural human hand and body motions.

XTR developed software-based full body 3D motion capture technology, using a single standard web-cam.

XTR software has a universal interface that can seamlessly integrate without modifications into existing applications, and may be ported to any embedded platform/ gaming console.

XTR’s robustness and accuracy are equal or superior to costly hardware based solutions and offer a real life interface resulting in an improved user experience. XTR’s full body motion capture is light weight, and does not require any alteration to computerized equipment.

Now I saw some work being done at the Sony labs in London involving the game thing and they’ve demonstrated that this is possible on the PS3 already. Is this the way of the future? We’ve already stepped away from sitting on the couch and button mashing with the new generation of controls and consoles, so perhaps in the near future it will all be on-screen action and no more controllers? Probably not, but it sure would be cool to be able to pick up units in an RTS and drop then where you want a la Minority Report.