Softkinetic revealed its Full Body Avatar Control system, enabling developers to create third-person avatars that move in real-time with players.
Built into the middleware developer's gesture recognition platform Iisu, the technology is made possible with the the help of a depth-sensing camera that recognizes the player’s spatial orientation, limb positions, and combinations of hand, feet and torso movements.
Iisu was launched at the Game Developers Conference in February 2008, and has since been incorporated into various applications for gaming, multimedia systems, fitness, and virtual training. A software development kit is available with which developers can create applications that use the human body as a natural input device, instead of using physical controllers.
Iisu and the Full Body Avatar Control system supports all 3D depth-sensing cameras currently on the market, including cameras from 3DV Systems, Canesta, MESA, PMDTec, Prime Sense, and Optex.
“We strongly believe that the video game industry will embrace 3D gesture recognition technology in 2009," says Softkinetic CEO Michel Tombroff, "And we believe the first games will hit the market as soon as 2010.”
