Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
An Analysis of CamSpace as a Webcam Mouse and Gaming Controller
Nod5:
This analysis was a great read VideoInPicture! :Thmbsup:
In all the linked youtube videos people have their webcam in the standard position above the screen. But maybe different placement would give better results? For example, for mouse simulation a webcam could be placed in front of the regular mouse position and the hand (with some marker on the fingers) could then occupy the regular mouse position. That way one hand could have mouse control while the other is at the keyboard, like with a real mouse.
A (quirky) thought I got when reading this: will it work with multiple webcams? In a driving game one cam could register a wheel object while another camera, on the floor, registers foot movement (acceleration/brake pedals) :D
VideoInPicture:
This analysis was a great read VideoInPicture! :Thmbsup:
In all the linked youtube videos people have their webcam in the standard position above the screen. But maybe different placement would give better results? For example, for mouse simulation a webcam could be placed in front of the regular mouse position and the hand (with some marker on the fingers) could then occupy the regular mouse position. That way one hand could have mouse control while the other is at the keyboard, like with a real mouse.
A (quirky) thought I got when reading this: will it work with multiple webcams? In a driving game one cam could register a wheel object while another camera, on the floor, registers foot movement (acceleration/brake pedals) :D
-Nod5 (July 08, 2008, 03:30 PM)
--- End quote ---
If you reposition the webcam to where the mouse usually is, I think you will lose the big benefit of the program, which is to provide a more natural input method and move away from traditional input mechanisms. You also have to be able to select objects and click with the mouse so you will likely need both hands to actuate the mouse. I haven't seen a viable input scheme from all the computer vision articles I have read that uses just one hand. To successfully implement a webcam mouse system with one hand (all the movements and clicks), you must resort to hand gestures which CamSpace is not able to analyze.
As for multiple webcams, that is not possible with the current version of CamSpace from all the wiki pages I have read and videos I have seem. From each webcam, you are only able to track a maximum of 4 objects so there are limitations. If you use multiple webcams, I think you would need a quad-core processor to handle the high processing load.
Nod5:
Yes, I can see the obstacles. The problem with CamSpace that you describe seem like a really tough design challenge for them to try to solve! I hope the devs come up with some smart way to at least lessen the problem.
If they used two or more webcams to record the hand/"mouse" from somewhat different angles, then that might solve much of the problem. But then they'd get the other problem with heavy system resource use.
This is off topic but the above problems got me thinking: do you know of some other promising new input tech that would be better at solving these problems? Are there some attempts at cheap 3D mice around? I've seen some devices using gyros. But how about a wireless mouse that instead uses multiple USB receivers positioned at different places in the room to somehow calculate the 3D position of the mouse? To my uninitiated ears it doesn't sound very expensive or impossible. But maybe there are large obstacles there too.
Nod5:
CamSpace Beta 7 (released September 17) is open for everyone. Has anyone tried it out? Impressions?
http://blog.camspace.com/
VideoInPicture:
I was one of those in the closed betas and got to try Camspace out. It does work like what you see in the videos and is well implemented but you really need to have lots of lighting in the room and the object you choose should not be similar to the colors in your background or the program can track off course. I still don't think it's a threat for conventional gaming or the Wii because it's pretty hard to use it to replace hardware controllers, especially if you want to push a button or you have lots of intricate commands for the game. I've seen people try to use it to replace a mouse but it doesn't work very well because you can't emulate all the buttons and mouse movements easily and naturally. Perhaps if you build an operating system around Camspace it would work out better.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version