The controller works in combination with the PlayStation Eye camera which tracks the controller’s glowing “light sphere” in three dimensions and that is the key to the Move’s accuracy. The light sphere also changes color in order to give some visual feedback from the game into our world. Sony also unveiled a Subcontroller that includes analogue stick input to function like a wireless version of Nintendo’s Nunchuk controller. For first person shooters (FPS) like the upcoming SOCOM 4 the Move controller is used to control the camera, while the Subcontroller is used to control the character.

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“We like to think that the migration path between Wii households and PlayStation households is a natural path,” said Peter Dille, Sony’s senior vice president for marketing and PlayStation. He added that Move offers greater precision than current motion controllers, with controller latency under one frame.

Sony is hoping to appeal to a wide range of gamers including the casual gamers that the Wii has been so successful with, as well as more hardcore gamers for whom accuracy and responsiveness is key. Games like DUKES and the medieval dueling in Sports Champions will require two PlayStation Move controllers unless you fancy yourself and think you can fight well enough with just one hand.

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Many existing franchises such as SOCOM will also be enhanced with PlayStation Move functionality. Sony says it is also able to add Move functionality to existing games such as LittleBigPlanet without compromising graphical quality or gameplay because of the Move’s low performance impact on the PS3 system.

The Move, which will be available this fall in a starter kit which consists of a PlayStation Eye camera, Move controller and a “starter disc” of demos of upcoming games that begins at under $100, is Sony’s attempt to jump ahead of Microsoft’s Natal and winning over some of the Wii users.

At the same E3 where Microsoft presented their Project Natal, Sony demonstrated their own motion controller. They probably wanted to expand t the market which Nintendo held with their Wii controller. Their controller offers true 1:1 tracking in a 3D environment. This sort of accuracy is crucial to doing things ranging from drawing with variable pressure, to flicking an enemy’s chin with the tip of your sword. Although we expected the Microsoft to announce usage of controllers along the Project Natal, Sony surprised with their version of a full-body game control concept.

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ICU uses stereo cameras to watch a player and judge depth, as we do with our pair of eyes. Like Natal, Sony’s system tracks a person’s whole body without their having to wear the body markers used in motion-capture studios.  Its face detection and movement recognition technologies allow it to know at which part of the screen the users are looking. The system is also able to tell different information by looking at the user, such as age, gender, and the emotion currently displayed.

Atracsys already sells a system that gives medics hands-free control of computers in sterile environments, called Infinitrack. But its users have to wear small reflective markers like those used in a movie industry motion-capture studio; previous versions required users to wear particular colors.

“Casual users can’t be expected to do that”, says Gaëtan Marti, CEO of Atracsys, “which limits the system’s precision. We cannot at present detect ‘finger signs’ [but] we can detect where you are looking at on the screen – up, middle, down – and the raw position of your arms [or legs],” he says.

ICU’s stereo cameras can detect the position of specific points on the arms, legs and head to within 10 cubic centimeters, compared with the 0.2 cubic millimeters accuracy of Infinitrack. ICU ‘reads’ facial expressions using a pattern-matching algorithm that has been trained on pictures of people expressing different emotions. Using cues such as the position and shape of the lips, ICU spots five basic states: happiness, anger, surprise, sadness and neutral.

It also has the ability to tune out the visual clutter around a player that could otherwise distort its results. “Once it detects a face 2 metres in front of the cameras, the system can isolate the person by only keeping the information between 1.5 and 2.5 metres away,” Marti says.

“Sophisticated as it is, however, ICU isn’t yet going to be launched into the punishing domestic entertainment market”, says Arnaud Destruels, marketing manager at Sony’s image-sensing division.

They are planning to test it in the world of advertising before they use it with their gaming system. If placed in a shop window, since it is able to adapt the content to the persons who are watching, it can provide them with targeted information. It can also catch passerby’s attention and invite them to interact with the system in a natural and easy way. It could also offer the possibility to browse through the information by simply moving their heads.