December 12, 2007
The camera that knows your every move
While 3D is being adopted by the movie industry as the technology that will put more bums on cinema seats, a new 3D camera being unveiled this week is designed to get people out of their chairs.
The ZCam, developed by the Israeli company 3DV Systems, represents a big advance on the motion-sensing technology currently being used to play video games by gestures rather than punching a controller.
Its array of sensors sends out infra-red pulses to bounce back off objects or a face, sending back information on their distance from the camera to an accuracy of around 5 millimetres and mapping the information to individual screen pixels.
This translates to a "heat map" kind of image where white is close, black is at a distance, while shades of grey create detailed 3D images and allow subtle movements to be picked up at 60 frames per second. Combined with a regular camera imaging chip, a user can pivot his or her face into a 3D colour profile and replace the black background with a movie of a palm-fringed beach or New York skyline, the same way TV weather presenters change their green-screen backgrounds.
3DV, which was founded 10 years ago, sold a few 3D cameras to broadcasters for $200,000 in its early days, to allow them to replace backgrounds. Now it expects cameras to appear for less than $100 in the second half of next year and be used as video game peripherals.
Zvika Klier, chief executive, showed me how I could fly a spitfire in a combat game and climb, dive and bank by just pushing my hands back, forward and sideways. Lifting my thumb triggered the machine gun.
Persuading publishers to write games specifically for the peripheral could prove difficult, but 3DV may benefit from a console maker adopting its technology.
Mr Klier sees video conferencing, automotive, security and robotics applications for the camera, but video gamers will benefit first from the total immersion and intuitive movements it makes possible.
3DV has more than 20 patents for its technology and backing from venture capitalists including the Valley’s Kleiner Perkins.
