This past week I received an expo pass to visit the Game Developers Conference: Next, a fairly new gathering of developers (from what I noticed primarily indie and social gaming) at the LA Convention Center. This should not be mistaken for the larger GDC that takes place in San Francisco in the spring. While my visit was short, the expo definitely had some gems worth sharing!
The small expo was host to several interesting booths, here is a run down of what I saw:
OUYA: Played Towerfall with some of their hardware. I have to be honest, I was pleasantly surprised with the controller. After reading a lot of hate on the controller's form factor, I thought for the overall price, it was definitely useable, albeit a bit flat. The OUYA is a fun little system that has some promise. I think it has shown the industry that there are other ways of bringing gaming to the big screen. Then again, it is a matter of time until Google and Apple release their own set top boxes...
CastAR: After seeing their Kickstarter campaign, this was definitely the piece of technology that I wanted to try out myself. CastAR is a different take on virtual reality that involves mounted projectors on a pair of glasses that project a virtual world upon a retro-reflective surface. The key advantage of this system is that the projected image appears naturally in the world as opposed on an LCD mere inches from your eye (ahem..Oculus Rift). They showcased two demos both running on a PC, an Angry Bots mod and table top board game setup. This is definitely an early prototype and seems a proof of concept than a final product, which the creators were clear to point out. While I do think this is a cool concept, the need for an external physical projection surface seems like an unnecessary infrastructure hassle that users will have to keep in mind when using the system.
Microsoft: While I was hoping to play some Xbox One, alas it was primarily a Surface and Unity for Windows Platform exhibit. I had an opportunity to play with a Surface Pro 2 and was definitely impressed with the horsepower of the system. I loaded up a video editing package and was zipping through editing some stock footage. They also had the Surface Pro 2 running Traktor Kontrol DJ Deck flawlessly - it was fun manipulating tracks on the Pro and cueing it up on the deck. I am still on the fence on what exactly the Surface brand is positioning itself to be...
Videogame History Museum: Well in preparation of the next generation of gaming, I got to play the best generation of gaming:
The promise of Kinect 2.0
As part of the pass, I was able to attend one talk at the conference - "Next Generation Natural User Interface with Kinect" by Ben Lower, Sr. Product Manager at Microsoft. In recent days, I have been extremely curious with Microsoft's Kinect 2 system, especially on how it may integrate into my mobile virtual camera tool. The talk was extremely informative in showcasing the features of the system, especially from a developers perspective overviewing specific API tools that developers would have access to with the new Kinect. The most interesting feature was understanding the engagement model that is captured by the system, assessing the player state, advanced skeletal tracking, and expression tracking. Ben demonstrated the ability to use the head-tracking of the Kinect as a third analog stick, which is being used in Battlefield 4 to lean around corners naturally.
While the Kinect has not been well received by gamers, I personally believe Microsoft is on the right track with NUIs and I think Kinect will become a technology that will elevate Microsoft into new markets. We live in a post-PC age where dynamic and natural user interfaces are impacting all facets of modern computer interaction. From my observation, Kinect 2 does everything the original Kinect was advertised to do, and that is a good place to start.
If you are interested in learning more, IGN wrote a great article about the talk: http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/11/07/how-next-gen-kinect-is-more-accurate-than-ever
That's it for this week! We have finally moved to our new office at the Santa Monica Business Park located in the vicinity of Activision, Treyarch, Animal Logic LA, and Beachhead Studios [yes, there was a Call of Duty: Ghosts Launch Party there last week ;) ]. There have been a couple bumps setting up the new SESI facility, but it is truly a great space and I look forward to continuing my work here for the next couple months. This may not be the Promenade, yet the park has its own gems notably its plethora of unique lunch trucks - take your pick of Indian, Thai, Mexican, Burgers, Fusion...its there!
This week I received an invitation from Walt Disney Animation Studios to attend the Open House. In addition, I will be making a trip out to Dreamworks Animation to tour their motion capture facility and speak to previs engineers on how they approach development and production.
