12-21-2017 02:48 PM
12-21-2017 05:05 PM
01-26-2018 08:01 PM
01-26-2018 08:29 PM
01-27-2018 06:29 AM
body tracking is an old technology that was reserved to professional due to the price of the equipement.
since a few years, new technologies have replaced the expensive equipment with very cheap ones (the cheapest being the Microsoft Kinect) , but due to the lack of standard most of these products were soon abandoned.
you can list:
Kinect 1(primesense) , Kinect 2(Microsoft) , Asus Xtion (primesense), RealSense (intel), a few product even never pass the prototype stage .Oculus killed NimbleVR kickstarter buy buying it and then never released a product, Apple purchased PrimeSense and killed it (never delivered a product), Microsoft killed Kinect (mainly because they had to pay royalties to Primesense), then developed Kinect 2 on their own and killed it soon after , intel killed their first camera R200, F200 and most SDK are today archived or abandoned.
So you understand that developpers where not happy to see their efforts going to the drain (while many of these applications are still working fine, like faceshift (killed by Apple), brekel, Skanect, ReconstructMe etc..).
For the MoCap Suit, it is a different story. There was several attempt to deliver body tracking for cheap, but only one project really succeed :Perception Neuron.
Salto (Smartsuit pro) changed from cheap to expensive and late (still not available, if ever) and PrioVR is still vaporware after several years.
The biggest problem for developer is the lack of standard. Each suit has a different number of sensor and placement and ouput a lot of data that is irrelevant to games where you only need to know a few actions and position (like idle, walk , run, jump, kick, crouch etc...). Kinect was better at that, but was a bit slow.
implementing more (like total free motion) , is a lot of work, if you understand that most characters in games are driven just by a few of poses (or animation) , each one being pre-recorded.
So basically when you push the UP key on keyboard, you just trigger the WALK routine that launch the walk animation (left foot, right foot, and repeat)
With a a body capture , each step would be a different one.
And lots of games are not even totally decoupled (meaning your walk direction is where you are looking at).
The Vive solution is interesting because it is game oriented (basically you just track head, hands, feet and you can reconstruct body position from a few sensor).
VR chat are more oriented to human interaction and could also need data from the hands and finger and even face tracking for emotion. Curiously face tracking seems to evolve more rapidily since you can find now applications able to track your face with a simple webcam
Despite several attempt (gloves or cameras like the Leap Motion), none is working nicely enough.
this currently requires a lot of additional sensors and rais cost a lot. (tracking hands is available with neuron, but requires the full 32 sensors)
The perception neuron suit is currently the best tool (and almost the only one) , since it there is support for it into unity, maya, blender, facerig, vr chat, but it is expensive (around 1500$)
other solution based on cameras require usually a fixed setup and lots of calibrations.
01-27-2018 06:43 PM
nosys70 said:
and PrioVR is still vaporware after several years.
01-28-2018 01:52 AM
yes I know that a few priovr have been released and we can salute the persistence of priovr to get the kickstarter fulfilled.
It has been a long way to go for them also. Respect.
the problem with such product is not the product itself but it acceptance in the developer's world.
Neuron being the first available, you can find now many product compatible with and many developpers who have solved the workflow issues to use it with MotionBuilder, Maya, 3DSMax, Blender, DAZ, Iclone, Fuse, Unity etc...
This is the real value of the product and often the trigger for purchase decision.