You have looked silly before. You will again. However, there are few things that can make you look as silly as playing Toysight, a new collection of games, MacOS X only, where your motions (real, physical motions) control the games. Developed with the iSight in mind, Toysight is, I think, revolutionary.
A free demo has just been released. There is only one game in the demo, Free Fall. It’s not the most compelling game I can imagine, but the sheer novelty of standing in front of your computer and motioning (OK, waving your arms about) to manuever your on-screen skydiver is tremendous. It works… that’s incredible enough. I can imagine other games that will work better, and the demo promotes several other items that will be in the collection. But for now, if you have an iSight, you owe it yourself to at least try the demo.
Warning: you will look silly. VERY silly. I think my wife can’t believe what she just saw. She knows I’m a geek, and I hope that most of the time she accepts that in the best way possible. But the vision of me ‘skydiving’ in our study startled even her. Even typing these words is silly, but I’m willing to share my silliness in public because this is the first time I’ve seen real physical manipulation of a computer program. The mouse opened up many doors, but this is much, much more dramatic. Not now, but not too far off, either.
Yes, Toysight is a demo, and first generation, and the controls are awkward (might work better in a room that was better lit), but the seeds of the future are here. I don’t usually come across things where I believe I can see the next technological step forward, but I have to believe that this game will open the eyes of developers everywhere to the possibilities which, to date, have remained only in research labs (try looking at some of these papers on ‘gestural computing’).
The iSight is a consumer gadget, ~$150. My wife gave it to me as an early Christmas present (is she sorry now?) so I could videochat with my siblings in Brooklyn. In many ways, it’s a toy (especially when playing games!). But it’s enough to open the door to enough people to make a video camera as common a computer accessory as the mouse, eventually.
In three years, I think, an iSight-level camera will be standard equipment on all desktop computers, perhaps built in to the monitor. The expense of miniaturizing the device enough for a laptop will make it less common there, at first, but it will be available as a regular option. I would expect Apple to push this into their high-end monitors first. Maybe Microsoft (perhaps with Longhorn) will have Windows fully ready for this kind of input no later than 2006 (and probably earlier, for early adopters)? I’m not pretending that gestural input works for most things people use computers for now, but with the spark of games like Toysight, some developer(s) will find an application compelling enough to pull this functionality from gaming into normal, everyday navigational usage.
Remember: you will look silly now. But in three years, you won’t. I promise. 😉