My EyeToy experience
After my brother picked up a playstation 2 eye toy bundle two days ago we spent the whole afternoon playing and i can tell you: this game rocks! Perhaps the biggest surprise was that it actually works.
It’s been tried before: human machine interaction by voice, motion or rather esoteric means. But we still operate most of our machines with a mouse, keyboard or keypad, so it’s safe to assume that those other attempts more or less failed. Eye toy works pretty well and more than good enough to be a lot of fun.
As i’m generally interested in user interface design i was especially impressed by the menu system of eye toy: you select options simply by moving your hand to certain areas on the screen and keeping your hand in place on those virtual buttons. It works a little like the interfaces in minority report, and while i thought that it wouldn’t work in reality when i first saw the movie, i now think it might work.
The eye toy menu system is of course rather limited, far from what you see in minority report. People bashing apples one-button mouse definitely wouldn’t be happy with it because navigating the menus is basically like using a mouse without any buttons, limited just to moving your hand around on the screen.
However, considering that this is just the first practically useful application of this technology i’ve encountered thus far and imagining the possible improvements, i find this very promising. Controlling the menu with free movements of whatever body part one considers appropriate works a lot better than i expected. Even though i’ve been using computers for quite some time now and i’m quite accustomed to computer mice, it felt more natural than using a mouse after a short period of time to adjust. Furthermore, over the last few days several people of various ages and computer experience tried the game and everyone accustomed to the control scheme quite fast.
If you wanna get a glimpse at one future aspect of human machine interaction or just want something to impress your friends, pick up eye toy, definitely the coolest and most impressive videogame i’ve ever played. And parents don’t have to worry about their kids hangin’ out in front of the playstation all day ’cause playing this game makes up for some great physical exercise. My muscles still feel sore…