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[CDLegasse]

Hey guys, Indecom here with another little project i'm developing alongside miniFlake. This project is a low cost motion tracking peripheral that will track motion and angle at a 1-1 rate similar to the playstation move but with a significantly lower price range.

I decided to come up with this design while discussing my future support of the Oculus Rift vr headset. I was thinking to myself about what techniques could be used to track the physical motion of a players hand rather than just sticking to mouse and keyboard, and in such a way that i wouldnt have to shell out another hundred or more dollars for just another motion controller for my pc. So the I-Game-Pistol was born.

What is the I-Game-Pistol? Essentially it's a lightweight gun peripheral with a big cuboid instead of a barrel. The cost effectivity of this device is based around the fact that it's built entirely out of paper, buy the template online, print it out, then cut and glue it together. There will be multiple models of the I-Game-Pistol, and eventually there may even be various rifles and other devices such as brass knuckles.

How does the I-Game-Pistol work? The secret to the peripheral is it's cuboid head. On all 5 sides of the cuboid are large AR markers. AR stands for Augmented Reality, and to my knowledge, has not been used purely as a means of motion tracking. Using nothing more than the webcam most people already have, the game can keep track of up to three of those markers at a time, allowing for super precise 1-1 angle and position tracking.

But how do I fire the I-Game-Pistol if it's made from paper? Believe me this is something that I toiled over for some time. How could I make something that's made out of paper send a certain signal to a computer without wires? That's when i figured out that this particular problem can be solved, not electronically, but rather mechanically. All I'd have to do is design a series of parts, secured to the pistol with pivoting joints. After designing on paper how this would work, I assembled a mockup using small pieces of cardboard and thumb tacks, and to my surprise the mechanics worked flawlessly with only a minor amount of tweaking.

So how do you send the signal to the PC using mechanics? Well with the current design itteration, as your finger presses down on the trigger, mechanical parts begin to shift around, and ass your pressure increases, a rectangular hatch on the top of the device lifts, revealing a hidden AR marker with a specific pattern that, when detected by your webcam, tells the game that the trigger has been pulled, and the game in turn reacts accordingly.

What does this peripheral look like? Right now the I-Game-Pistol only exists in concept art and a fully realized 3 dimensional model, both of which will be shown below, as well as a video demonstrating the mechanics behind the trigger.

CONCEPT:


MODEL:


TRIGGER MECHANICS VIDEO

[CDLegasse]

Hey guys, i updated the current prototype to try help it hold up under pressure, broke the handle up into smaller parts, and filled the whole thing with support sheets that should help it retain it's shape. Also makes it look a little cooler.





Just finished the first iteration of disassembly, and printed out all the pages for the first version of the prototype. I intend on there being multiple models like i stated before, a more complex build, then a simpler, yet a tad uglier version that will also use up fiewer sheets of paper to assemble, as the current prototype uses 21 sheets of cardstock

[CDLegasse]

Hey guys, a lot of work was put into this first prototype and much was learned. Before i get into what i learned, i'll go ahead and show you guys what the prototype looks like all put together:





Now as you can tell it's a little large to be comfortable in my hands. That's an easy solution, also some parts had to be physically cut apart to allow for the mechanisms inside to have full unrestricted motion. Also a few small parts have been removed from the design completely since they were deemed unimportant enough to scrap. This also made it much easier to put together .

Some more work needs to be put into the design before i settle upon something that i consider to be a final product, but this is a great first step on the road to affordable motion tracking solutions for gamers!

[Paul Jeffries]

This seems like a really cool idea.  Have you actually tested the motion tracking, though?  I would have thought that would be the first thing to get right before worrying about what the gun looks like.  Is it really going to be accurate and responsive enough to give you a good level of realtime control?  One problem I can see immediately is that with the cuboid shape you'll need to be standing a fair way away from the webcam in order for it to be able to see more than just the front face.  Also, if you're aiming the gun upwards you will be obscuring the 'trigger flap' with the barrel.  Perhaps angling the sides a little, or even going for a more pyramid-like arrangement might work better?

[CDLegasse]

With the current pc I'm using, i havent even set up a good testing bed because its about 4 years old and im not sure how wll it can handlestuff like this. However the motion tracking elements are a pretty big no brainer. as for the flap becoming obscured by the cuboid, thays something I've  thought of and will figure out how to remedy in future prototypes.

[clockwrk_routine]

This is cool! 
I hadn't heard of Augmented Reality, but it sounds really cheap and something to be played around with more.  I've been thinking about making some art installations that reacted to audience input and AR would be perfect for that.

[Manuel Magalhães]

This is amazing, I'd like to try to do a game for it when it gets released.

[Laitch]

Nice idea! I hope you can do fast enough image processing

I tried this prototype a while back and the latency made it very hard to play

[CDLegasse]

Hey guys, thanks for allthe positive feeback. Once i begin working on the software part of this I'll work my butt off to optimise the crap out of it. I'm glad you guys are supporting this idea though. I enjoy the validation of my ideas

[unsilentwill]

Oh sorry, because here comes some constructive criticism. Despite how neat motion control is, it still requires an analog stick for movement (walking in place, I dunno). If you can make that out of paper and software, that'd be super cool (hey, maybe that make-your-own-button thing on Kickstarter?). I'm also curious how it would respond to moving it out of the range of the webcam?

The gun is cool but limiting, would it work as just a stick that's fully replaceable in the game world as something else like the Move?

[CDLegasse]

Thats something that ive been pining over as well. Right now I'm offering up just a motion control solution to use in conjunction with some other kind of controller for player movement. I may in the end come up with a solution for that as well, but for now I'm focusing on this part. Who knows, maybe AR could solve that problem as well.

EDIT:
I've discovered some more issues regarding the head of the gun blocking the webcam from seeing the flap and i'm conceptualizing some solutions to the issue that changes the location of the flap as well as it's shape that would aleviate that issue as well as turning the gun into a transformer looking thing lol