PlayStation Eye camera coming for PS3

Stephen Withers
Friday, 27 April 2007 03:53

Your IT - Entertainment

Sony makes some bold claims for its forthcoming PlayStation Eye camera for the PS3.

The USB 2.0 device is said to provide "sophisticated low-light operation [so] the room doesn’t have to be brightly lit for the camera to deliver crisp, perfectly exposed video", while the four-microphone array with voice location tracking, echo cancelling and background noise suppression "allows for clear audio chat in even the most noisy of environments, without the need to hold [a microphone] or wear a headset."

Sounds impressive, and if it's as good as Sony claims it should prove a popular accessory.

"PlayStation Eye is a great example of how we have moved forward so significantly with our technology," said David Reeves, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. "

"PlayStation Eye has four times the resolution, twice the framerate and double the sensitivity of its predecessor EyeToy USB Camera. With the technology that we now have at our disposal we will be able to dramatically improve the communications experience enjoyed on PS3."

The EyeCreate software supplied with the PlayStation Eye allows still, video and audio capture (including time-lapse and slow motion), video editing and the addition of visual effects.

There's clearly more software to come - Sony officials mentioned speech recognition, "physical gaming" (a la EyeToy) and video chat. Developers are likely to take full advantage of the new camera in future titles. "Multidirectional voice location tracking" sounds particularly interesting - if the camera can distinguish two different voices from their direction, multi-player speech recognition could be possible, given the processing power inside the PS3.

PlayStation Eye specs include 640 x 480 pixels at 60fps or 320 x 240 at 120 fps, 56 or 75 degree field of view, a fixed-focus f2.1 lens, and 16-bit audio with a signal-to-noise ratio of 90dB.

The camera is due this northern summer. No price yet.