Recently we had the pleasure of interviewing Jake Slake and Cash Garman, two of the men working on the eMove project which we exclusively covered earlier today. What follows, is that interview.

MediaKick: Firstly, I guess we should find out who you are and what it is that you’re doing…

Jake Slake: We work as part of a seven-man research team at the University of Sussex. We’re here working in partnership with the motion capture company ‘Animazoo’ and are responsible for developing the SDK plus the flag-ship title and a few small titles for a low-cost upper body exo-skeleton mocap suit made for gaming on the PC. The SDK will allow indie, professional and stand-alone developers to build a game/application for the suit with little need for additional resources. It will also let the universities loose on playing around with what’s possible. We are planning on letting a lot University’s getting the SDK and hardware.

MK: So how does this exo-skeleton mocap suit work?

Jake: The suit is an exo-skeleton inertial motion capture system using orientation sensors to continuously calculate the motion of the upper body. The exo-skeleton fits snugly around the player by the way of clips and velcro straps if you really want it fully secured. The suit outputs a total of 33 Euler angles sampled at 120 frames a second which is ready to be dumped straight onto a character rig to generate real-time motion.

MK: That sounds like some hefty data. Do you suffer from any lag on the system?

Cash Garman: The suit has effectively zero latency/lag, unlike systems like Kinect and Move. This is because it doesn’t need to do any complex calculations to work out the orientation of the limbs. Plus it has joysticks grasped by the hands, which makes game control (especially movement) much simpler.

MK: Impressive. What difficulties have you encountered/are still encountering with the suit?

Cash: In terms of difficulties we had some trouble calibrating the suit in the early days, mostly because it was a very manual affair. Now it’s much more automatic which simplifies calibration a lot. Up till now we’ve been using a quite bulky prototype suit, but we’re now starting to get the first production suits in now, which will address the problems of the prototype.

MK: Is it one size fits all or are there different sizes?

Cash: The suit is highly adjustable and can be adjusted to fit any body shape quite happily.

MK: It almost seems like a modified version of a mo-cap suit? Is this the case?

Jake: The design of the suit came as a redesign/offshoot of a full body mocap system sold to animation studios, game companies, universities etc to produce pre-recorded animations. The ambition has always been there but it’s only now that the technology and hardware is available for motion capture suits to be used as a game peripheral.

MK: Well it all sounds very impressive so far. I’m to understand that the product was originally called eMove, but you are now looking into a new brand name due to the announcement of Sony’s Move controller for the PlayStation 3. Is this the case? If so, do you have a final brand name or is it a Project Natal-esque placeholder at the moment?

Cash: It’s a placeholder name at the moment, we’ll be settling on a final name before the final release.

MK: While on the topic of Move and Kinect, I expect you’ve been keeping an eye on the motion controllers from both Sony and Microsoft that are due out this year. What are your thoughts on both Move and Kinect? And do you see yourself competing directly or going for a different market altogether?

Cash: Microsoft’s Kinect in an impressive piece of technology, and will do very well in taking a bite out the casual/family games market so far dominated by the Wii. Its main advantages are also its main disadvantages though. No controller will make it difficult to move your character around in a game world, so it will make FPSs and other genres very difficult to play. The eMove suit has a joystick for each hand complete with the usual buttons and thumbsticks, making these games possible.

Playstation Move’s wand does offer a thumbstick and so will suffer less from this problem, but as most gamers know, controlling both looking around and movement with a single thumbstick would be a major challenge.

Both systems also suffer from some kind of lag, since they are doing some major number crunching behind the scenes, this isn’t something eMove suffers from, our exo-skeleton has no perceptible lag.

All in all we think Kinect and Move will do well in their markets, but will struggle in the hardcore gaming market, which we hope to target.

MK: Obviously, we’ve missed a highly influential factor – pricing. I would expect it to be considerably more expensive than both Move and Kinect based on the complexity of the exo-skeleton (a word I might add that never loses its coolness). With Move controllers starting at £35 and Kinect rumoured to be a pricier £130, where does eMove sit price wise? Or at least, what do you expect it to cost come release?

Jake: Come release next year the consumer level exo-skeleton will be available for $299 – $399 (pricing yet to be confirmed). The suit will be plug-and-play through USB and ready for gaming or animating straight out the box. There will be additional content included in that price but that’s under wraps for now.

MK: Is there a reason the pricing is in dollars, considering you’re based in Brighton, UK? If we compare that to Move (bundle for $99) and Kinect (rumoured to be $150), it is considerably more pricey, but then when looking at the tech it’s not hard to see why. As the project progresses, do you foresee improved models being released? Almost like a new console revision.

Jake: The suit is going to be a global product, prices will be relative to this price in each respective country. Absolutely on the updates front. We hope to have additions such as virtual reality with full 3D stereoscopic displays, force feedback and a full body exo-skeleton. When combining mo-cap with a HMD the results are pretty incredible, to be able to hold and move your avatar’s hands in front of you is fascinating and takes the level of immersion to a whole new level.

MK: Wow, that sounds great! Obviously the comparison to Kinect and Move – whilst a different kind of tech – is inevitable. So far, the majority of the games for Kinect have been casual party games, whereas Move has the sports titles as well as games like LittleBigPlanet and Heavy Rain incorporating the technology (not to mention Sorcery which we were really impressed with at E3). What are the primary titles that you expect to be created for eMove and what ones are already in the pipeline (obviously that you can talk about)? I assume that a table-tennis game isn’t at the top of the list.

Jake: We want to take advantage of the suit’s complete upper body accuracy and zero lag, we’re therefore aiming to produce a title that maps the player’s movements to the avatar’s using direct 1:1 mapping. We would like to stay away from gesture controls as much as possible. Our flag-ship title will be an on-line, multiplayer sandbox game that promotes emergent gameplay. We want to give players the tools to interact with the world in any that could in reality; climb trees, swing from vines, pick up objects, shake hands with other players, reload a gun, fire it empty then batter another player over the head with it! We want to create an immersive world with enough tools, abilities and assets for users to create their own shooter or racing or adventure experience.

MK: From the test videos that I’ve seen, eMove has primary been tested in a third-person environment where you can see the entire character? Was this just for testing purposes, or does the tech not suit a first-person perspective?

Jake: Testing is certainly made a lot of easier by playing third-person but in terms of gameplay it’s by no means a necessary. In terms of the experience, it is certainly pretty cool to see your own movements replicated by a 3D avatar when in third-person. A first-person viewpoint works just as well but really comes alive when you put on a VR headset.

MK: So, we know the price, a rough release date, what it looks like, what sort of games to expect and the spec of the tech. Now just convince us in one paragraph as to why I should buy eMove.

Cash: The eMove project is offering something to hardcore gamers that other upcoming motion capture technologies do not: A level of immersion never before seen in games. Being a highly accurate and effectively zero-lag system allow developers to create gameplay which mirrors real life. Gamers who want more than the disembodied link to their in-game characters provided by a gamepad now have that possibility.

The future of eMove is bright, future enhancements will take the level of immersion even further. With head mounted displays and force feedback, the game experience will be taken to new heights previously the stuff of science fiction.