EndWar gets gesture controls

By Johnny Minkley Published 29 May, 2008

Wave goodbye to your enemies.

Not content with shaking up the RTS genre with voice-driven gameplay, Ubisoft's Shanghai team has just implemented a gesture-based system in EndWar that lets you perform Minority Report-style screen manipulation using a console camera.

Content director Julian Gerighty spilled the beans to Eurogamer earlier this morning during a demo of the new Tom Clancy war game. By using the PlayStation Eye with the stand that comes with Sony's Eye of Judgement game, players can scroll around when viewing EndWar's overhead tactical map simply by waving their hand under the camera.

Gerighty said the system had only just been implemented and is currently only in the PlayStation 3 version. Creative director Michael de Plater explained to us that the obstacle to including this feature on 360 was simply that the Vision Cam lacked the stand available with Sony's camera.

Gerighty added that the feature was not guaranteed for inclusion in the final game, since the team is expected to deliver "feature parity" across all versions, but said he was hopeful it would make the final cut.

If you want to know all about the increasingly impressive-looking EndWar, why not check out the latest Episode of The Eurogamer TV Show, featuring an exclusive look behind-the-scenes at Ubisoft Shanghai. And don't forget the brand new Ubidays trailer.

EndWar is due out on PS3 and 360 this October.

Picture of Johnny.

About Johnny Minkley

Eurogamer TV's Johnny Minkley is a veteran journalist with a lifelong passion for games and the games industry. He uses Twitter more than most people use air.

Read more articles from Johnny by visiting the Johnny Minkley archive page.

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Comments (12) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Razorus #1 4 years ago

    Neat idea, it's about time someone utilized the cameras in proper games. Now, announce me the 360 version using the Live Vision cam and I will touch myself...

  • penhalion #2 4 years ago

    Not gonna work end of story. Did some R and D with a similar system a little while back. You need to track the movements and any big variance in lighting in the room will cause mis-reads. You can use reflective stick on finger tips to get around this but, you can guess how impractical that gets.

    I'm gonna be interested to see how they work this without it becoming a "pointless feature that you instantly disable" in the old reviews.

  • MrXBob #3 4 years ago

    What are they talking about? The 360 Vision Camera has a stand.

  • DFawkes #4 4 years ago

    The EoJ one holds it up, aiming down at the play mat.
    Anyway, I hope it isn't cut out of the PS3 version just because there's no stand. Leave the feaure in, let 360 owners build on out of toilet roll tubes and blue tak.

  • neilch #5 4 years ago

    ahh, wish I'd got the EoJ pack if other people are going to use the stand.

  • RazorObsession #6 4 years ago

    its about time the cameras were used in a gaming sense, its just a shame that the tech isnt quite up to par. i get regular use of my live vision camera, but thats only because i live in australia, and my family are in the UK, which equates to cheap video calls, but it would be gathering dust otherwise.

    that totemball was total shit though , you have to have the right lighting conditions, and a pure white background for it to even begin to work. stand or no stand, as penhalion pointed out, unless you have the right conditions its just not worth it with all the mis reads.

    perhaps a special micheal jackson kidrapeglove TM with sparkly finger tips would do the trick?

  • Ryze #7 4 years ago

    Shows how basic and underused the 360 camera is.

    Missed opportunity for M$. Get it sorted!

    Do an image search and look at the Eye of Judgement stand, MrXBob.

  • ScarOnTheSky #8 4 years ago

    Aw - come on! How hard can it be to make your own camera stand?

  • davisorle #9 4 years ago

    Do they really expect to beraising your hand of the controller and try to scroll the cam with it? I rather not even if fun to just try a couple of times.

  • AphoticCosmos #10 4 years ago

    Looks like EndWar is actually going to try and revolutionise the genre for consoles, and that's a good thing. Even if they fail, kudos to Ubi for trying this.

    I'm actually looking forward to the voice command.

  • hahayou #11 4 years ago

    Hey, maybe they could make the camera wireless so you can use it more easily. Putting an LED by the optical sensor would get rid of the lighting problem, and if they made it smaller and lighter you could use it with any surface instead of just your hand. That'd let you rest it on things, much comfier than holding your hand up in the air. Since you're holding it, why not put some buttons on it, that'd make controlling the game really easy. Especially if this "wireless mobile image recognition device for input and analog cursor control" had actually been used as the standard in RTS games for about 15 years. And if everyone already owned one and the PS3 already supported plugging it in that would make it pretty convenient too.

    They're reinventing the (scroll) wheel...

  • bushwod #12 4 years ago

    @hahayou

    Yeah, or they could make it remote shaped and allow you to gesture control it, that would be a revolution wouldn't it......