The gaming industry is experiencing a period of rapid growth – it has recently overtaken the music industry in the US – that will take the global market from $31.6 billion in 2006 to an estimated $48.9 billion in 2011 (source: PricewaterhouseCooper’s Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2006-2011.) This growth is driven by the continued introduction of technologically advanced game consoles and innovative game plays (e.g. casual and fitness games) that extend the gaming experience to new demographic groups (e.g. adults, women.)

Game developers, game publishers, and game console manufacturers are looking for ways to differentiate in this increasingly competitive marketplace. Transforming the user experience through an immersive, transparent (marker-less) and intuitive interface represents a fantastic opportunity to establish a leadership position in the next generation action, casual, sports and fitness gaming markets. The commercial availability of low-cost 3D depth sensing devices is about to make this revolution possible.

Softkinetic anticipated the availability of such 3D depth sensing cameras and is today the leading provider of 3D gesture recognition solutions for building immersive, transparent and intuitive interfaces and game plays.

History
 

Anticipating the commercial availability of affordable 3D depth sensing cameras, Softkinetic is today the only company that provides game and content developers, console and arcade manufacturers, fitness equipment manufacturers and industrial applications developers with a standard software platform to develop their next generation interactive solutions.

Softkinetic’s technology is the result of more than four years of research and development by a team of 3D imaging experts, mathematicians and gaming enthusiasts. Softkinetic S.A. was founded in July 2007, is privately held and headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. Softkinetic’s primary focus is the Interactive Digital Entertainment market, but our solutions are also applicable for building next generation fitness equipments, virtual reality industrial, military, simulation and education applications.

Technology
 

Softkinetic iisu™ is the most advanced 3D gesture recognition software platform available today. iisu is compatible with all major 3D depth sensing devices and allows developers to build natural, immersive, transparent and intuitive interfaces for games, interactive marketing, fitness, industrial simulation, education and military applications.

• With a single depth sensing device, iisu recognizes the concurrent motions of head, shoulders, hands, feet, and torso in real-time and transforms that information into actionable vectors and objects for the developer to use.
• Without requiring error prone and time consuming calibration, iisu analyses the scene and filters out all the objects that are not part of the user’s body – allowing the programmer to concentrate his efforts on the most important aspects of his application.
• iisu offers a wide range of APIs – from the lowest 3D depth map to complex gesture recognition elements – to allow the programmer to develop the most advanced interactions between the user and the virtual world.
• iisu can be used to define gesture-based triggers to transform existing games and applications with a totally new user experience. As an example it took us less than two hours to convert Quake™ into a full-body experience.