EA founder believes Extreme Reality holds key to better motion control

The founder of Electronic Arts, Trip Hawkins, has joined the board of directors at Israeli technology company, Extreme Reality, where he will be working on developing motion control software that can read a person's movement in 3D (like the Kinect) but only requires a 2D camera, VentureBeat reports.

Hawkins says that Extreme Reality's tech can keep up with the movement of a player in real time, even in poor lighting, while also doing a better job of detecting the player than current technology like the Kinect.

"This is an issue of 3D cameras and gesture-input devices and the cost associated with them," Hawkins said in an interview with VentureBeat.

Hawkins believes that bringing down costs is crucial to the success of the technology, citing an example of a mouse that was developed at Apple that had a $400 building-materials cost. After changing the design, it brought the price down to $15, resulting in the first optical mouse that has since become a standard device in homes and offices.

"[Extreme Reality's tech] is truly a major breakthrough," he said. "There's always the fundamental issue of cost, and particularly in markets like the game industry, products fail because the price points are too high.

"Extreme Reality 3D has a solution that doesn't require a 3D camera, nor does it require a special input device to be held by the player. We're talking about a software solution, but it's not just [better] because it's a software solution. It actually has a number of elements that are superior," he said.

Hawkins and Extreme Reality have not announced who they are working with to bring this technology to market.