By Greg DeLacy – 03/12/2010

Well it seems we are learning more and more from GDC about the new Sony Move controller.  One of the biggest revelations about Sony’s competitor systems Natal was that it was going to potentially use a substantial amount of the processing power of the 360.  The natural question to ask now is what would Sony’s motion controller and camera combo pull from the PS3.  The answer, while not completely complete, came in a GDC panel discussion and is just another testament to Sony’s hardware exptertise. 

Sony’s GDC panel “Introducing the PlayStation Motion Controller was exactly that: An introduction to the newly named Move peripheral. David Coombes, Kirk Bender and Anton Mikhailov showcased a number of impressive tech demos, many of which demonstrated the Move’s incredible precision and low latency. One of the most impressive demos showcased full body tracking using an on-screen body puppet, not unlike one of Project Natal’s tech demos.

Body tracking is made possible by combining the Move and PS3′s head tracking capability. According to the presentation, the PS3 can also detect faces, going so far as to identify individuals through face contour and feature detection. The software will be able to recognize gender, age, smiles and when eyes open and close.

Coombes explained that all the calculations necessary to handle image processing are done by the Cell CPU, which apparently excels at the doing floating point calculations. The raw data can be processed incredibly quickly by the PS3, taking “under a frame” to translate to a game experience. And while Mikhailov didn’t reveal how much of the CPU’s overall power the Move controller requires, he did reveal that the memory demands are truly “insignificant” — 1-2 MB of system memory.

[via Joystiq.com]