Mick Hocking

VP Studio Group, Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios Europe

I think 3-D and augmented reality in gaming are really important as games are often one of the first touch-points for the consumer, and because we’re delivering entertainment it gives people the chance to enjoy and be amazed by these new technologies. If we get it right and the consumer enjoys the experience it opens up the possibilities for other areas, like 3-D Phones, Laptops, Bloggies, tablets etc. We’re even seeing the first signs of these technologies in educational institutions. There are currently around 50-million PlayStation 3′s out there and as long as users have the latest firmware updates, they have got perhaps the most powerful 3-D playback platform available. PlayStation 3 can deliver 3D games, 3D Blu-rays, 3D photos and 3D MP4′s, and all these updates are free.

One of the misconceptions about 3-D in gaming is that you’re just adding depth to a scene, but we’ve found there is a lot of creative stuff we can do to further enhance the experience and give people a greater sense of immersion. For example, we’ve just announced our new PlayStation monitor, which is a 24” 3-D monitor, but because we’re using shutter glasses we are able to offer a mode where two players can go head-to-head on the same monitor in full-screen. When you play like this the software mode switches so that each player can only see their own viewpoint, which is perfect for head-to-head shooters & racing games.

Gaming is already using a lot of augmented reality but I think we’ve only just started to scratch the surface of what’s possible. On the PSP we have a lot of AR products, like Invizimals, where a marker that sits on a surface allows the PSP to augment creatures on top of it to be used for battling games etc. There are fantastic possibilities in this field with our new PlayStation Vita device, which is a very powerful portable console with high quality cameras on board, so we can do some really incredible things with AR – although I can’t talk about much with you just yet, but watch this space…

We have many really exciting R&D projects running with 3D related technologies. One is 3-D sculpting, this combines 3-D visualisation on the TV screen with head tracking sensors, we can produce a very convincing pseudo-holographic effect by altering the 3D rendering relative to the viewer’s position. When this is combined with object sitting in front of the screen, using negative parallax, the effect is particularly impressive. If you imagine this combined with very accurate hand position & control using our Move controllers, you can see how we can use these new technologies together to create an experience which feels like you’re carving out an object in 3-D space, seeing all aspects of it just as you would in the real world. I think we’ll see applications like this using our new technologies in the not too distant future.

Who should we invite? What are the most important topics for the programme?

The panel I would love to see is about how we can make sure we’re producing the highest quality 3-D, especially for the home entertainment market. When you do 3-D games well it can really enhance the experience and will encourage people to try 3-D in other areas – like TV. Done badly it can have the opposite effect and actually put consumers off the idea of 3-D as a concept.

On this panel I would have someone like James Cameron to represent film, as he has proven that he can produce great 3-D quality for the movies.

I’d have a game developer working in this area, like the Game Director from Naughty Dog, Gorilla Studios or Evolution.

And a journalist or a punter – someone who understands what is out there at the moment and can help us pin down how we can use 3-D to add to the experience.

Your expertise?

I’m a VP for Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios Europe. I look after development for a lot of games but also particularly the 3-D side of things. A big focus for us is proactively educating developers and programmers, both first & third party, in how to create good quality 3-D content.

What’s possible?

The combination of 3-D and augmented reality will form a very significant next step for games. Combining augmented reality and stereoscopic 3-D so that we can augment the real world with gaming objects is fascinating and we’re starting to see portable devices that have the power to be able to do this. We’ve also got some really exciting 3-D games coming out on the PS3 in the next few years too.

What are the best examples?

The state of the art in terms of 3-D games right now are games like Motorstorm Apocalypse, Uncharted 3 & Kill Zone 3. These games not only use 3-D well technically, but the development teams have also thought about how to use the technology creatively to enhance the gaming experience.

Most of the really exciting stuff is out there in the R&D area at the moment – like having contact lenses with cameras & sensors built-in so that everything you see can be augmented with useful data.

Also the concept of Virtual Reality is coming back strong and we now actually have hardware that is powerful enough to give is the kind of results we all hoped for in the 80’s – like our new 3-D head-mounted display (HMD), which we showed at CES this year.