Remember the commercials with athletes wearing body suits with tracking balls on them? That is how they were able to track realistic body motions of star athletes and transpose them into a 3d virtual gaming character. This really added to the realism of the gaming experience as the virtual representation of star players like Sydney Cosby ( including signature moves and celebrations) was captured and represented in the gaming systems.
Check this cool video of the progression of Sydney Crosby from NHL 07 to NHL 17 gaming system. The motion capture and graphics have improved tremendously.
Companies like Optitrack have been pushing the boundaries of tracking systems for years.
http://optitrack.com/motion-capture-movement-sciences/
What if instead of creating characters, you become one in real-time in the virtual environment? That is what the Xenoma team, based in Japan, is developing. A unique wearable controller has been designed to track body movements in real-time with the use of an e-skin shirt.
The first impressions of this, it has the potential to transform the gaming industry. Get a VR headset and one of these and you are literally in the game. It can also be used to monitor body movement, posture and respiration.
Look a little deeper and you can look at how this type of technology can be used in training scenarios. Training scenarios for first responders for instance. We can use a gaming experience to do some training now but it would be must more realistic to have the trainer participant in the physical tasks by adding movement. This type of technology will enable that. It can lead to a future training centre that mixes a soundstage type environment that consists of real-world systems (ambulance, doctors office) mixed with virtual environments to create the more expensive training scenarios along with mixed augmented training experiences. This could be a future trifactor of training that could lead to a better and more cost-effective training environment.
Check out more about xenoma here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/961243492/e-skin-smart-apparel-hack-your-life
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/961243492/e-skin-smart-apparel-hack-your-life