Gmail Motion: April Fools' Joke Friday, Reality by Monday

As scienceline.org points out, most novice game users twist and lift their game controllers trying to get Mario to jump or their virtual skier to get some more air. Wishful thinking until a few years ago, when motion controllers started to hit the market. Google exploited this return from button-pushing to natural gestures for control in their 2011 April Fools' joke, Gmail Motion.

It turns out the joke was on Google - ReadWriteWeb reports that a lab at the University of Southern California has already implemented something very similar to the supposedly fictional system which allows users to make gestures to control the reading and sending of e-mail. Perhaps more importantly to many, researchers have reportedly implemented a gesture-based interface to "World of Warcraft" as well.

The consumer market responded strongly to Nintendo's Wii motion controller technology, followed by Microsoft's Kinect, and soon Microsoft's partner Primesense is said to be producing a Kinect-like interface for the PC in conjunction with ASUS. Other companies have announced products or research as well, and most smartphones now include accelerometer technology which allows motion-based games.

An accelerometer is a chip-sized device that senses motion, including direction and acceleration. This gives a realistic impression that the device is responding to your physical commands, but that's all. The Wii added an understanding of location which allowed a wide variety of games with realistic response. The Kinect generation of controllers adds imaging using video cameras plus infrared to image the space in front of the controller, eliminating the need for gadgets and allowing simple gestures to be used.

Right now, Kinect-style boxes use powerful processors to handle the image data even before it's passed to the system. That means that Google's Motion product is probably, as a purely PC-based system, still in the future. The system also requires more than just the usual single webcam with no infrared illumination. It's only a matter of time, though, before something like the Kinect becomes a standard feature as well.

Introducing Gmail Motion, Google
Audrey Watters, Thanks to Kinect, Google's Gmail Motion Joke Becomes Reality , ReadWriteWeb
Sean Hollister, PrimeSense and ASUS team, bring Kinect-like Wavi Xtion to your living room TV, Engadget
Joshua J. Romero , How do Motion-Sensing Video Game Controllers Work? , Scienceline
Mike Schramm, Kinect: The company behind the tech explains how it works , Joystiq