Vicon MX40 is not just a camera but a complete system.

But dramatic improvement is nothing new for Vicon. "During its 24 years at the vanguard of the motion capture industry, Vicon has introduced more than 20 ground-breaking cameras. Every increment of camera performance has been larger than the one before, and the MX family is no exception. The cameras' supreme specifications speak for themselves and are a tribute to our engineering development team. The four-million pixel MX40 is the highest-resolution, high-speed, image-processing camera in the world, in this or any other market," boasted Dr. Julian Morris, ceo of Vicon and parent company OMG plc. "But the most important message is that all this resolution and processing power makes motion capture simpler, faster and more useful than ever before."

The Vicon MX40 is more than just a camera. It's a complete system. So are there any additional innovations as far as the whole system is concerned?

"The cable lengths are greatly improved," Damush suggested "Our standard cable length now is over 150 feet, which enables use in very large studios akin to what they use in a lot of big films today." Before the cable length was about 100 feet. So all in all that's a 50% improvement. Even more dramatic is the way they have compacted the system. "We've minimized the equipment profile at the central point so that all the equipment you need can be rack-mounted along the lines of your other audio visual equipment very easily." All you need to do now is pop them into your existing studio racks and run cables all the way out to the cameras. "In our previous systems we had these components in the middle (of the camera) that would basically multiplex a cable into multi-cables and you had to strap those in. Now you don't have to that anymore."

Of course, when we talk about the software, the improvement there seems even more dramatic. The software that comes along with the MX suite is called IQ2.0. If you think the name is a little presumptuous, think again. As Damush explained, "Each camera now is essentially its own computer. It's doing that gray-scale processing on board so that it minimizes the work that the central computer has to do. Combine that with some of the biomechanics work that we have from our other markets and you have IQ, a software that takes all that knowledge of both what the camera provides and the work we've done in the biomechanics world." That knowledge of the human body allows the MX40 to do some pretty incredible things automatically. "So, when we have a performer that we're capturing, we will actually be able to tell you what their bone lengths are a) because of the accuracy of the system and then b) because of the biomechanics background that our software uses. Once we know that information we can create that person's skeleton, and then we use knowledge about their skeleton and the fact that they're humans to fill in the gaps in motion capture data. Even the hardest moves can be pretty much automatically processed. When it comes down to the studio level, especially when they start shooting hundreds of moves per day, it winds up saving them days if not weeks of man-hours."

What about support for the Vicon MX suite? Just how good is it? "Past support is one of the main reasons that I have chosen Vicon," stated Sony's Rausch. "They have always been extremely helpful and responsive to any concerns that we had, tools that we needed, or hardware replacements and upgrades on the spot." Another important point is the fact that Vicon has purchased the motion capture firm, House of Moves, which licenses Diva software. "Diva is a large, vital, ever growing portion of our pipeline," says Rausch.

The Vicon MX line, which started shipping in July, will be on display at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Aug. 10-12, in booth #1346.

J. Paul Peszko is a freelance writer and screenwriter living in Los Angeles. He writes various features and reviews as well as short fiction. He has a feature comedy in development and has just completed his second novel. When he isn't writing, he teaches communications courses.