1. #1

    Camera stops working

    Hi

    When playing Just Dance 2020 World Dance floor I have an issue.
    Suddenly (a couple of songs in) my camera is not responding anymore. A restart of my PS4 helps but then I miss a couple of songs in the tournament.
    Just unconnect and connect the camera doesn work.
    and the camera is placed as the directions says it should be.
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  2. #2
    I experienced a similar issue with the PS4 Camera with JD 2019 and JD 2018. In the past 3 years, this hasn't been a problem for me with Xbox Kinect (although once in a blue moon someone else in the house happens to walk by and then Kinect gets us mixed up). I've often wondered why the PS4 Camera does it, but Kinect doesn't (at least, for me).

    The PS4 Camera has some general technical challenges compared to Kinect. Perhaps one of these issues is causing the camera to stop responding.

    If I walk out of the room (or out of the camera's vision), if I walk up close to the t.v., or if I pass near a large object in the background, the PS4 Camera is more likely to stop working for me. Yet when I'm on the WDF, it's almost inevitable that I will need to wipe sweat off my forehead with a towel or grab a bottle of water, and then one of the things I mentioned is likely to occur.

    Once the game stops displaying my Dancer Card, the PS4 Camera stops giving me scores no matter what I do, I must exit the game and reopen it. That's not practical when dancing on the WDF.

    It's almost like the camera continues to track me in between songs.

    Perhaps the game should search for you through the camera at the beginning of each dance just as if you'd just opened the game and started a dance. Then the history of walking out of the room, wiping your head with.a towel, drinking water, sitting on a chair, walking up to the t.v., etc. wouldn't cause issues, at least it seems that way. Maybe this wouldn't be good for a Playlist, but it may help the WDF issue. (Even with a Playlist, what would be the point of dancing when you're just getting X's on every move because the camera has lost you? So even for that, it would be better to wait for the camera to refresh and look for you.)

    It's crazy that once the PS4 Camera loses you, it usually can't find you again. It's like it completely stops looking. Well, I still see an image at the top of the screen, though usually at this point it's more distorted than usual. It just stops registering me and scoring my moves. Once in a while, I can walk out of the room and back and it will start working again, but usually even this doesn't help.

    But the PS4 Camera tracking in general seems to be poor quality compared to Xbox Kinect. When I view my body-outline image at the top of the screen with the PS4 Camera, the legs and arms are thick, it's hard to make out hands and other details, the feet show separation even when they're practically together if there is any gap (like bowleggedness with tight fitting pants), and the outline is vibrating even if you stand completely still. In contrast, with Xbox Kinect, which last year was very clear, is even sharper this year and not distorted. My body outline is very clear, shows my hands, the leg angles are clear, the outline is very steady, etc. When I watch YouTube videos, from the outline at the top of the screen I can tell if a player used the PS4 Camera or Xbox Kinect. (Another difference between the PS4 Camera and Kinect is how the game is scored and what the game looks for on each move. You can hit 13k on a song regularly on one platform, but struggle with the same dance on the other due to these differences. My guess is that since one sensor seems to track better than the other, they must look for different criteria.)

    I don't know if the limitation is due to Sony or Ubisoft, but it sure would be nice to see it improved.

    At the very least, it would be nice if the game didn't lose dancers using the PS4 Camera on the WDF.

    Is what I described similar to your issue? Or do you get some error message? If your issue is different, please elaborate and perhaps support can help you out.
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  3. #3
    littlesiha's Avatar Member
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    Yeah I have to agree, the PS4 camera is not great. My biggest advice is to wear clothes that stand out from your background (if your walls are white, wear black.) Other than that, it's not great for detection like the Kinect is.
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  4. #4
    I went to great lengths to optimize the PS4 camera in 2019. I setup a black background and wore exercise clothes that fit snugly in bright colors like green and orange. I heard that bright colors worked a little better. I seemed to do better with greens and oranges on a black background (initially I had worn black or red on a green background, which Kinect seemed content with). I had less luck with red and blue or even white. Anything with stripes, even a single stripe seemed to give a little trouble. It's amazing that the camera can catch a little logo and put a hole on the body-outline image, yet have other seemingly more obvious issues with that body-outline.

    The shadows caused me great troubles at first. Kinect didn't seem to have issues with them. I finally turned the overhead light off and put a light directly above (just barely) and behind the t.v. so that the shadow would be behind me, hidden from the camera fairly well. (The fun was then trying not to look directly at the light.)

    The line where the wall meets the floor also caused me a great deal of grief. I bought a set of globe lights to lay there, but the ones I bought were too small to have any impact. So then I set black flooring in my dance room up against the black background, and finally found a surface that didn't cause detection issues on the floor.

    The PS4 camera wasn't always picking up my arms in the body-outline image until I started wearing sleeves. I had trouble finding a bright color for the sleeves that didn't look the same color as my overshirt in the optical camera feed; I was concerned about the game detecting my arms crossing in front of my body. I even put on bright green gloves.

    When I was learning JD 2019, I did a few dances per day on Kinect, and the next day I did the same dances on the PS4 camera. For the most part, I could score nearly as well with the PS4 camera.

    In fact, while I often hit high 12's on the extremes with Kinect, I found it easier to hit 13's on the extremes with the PS4 camera. I wonder if Kinect was catching subtle mistakes that the PS4 camera couldn't see. Or maybe the PS4 camera rewarded me for certain subtle moves that I realized were important for PS4 scoring, or maybe it rewarded me for the great lengths I went to aid its detection.

    In the spring, I tried dancing on the WDF with the PS4 camera, but I got frustrated after a couple of weeks and decided to stick with Kinect instead. For one, it wasn't comfortable to wear sleeves, wear gloves, leave my fan off (because the waviness of the clothing in the fan didn't seem to help), have a bright light above the t.v., etc. None of that seems to matter with Kinect. The quality of the body-outline deteriorates with each dance. Then after a number of songs it just stopped detecting me.

    My scoring is more consistent with Kinect. With the PS4 camera, I felt like I could take one X on any dance on any move no matter how easy. Once I learn a dance well with Kinect, I hit a fairly consistent score time after time (unless I fall out of practice with it). Then there were a couple of songs where I could hit a nearly perfect score with Kinect, but where I was struggling to hit better than a mid 12 with the PS4 camera, and the WDF loved to feed me one or both of these songs just about every tournament. Of the songs that were easier with the PS4 camera, I could still hit a high 12 or even a 13 on Kinect, so with Xbox I didn't feel I was as dependent on the song selection.

    Perhaps the experience factor also made the difference. I have danced avidly with Kinect since early 2017 and gone through the entire Unlimited catalog to learn it. With the PS4 camera, I have only used it a few weeks at a time a few different times. Perhaps if I stuck with PS4 longer I would begin to score more consistently and not have a couple of significantly weaker scores with it. Over the summer I started to get even better with Kinect (the more I dance with it the more I learn about it), and decided to just stick with that for now.

    Thanks for visiting the forums. Happy dancing. :-)
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