Slashdot Mirror
Why Natal Is a Big Deal
Kikizo has an editorial piece evaluating the Xbox 360's upcoming motion-control scheme, Project Natal, and discussing why it's a bigger step forward for interactive gaming than many people think. Quoting: "[Natal] accurately perceives players in 3D space, simultaneously tracking over 48 joints on your body, enabling it to accurately redraw your skeleton in real time as you move about. On a separate 'debug screen' in the closed-doors session, we could witness for ourselves the 'mind's eye' of Natal, visually showing how it completely understands where we are, how we're moving, where we are in 3D space, how far in front of my face my hand is, whatever. It can supposedly even track individual hand and finger movement when it switches into this more finely-tuned mode. ... There is a surprising feeling of tactility and iPhone-like fluidity and precision to the way Natal works." Another interesting bit of news about Natal is that Wii-hacker Johnny Chung Lee is part of the development team. We've discussed some of his creations in the past.
Xbox Project Natal : Felicia Day
"I can't wait to throw a fireball."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYuJivFFa-c
I could see myself controlling my Xbox interface like Tom Cruise in Minority Report. Granted it wouldn't add much to the functionality, but damn if that wouldn't be the coolest gadget ever.
After scanning this article, I'm kind of worried. Everyone's jumping into 3D immersive technology and that's great. Heck, I own a Wii myself ... but one thing I don't like about it is my inability to become really good at a game that relies on WiiMote motion. I don't know what the deal is but the learning curve seems really easy yet once you get there there is no way to differentiate between the 98 percentile player and the 99 percentile player. Now, I haven't gotten addicted to the WiiMote intensive games and I'm grateful that games like Super Smash Bros. don't rely on 3D motion of the WiiMote. It's just too complex and inaccurate. That said, this screenshot really worried me. No controller required or controller optional?
I welcome this new technology but as an avid gamer I'm more than a little bit afraid that with this new technology everyone is going to be expected to take advantage of it on the XBox360. We might be jumping into a new dimension too fast for software and hardware to support it. I know a lot of people would argue with that statement but Wii games feel 'soft' when they are WiiMote intensive and I wonder if Project Natal will feel the same way. Don't get me wrong, they are great games for four people to play while getting loaded.
I guess Nintendo pioneered what is the next step in video games much like Sony pioneering the transition from directional pad to miniature joystick. My question now is really whether or not the PS3 will follow suit. They have to in order to attract these motion titles, don't they?
My work here is dung.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/6/5/
"SirWangALot hits you with his 'Pendulous Apendage of Pendulousnous' for 2 bashing damage, and you are afflicted with 'Point and Laugh Hysterically!' for 10 seconds.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
They could release an adult version of Project Natal that tracks 49 joints. That would make for a VERY interactive experience.
Im really looking forward to Natal, I think its one step closer to total immersion, however its not without problems. A wand or some sort of controller is still going to be needed to effectively "walk" in a game the only other way to do it would be to use some sort of gesture to glide the player along or to walk in place, neither of which is very practical. Using a gesture to walk forward in an FPS or RPG for instance would not only be awkward but would also completely destroy the "immersion" they are going for and anyone who has played Final Fantasy would balk at the idea of having to "moonwalk" your way across the map.
I can easily see it working in conjunction with a controller for those types of situations though and would still make the game more fun. The gesture recognition has me thinking about Fable 3, especially with Lionhead already playing with the technology. Fable 3 used a gesture menu that caused NPC's to react differently and say different things based on the "mood" or jesture your character portrayed. Just thinking about being able to talk (even with a limited amount of things be able to say) to the npc's, or to be able to sneer, growl or smile and get a reaction sounds extremely fun. I still see this as being a rather long way off but its undeniable that its a leap forward.
I had the pleasure of playing with a Z-Cam at last years CES, Natal is supposedly based partially on that and partially on something MS has been developing for years, the Z-Cam was already impressive, if with the melding of technology this is actually an improvement its going to be something to behold.
Haha, yeah, with multiplayer you can get punched out on screen AND in real life.
"iPhone-like fluidity"
gimmie a break. How and why did you manage to fit a reference to the iphone into the summary.
This thing is crying out for applications beyond games (which will be interesting, don't get me wrong). Imagine hooking this up to your front door - you could use the gesture recognition to make it so that your door only unlocks for people when they do the Truffle Shuffle!
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
If this technology is as good as it sounds, this spells the end of the mouse.
Seriously, my mousepad could be a touchpad.
Would probably need a thimble to avoid friction burn though.
With all the multi-million dollar resources of the movie industry doing motion capture for films, it's a bit telling that they all use the ping-pong ball technique stuck to people. If this 'clever' Microsoft thing is so good, I think the movie industry would have already been using a similar system. Sounds like ping-pong balls are more accurate. Wait - that's what's on the end of the new PS3-mote.
How well is this going to work for hardcore gamers loging multi hour session? One of my favorite parts of video games is that I can kick back on the couch after work and zone out for hours of mindless entertainment. If I wanted a workout I'd go to the gym!
An inventor is a man who asks 'Why?' of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and his mind.
See, the thing is that it doesn't have to be gimicky. There have been a lot of bad with motion capture control, but there have been a few gems. I remember there being an arcade shooter a few years back, where instead of pressing a pedal to duck, you literally had to duck to the side. It was incredibly immersive. Personally, I'd love to see a natal "Punchout" game, where you actually had to punch and dodge. I think the issue is that game developers have had a few decades of hand-only input. Give them a few years with this new technology, and we're bound to see something that will blow our minds.
The project Natal is indeed different for an Eye tool of a wii mote. This is a depth sensing camera (you have a RGB image and an image with the distance to the camera). This camera is made by Primesense (you can check theirs patents), it works by projecting a grid (infrared so you can't see it). By analyzing the deformed pattern with a camera, the depth is computed.
Having the deep information is really useful because you get the 3d cloud of the user and with some math, you can guess where is the user and what he is doing. For example you can find the biggest cluster of point (the user). The mass center of these points will give you the position of the user (this is already enough to to a lot of thing).
But the technology is not perfect. It will never be a full replacement for motion capture because it's subject to occlusions and there are a lot of ambiguous cases so the system will always need to cheat.
I don't see this replacing the mouse and keyboard or controller. It may be fun for a few minutes but I'm sure it will get tiring playing games such as rpg's and having to swing your arm every time to attack. Or holding your hands in the air when playing a racing game.
...but it's a great step towards touchless interfaces. I'm pretty sure we'll eventually have touchless interfaces based on gestural controls along with enhanced voice recognition technologies for our computers. It's the next logical step really. How close that is to reality, however, is a matter of debate. I don't think it's coming as soon as we'd expect, but I also believe that it's going to come about in our lifetime.
y, I'd love to see a natal "Punchout" game, where you actually had to punch and dodge.
I remember having seen similar type of games for Arcades (I *think* it was from Sega, although I am not sure) some time ago (maybe 7 years?).
Aside from being an interesting gimmick, it gets old very fast.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Microsoft thinks it can get a piece of the Wii fad pie. Just like the Wii, it won't revolutionize gaming, it will just be a great marketing tool for parents and 30 somethings.
Mom: I don't know son, this new game thingy looks just like your current game thingy with a bigger price tag
(enter Wii/Natal)
Mom: Oh wow! Futuristic game thingy is surely worth my money!
Nintendo/Microsoft: *snicker*
Yup, this completely reflects on an Uncle who is completely computer illiterate and is one of those guys who only let his daughter see 1 hour of TV a day.
He says that he does not let his kids play videogames... except for Wii which has some real value.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
From the demo picture, it looks like you need a closed room with air conditioning for the IR system to function properly. This will perfectly feat you current geek basement room (at least for the absence of windows), but what about the average user ?
And worse yet, what about playing in the day... when the sun is looking directly at the windows... or with fluorecent lamps. More than once I have had to close the curtains of my living room while trying to play with the Wii.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Project Natal adds a new dimension for your cat to bother you while playing games.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/6/5/
My Journal
I don't want to have to jump around my living room to play the latest Super Mario incarnation.
Enjoy the ass-print on your couch, potato.
Having spent entirely too little time jumping around, I for one welcome our new House of Pain overlords.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I think the issue is that game developers have had a few decades of hand-only input.
That explains how we got DOA beach volleyball...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Say you only got one arm? or One leg?
Will Natal still work correctly?
EA: Sports 2010
Requirements: Xbox 360, Natal system, no physical disabilites
What happens if I stand just behind my friend and it looks like we have four arms? Will Natal work that out?
I agree! It's bad enough trying to turn "iPhone" into a generic noun to replace the perfectly good word we already have: phone - now we get to use it as an adjective? (Although perhaps we should - if successful, Apple lose their trademark!)
I honestly can't even fathom what he means by it - although I suppose it's true that Natal doesn't have a keyboard, and probably doesn't have copy/paste...
Anyhow, now I'm off to iPhone-like read the rest of the ipHone-like Slashdot on my iPHone-like computer (it can access web pages, see! Although mine has a keyboard).
I'm of 2 minds about this. On 1 hand, this is really neat and could lead to some nice games. On the other hand, the Wii has produced the crappiest set of games of any console I've ever owned. No console of mine has ever had so much off-time before. The Wii showed the same promise that this does...
Also, the driving games... They insist they will be perfectly responsive and all that, but there's no way that much processing can go on and add no lag whatsoever. And any time it glitches and thinks my hands are in the wrong spot, I'll go out of control.
Another reason I am so down on this is the 360's current camera based games. They all suck. I bought a camera just for them and they are horrid.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I'd be interested in seeing how you play Quake/Prince of Persia (Climbing walls and jumping around) on it......probably have to run around the room - get a lot exercise that way - but what if you don't have the space? I like not having to move much to get things done.
What I like more is not the gaming aspect, but the VR aspect. I'd love to see the first networked virtual worlds that come out of this system...
blog.idigitall.com
Think about this - you CAN have a controller as well you know. Imagine a FPS with a johnny lee style 3d effect, without having to wear any headgear. Natal seems to provide this out of the box. Now imagine a gun controller where you have fps controls embedded, but like left 4 dead you can also shove opponents away, and you can actually shove them.
What about some LCD glasses and headtracking? That's immersive VR right there.
There is a lot of potential in this.
Doesn't anyone else see this for what it obviously is: a way for Microsoft to steal market share from Nintendo? Sony and Microsoft battled it out over pixel pushing, while Nintendo actually innovated (something Microsoft talks about a lot but never does) and built something new that people really liked -- something that actually got non-gamers onto the scene.
So now they're trying to build "Wii without the Wiimote." This is a "meeee toooo" play, which is Microsoft's usual way of doing business. YAWN.
You're commenting on motives. I think the "big deal" in the story is referring to potential. Clearly precise tracking of 48 joints is a lot more interesting and powerful than fuzzy tracking of 1-2 clunky controllers.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
"Natal does not track players by colour (although we know from Milo commenting on my blue shirt that it can if it wants to); it tracks them by infra-red "
Gah! Willful, unthinking ignorance like this really yanks my chain. When you get things like this wrong it makes me want to ignore you completely, because you're probably an idiot. There are several mistakes like this in that article, and the continual invoking of "magic" is particularly bad. There is quite a fair bit known about how Natal works. If you somehow missed it at E3, look it up slacker! If you really want to persuade people, sound like you were paying attention at E3 for chrissake.
As for addressing the claim that hardcore gamers don't want to jump around in front of their couch rather than sitting on it and twiddling their thumbs...
Fail.
There's something truly awesome about sitting back, taking a piece of clunky plastic in your hands, and gaming the night away with some good ol' fashioned haptic feedback. Maybe Natal is precise enough to read your finger positions without needing a controller, but it still can't give you tactile feedback. Incidentally, spinning your hands in the air to control a car is actually a step further away from total immersion as compared to spinning a steering wheel in the air, because real cars have steering wheels!
Don't get me wrong. Natal is still an epic achievement, but hardcore gamers should probably realize it's more for their mothers than them. Take a look at the Wii. It's sort of a gimmick. A lot of people get one, play it for a couple months, and then pull it out only for parties. Why just parties? For one thing, it has a lot of games that are easy to learn and offer little advantage to the master, meaning almost anyone can win by the end of a session. It's also fundamentally enjoyable watching people spaz out in front of the thing before they realize it's all in the wrist. Given the Wii's relative lack of depth, why has it outsold the PS3 and Xbox360 combined several times over? Broad appeal. Your mom doesn't see the point of yet another game about saving Master Chief's undies from alien zombies, but air-golfing? Score.
Look at how MS operates and you'll figure out what's going on here pretty quick. Natal isn't the next generation of hardcore gaming. It's the Internet explorer of casual gaming come to dethrone Nintendo's Netscape. The Wii showed Sony and MS how monolithically massive the casual gaming market is, and now they want in. Natal is a slash aimed squarely at Nintendo's jugular, and they're going to have to innovate our pants off and then fellate us to stay in business.
So, will Natal ever do anything for hardcore gaming? I don't know. Natal, or something like it, will someday. It really is in the hands of the software developers though. I applaud MS for giving us a whole new bag of tricks, but I honestly don't expect a hardcore gaming Nirvana to come out of the mist like the author of that article does. I expect Wii-type gimmicky crap that will be a whole lot of fun at parties, and for your mom, but not that fantastic for late night fragging. Emotional AI and speech recognition is bloody impressive, but Turing test passing AI is still very bloody hard stuff. They can put this stuff into games, but at some point you'll probably feel like you're trapped in a world full of Dr.Sbaitso's. Scripted dialogue trees (Mass effect is a great example of doing those well) aren't going to go away for quite some time. In reality, the tools MS is giving us will take years or decades to refine on the software side of things. Existing input methods, like mice or gamepads, have been around for several decades and are heavily optimized. They're not going to be replaced in one generation.
More than once I have had to close the curtains of my living room while trying to play with the Wii.
You should probably do that anyway, just to be considerate.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Sony are much closer to the Wii with their motion control wand they showed off at E3.
But I don't really care about who was first. I care only about who does it best. Nintendo have done a great job with the Wii, but they seriously need some competition in the casual market.
With how good Natal *allegedly* is I highly doubt this development started as soon as the Wiimote dropped out of the womb. This is far from a me too play, the Wiimote is like a shitty sawed off magic wand you use to control things like tennis rackets, golf clubs and boxing gloves. Project Natal could provide actual running/walking around on a treadmill like interface which could allow virtual worlds (See RPGs) to be so much more real and involving.
#define true false
I always see Natal being compared to MotionPlus and Sonys Motion sensing, but I think that isn't really correct. Both MotionPlus and Sonys solution feature more or less classic controllers, but with motion sensing added. Both of them also have heavy focus on wrist movement, while ignoring the rest of the body.
Natal on the other side features no controller at all, thus no buttons and analogsticks, making navigation through pretty much any normal game impossible or at least really cumbersome. On top of that Natal doesn't put emphasis on the wrist/hand, but on the whole body, so you lose a lot of the small movement precision that MotionPlus and Sonys solution have. So Natal really isn't an improvement over other motion sensing solution, as it can't do what those can.
So what is it? Pretty much the same thing as WiiFit or EyeToy, just in an improved form and those didn't exactly turn out as hardcore gamers best friends either. Natal will fail for the same reason. Positional information on where your arms and legs are just aren't enough for precise gameplay, you need buttons for that. Look for example at Ricochet, you have to punch the ball into the game instead of doing the more natural thing of throwing it. Why? Because there is nothing in Natal that could give the game a clear idea when the player let the virtual ball go.
Unless somebody comes up with some actual interesting gameconcepts instead of the full-body-waggle, that Ricochet is, I remain highly skeptical on the future of Natal. At this point it looks like an interesting techdemo, not like a way to control future games.
Natal might be the first step towards the next gaming revolution, but so was the Powerglove, that alone doesn't turn it into a useful peripheral.
in the end people don't care how something works.
Sony and Microsoft battled it out over pixel pushing, while Nintendo actually innovated (something Microsoft talks about a lot but never does) and built something new that people really liked -- something that actually got non-gamers onto the scene.
When Sony or Microsoft do what you praise Nintendo for, it's bad? Their technology is clearly innovative and different to the Wii.
The fact is they can have their high end processing power and graphics, and fun motion controls on top of that. They'll probably be better able to utilise them because of that power and make more fun games that wouldn't be possible with the Wii's hardware limitations. As someone interested in games, and not Sacred Nintendo's market share, it seems like a good thing to me.
[/Wii owner]
First I would write games that combine the standard or specialized controllers with Natal. This will give new meaning to games like Guitar Hero as you try and press the keys behind your back!
But I can see this extending way beyond gaming. I coach high level amature sports (soccer and hockey) one of my favorite tools is the video camera. Now what if you could put a player on a skating treadmill infront of an XBox and and provide real time stride analysis.
Imagine a golf game with a REAL club. How long will it be before some adds "prop" recognition to their games.
Think of the other controlling aspects from controlling the TV set, phone, security system, automatic window shades. All with a gesture.
Excersize games/videos can take on a whole new dimension with interactive feedback. Heck games themselves can become a workout instead of a thumb bruise.
Now what if this technology is also converted to your PC, Your Car, or imagine a buisness that can react to customer motion! Think about a business that can start profiling body posture. I can think of a few car dealerships that would pay heavy for that.
I grant you that this is still in the future, but the first mouse was nothing more than a block of wood with a .15 cent button drilled into the top.
Wii broke the ground, now comes the assault of the new technology. I wont just stop at gaming.
While many are missing the practical application of this in gaming is not so much just full body games.
As several readers pointed out Minority Report gives us an excellent idea of how it can be used. In addition for those that remember Black and White's gestures a wide variety of discrete tools come along with this.
Flipping through button bars, resizing things, and a wide variety of gesture controls will have a major impact in an area many of you are missing.
Carpel Tunnel and other Repetitive Stress injuries.
By distributing the "interface" or "input" beyond just the hands the stress could be much lower over all.
In addition by integrating minor physical activity you are adding additional burned calories (even if it is just 1 or 2 additional a day) you are improving health and using the human body the way it was mean to be used, as a multi functional device.
Many have pointed out my weird typos, the fact it I use voice dication mostly at home now (hands aren't so good anymore) and the Wii was a nice break since the thumb\analog stick that most consoles use now can give me stabbing pain after about 30 minutes now. Imagine Punch Out redone with the full body detection!
But even taking sport games out of it (why typecast an inteface) top down shooters for instance and Space Harrier\Top Gun behind the ship type games can be piloted by your hand (who hasn't done that as a kid?!)
Unlike the Wii controller, by removing the physical controller you are also reducing the risk fo damage to the controller.
This also opens up a wide variety of aids for people learning martial arts (practicing a kata for instance), learning to dance, and the applications for hospitals for physical therapy (which is tearfully boring) would aid in what is usually called Occupational Therapy (doing things).
The innovation is actually more then I think even the developers realize.
Think of an MMO + Gesture Controls
It opens up games to people that also may not even have hands! Athritic people may have better access to games (spefic to hands). I see this alot in retirement homes. The Wii controller + an elastic band glove gives some arthritic people the ability to play several of the games, bowling is popular.
This is gesture control without having to have a touch screen people.
Bigger then I think the developer realize...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&safe=off&q=microsoft%20e3&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv#
Seriously, has anyone actually paid attention to the stage demo?
Take a look at the first bit with Ridiculous Sunglasses Guy and his avatar - he makes little, uncomplicated poses and the avatar twists itself into pretzels.
It's _extremely_ glitchy.
Then they change to the girl playing ricochet, which is something like 500+ ms lagged and it seems clearly impossible to control with any kind of precision. The lag indicates to me that they are using a tremendous amount of smoothing to try and avoid some serious jitter problems.
It looks like it will fall as short of their glitzy marketing video promise as the wii controller did.
Any game that is not frustrating to control with this technology will basically be playing itself with small cues from you.
I think it's great that there is work being done in these areas, but I am just astounded that so many people are so readily regurgitating the marketing promises for this technology, when they can even demonstrate it halfway convincingly under completely controlled conditions.
Give me liberty or give me kill -s 9
By watching:
- all that "movie magic" (as one put it) in the non-live demos
- the highly choreographed demos given on stage
- Microsoft saying this is a very early in development
- Microsoft saying there is no shipping date
- the Milo video suggests a very capable AI far beyond what we could expect today, with reactions to facial expressions and broad-domain speech recognition
- how Vista looked great in that early video when it was called Longhorn and what a dog it is.
I call it bullshit.
This is Microsoft showing a non-product in order to damage sales of its competitors who are selling obviously less-advanced technology (of course - because they can ship a real product right now) than the fantasies they depict in their promotional videos.
Wake me up when they have a product.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
I can't trust anything associated with Peter Molyneux anymore. The man has over-hyped some of his games as a mighty revolution in gaming; the released product then falls far short(Black and White, Fable). This article is just a part of that hype machine rolling on.
I'd love to be proven wrong, but I'll believe this when I see it.
The same could be said for the Wii but plenty are happy to jump around, although I agree, it's not my cup of tea. If I want exercise I go for a run, walk the dogs, do some gardening, that sort of thing.
When I came I just want to sit back and relax, but as has been said I believe Natal can be used in this manner you just wont get the full benefit out of what it can provide. That doesn't mean it can't add more depth to classic controller based games though such as maybe the odd hand signal to give your squad orders or simply using the voice recognition to issue commands on top or even just to exploit headset free voice chat playing online with mates.
It's quite ironic that list of consoles ranked by tech power matches perfectly to reversed list of consoles ranked by popularity.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
I can certainly see the potential here, but I think they're making a mistake if they try to ditch the controller entirely. Some games will simply function better with more precise controls. And motion sensing will not work well in every situation. Someone who is disabled, or fat, or in a small space, or wearing a funky shirt that messes with the motion recognition, or just tired after a long day, might prefer traditional controls. Ideally, games will be designed so that they can be controlled by motion and/or with the controller, according to the user's preference.
As a side note, the end of this demo video is unintentionally creepy. The young married couple at the end finish watching their movie and turn off the system. It looks as if they're probably going to make love and go to bed. The camera switches to a close up on the twin eyes of the 360, still watching intently despite being turned off. Fade to black.
P.
"Doesn't anyone else see this for what it obviously is: a way for Microsoft to steal market share from Nintendo?"
Oh my, god forbid two companies fight over marketshare, how could they!
Apple be damned for trying to take marketshare from Microsoft, damn you GM for trying to take marketshare from Ford and curse you Dyson for stealing marketshare from Hoover, bad companies, bad companies! How dare you!
Why didn't anyone notice this before, why did no one realise that companies compete with each other. This fascinating and insightful revelation has painted the world in a whole new light for me.
[...] and "core" gamers do no want Wii-like motion based games.
Core gamers want 3D motion controls.
Core gamers do not want waggle, to which WiiMote was reduced by flood of quick-and-dirty ports from other consoles.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
track individual hand and finger movement
Great feature for multiplayer games.
Not only do you get to tell the idiot teamkiller how you feel, you can accompany it with the actual gesture.
Awesome.
As usual, Microsoft uses the policy "announce early, release late".
Compare this to Apple's policy: "announce late, release early"
Microsoft's policy worked several years ago, when they crushed their competitors.
But, seriously, who will wait several months to get a console that *may* be better than the current ones ?
This also opens up a wide variety of aids for people learning martial arts (practicing a kata for instance), learning to dance, and the applications for hospitals for physical therapy (which is tearfully boring) would aid in what is usually called Occupational Therapy (doing things).
You hit the nail on the head. This type of control is so new no one knows what to do with it yet. It would be a mistake to try retrofitting existing gameplay styles. Take your martial arts sim for example, Imagine if they combined this with "force feedback" bracelets so you could feel your foot hitting the side of someones face. I've always wanted to learn Tai Chi, and I think this type of simulation would be a perfect way for a beginner to learn the basics or a master to go back to the basic motions and mechanics of form.
Wow, so you're telling us they're being competitive? Thanks for the brilliant insight.
And they kept being non-gamers after they shelved their Wii. I have a Wii -- I bought it when it first came. I have a Wii fit. I have a bunch of the games. I have three young children, perfectly in the demographic.
The console sucks. It is grossly overrated by people who bought it and stuffed it away, then making it their mission to present it as the second coming.
Then I bought an XBox 360 which cost me $100 less and is 100x the unit, and have been enjoying non-gimmicky, deep games since. Of course it did lack some of the family games, but is moving quickly in that direction, so it's becoming a unit that the whole family loves.
This is nothing like the Wiimote, and the idea that the Wii has some sort of hold over the idea of physically interactive games...holy shit, you need to tone down the Wii-fanaticism. Guess what -- this has been the goal in games for decades, and certainly didn't suddenly come into existence the moment the Wii came out.
Minority Report, well known as a huge SciFi future-wank that did pretty much nothing but act as an excuse to show off random imaginings of what the neato future might hold, had Tom Cruise using a stupid awkward light-up glove when using a motion-tracking input device. Natal can easily do the same thing simply by looking at you, today
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Does this look interesting?
.
Yes. .
But I will believe it only when I see it available in the retail world. Until then:
VAPORWARE
There were a couple of moments that seemed kind of cool, like the fan opening up to cover the guys face. But where are they going with this? What game will you be playing where you're going to be looking at your yourself for more then a few seconds? Hall of Mirrors? SimPerson? When they did switch to an outward looking view, it looked like a wall in a men's room.
It might be precise, but the guy couldn't hit a ball with a racket, a bat, a golf club and just barely managed to touch the ball with the stop sign. They need to get out a better video, if they have one, and soon.
I could understand if they were in 1st place, but they're still millions of consoles away from 2nd. At least for this generation of consoles.
It's not just consoles.
Mercedes sell less cars every year than Ford do, however I know which one I want to drive...
Me too
Relying on cameras and sensors, the players are still stowed if something crosses between them and the sensors. At least with the Wii, if you see someone coming, you can raise the Wiimote or slide it to the side. If Natal is watching your whole body, and someone needs to cross in front of you to get to the bathroom (or if a large dog or smaller siblings come into the play space), you're stowed. Until they describe how they will compensate for environmental disruptions, I'll put this in the "useless hype" category.
I'm not saying the tech isn't cool, and I definately can see uses for it (the manipulation of 3D models alone would be awesome), but you're more likley to find uses for this in commerce and industry where dedicated manipulation zones can be established. Of course, it would also work if the game system is in someone's bedroom or another space where no one will bother the player, but those households are not going to be as broad an audience as that reached by the Wii. Hardcore gamers do have funds to spend, and I'm sure many will buy, but they will hit a market saturation point.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Are you friggin' kidding me? How the hell does your one-armed brother even play on a standard controller in the first place!? It seems to me that if I were him, I would be really excited about Natal. It seems there would be much more possible control scheme's available that would cater towards his disability as well other disabilities.
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And how does your brother currently use a Xbox 360 controller? The current control interface for computer games is poor for people without two 'standard' hands. It'd be much easier to modify a piece of software to accept alternative gestures than produce alternative input devices (if not easier then more likely due to decreased cost).
At the moment people with many disabilities will have major problems using console controllers, using movement/gesture recognition would make supporting them easier, not harder.
You dont need absurd accuracy for Natal to work.
But what does "work" really mean?
The demos they showed (talking about live demos not the video) showed only very crude movement recognized, like whole limbs...
The advantage controller based systems have is that you can have a finer degree of control from your hands (where we are used to having a final degree of control) and even more precise positional data.
It's cool they know where your body is so well, but for many games people care more about input being exactly recognized - which is why controllers have traditionally been such a source of frustration.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The one team that got access to the internals of Microsoft's new device, has only good things to say about it? ;)
Who'd have thunk of that?
Seriously. I bet my next set of moderation points on the fact that they had to agree to create this article, and spread it, in order to gain access to the device's internal infos.
Why Natal Is a Big Deal.
Why Microsoft Are a Bunch of Criminals.
Why Slashdot Is an Advertisement Site.
Why You and I Are the Two Hottest and Coolest People On the Planet. (Sorry, I don't know this strange uppercase style, as I'm no native speaker.)
Do you see the suggestive pattern here? ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
The video demo that was linked to on a previous slashdot article shows a guy waving his arms up and down(not very fast). The display was not able to follow his movements very quickly. It showed his arms as up when they were already down. If you look at the PS3 video demo they were able to quickly move the wands back and forth VERY quickly and the wand appeared to track the movement without any apparent latency.
I could have sworn Sony (maybe Nintendo as well at an ancient E3?) dabbled in this (camera oriented motion tracking) before and the public rejected it. I wonder why suddenly think it is an awesome idea when Microsoft does it....
But as a technology feature, this isn't a bad thing to add for free. I can see this as a great way to control media features: Instead of using a remote or a controller to select which movie to play do a "cover layout" and have the user reach up and grab the one they want. If they don't like any on presented, swipe their hand left/right or up/down to scroll through. I'm not entirely sure it is a solid way to make beyond some of the toys we've already seen. I can't see this replacing games that have been designed around keyboard + mice or controller but I can see this for other things.
Pretty sure a significant percentage of current WoW players are thinking: Man, I wish I could control my character like that! Imagine the shape I'd be in if I played like that...!
Yeah, if this reaches the market and allows for seamless integration into any/some/many/one MMO, talk about a runaway hit.
"Kill epic monsters, get a workout!" Where's the downside?
1) It's probably not, that's why it's not due out for at very least a year, probably 18 months minimum.
2, 3, 4) It uses an infrared projector and monochrome camera, so low light isn't actually an issue. I'm not sure which site I read it at, but the reports coming back from E3 said most the demos were actually done in dark rooms. Regarding subtle movements, the racing movements are much more subtle, they have to be as not every race track is a sharp corner. It's also worth pointing out that even existing camera tecnhology such as cheap logitech webcams can handle subtle movement and that's without anything as precise as Natal and is simply image parsing so there's no reason this would be an issue.
5) Supposedly this is one of it's strong points, it can track multiple people round the room. The paint demo kinda showed it and the promotional video shows it, but it'd be nice to see something more solid here for sure.
6) Well, Microsoft stated at E3 they only sent the dev kits out the day they announced it so of course games aren't around yet. No one can make a full blown game in just a couple of days. That said, Microsoft themselves had at least released some demos such as Ricochet and their modified version of Burnout paradise at least so for a technology so early in it's lifecycle it's clearly not totally devoid of application. Ricochet and Burnout were certainly real time environments and certainly were not controlled.
Most of this information has been widely mentioned and shown already in run of the mill E3 coverage. Certainly there are a lot of questions about it, but those you pose in your post have already been pretty much entirely covered and demonstrated already bar perhaps point 5 which could do with more demos for sure. I'd imagine Microsoft will release more over the coming year and now developers have the devkits (apparently they sent 1000 out) we'll probably start seeing demos of actual games using it in a year or so. Perhaps the most obvious point that arises from your questions though is that Natal is clearly nowhere near release - as I stated in another post, I don't even know if we'll see it fully exploited this console generation. I think it'll be at least 2011 before we see it really doing it's stuff in live games as that gives 2 years for the first round of AAA titles to be built for it.
Can you imagine when they develop the ability for the computer to read sign language? I bet an adept person can sign faster than most people can type.
a red, glowing suit and jump around in it like Hapkido/Jujitsu, and if we had as many JOINTS as we have BONES, then we *could* look like a fireball. Wait, would that be a conundrum? Joints count keeping up with bones count...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Will the Natal be just a peripheral that is brought out and dusted off when curious company comes over, sort of like the WiiFit? Can it be a core controller for the X-Box, the way the Wiimote is for the Wii? The Wiimote can function as a traditional controller. Smash Brothers, for example, has almost no motion sensing functions at all and the Wiimote works just fine for that. Or it can use motion sensing as an enhancement to the traditional controller. MaroKart would be an example of this. Now if you want to get up and do something, you can put WiiSports in (actually we play WiiSports sitting down, but never mind that for now) or dig out the WiiFit. But how often do gamers really want to do that? Do gamers really want to get off the couch to play their games? If they just want to sit down and relax while they play, can they use the Natal, or will they have to put the Natal away and get out the traditional controller?
Maybe by using an alternative controller? There is for example the Xbox360 Access Controller
I could see myself controlling my Xbox interface like Tom Cruise in Minority Report. Granted it wouldn't add much to the functionality, but damn if that wouldn't be the coolest gadget ever.
Actually, it would do some things much better than your PC ever could. There's a reason why CRC cards, implemented with dead tree 3x5" cards, is still one of the most effective design tools -- they're great for interacting with other people. Natal opens up the possibility of writing interfaces that are really great for interacting with other people over digital media. The user interface suite we have today -- keyboard, screen, mouse -- is meant to soak up all of your attention! There's a reason why it's called a Workstation! A meeting room and 3x5 cards are great for interacting with other people and exchanging ideas and acting out workflows or APIs. An interface like "Reactable" would be extremely cool for making music. (And that would actually work across high jitter Internet connections!)
Reactable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEDia3CFdfg
Dunno why people keep saying this. The 360 controllers aren't going anywhere - you can still use them to play all the games that benefit from a controller.
In fact, you can use a controller and Natal at the same time, for additional expression and control. How is that not a useful thing?
So long as devs don't force Natal-style controls on people, just for the sake of the gimmick, but I think Lair taught them that lesson.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
This is the point I think many people are overlooking. We've seen this before with mice/keyboards vs dual-analogue sticks. Most existing games (and game genres) are designed to use traditional controllers, because that's what's available, so why would you want to replace them to use a completely different control method? Just keep using traditional controllers, they work well.
However, there are entirely new game genres out there waiting to be discovered, games that require free-form multi-limbed or full-body control, advanced facial/voice recognition etc, and where twitch control isn't quite so crucial, plus of course hybrid control schemes. These games will play on different strengths, and will suit Natal far more than hand-held controllers alone.
There's obviously a market for such games, as Nintendo proved, and the resulting shovelware is just something we'll have to deal with until development matures. I for one don't doubt that face/voice/gesture control will be a part of the future of games and indeed UIs in general, and Natal is a big step to that end, but dual-analogue controllers aren't going away any more than them replacing mice & keyboards.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
One of the sensors used in Natal is a 3D camera, developed by 3DVsystems, which they bought out. I was a conference about 2 years ago and saw some Korean PhD students using it for 3D reconstruction. Have a search on google for ZCAM (www.3dvsystems.com). The videos are quite impressive. Unfortunately, they weren't selling any because it was apparently still in development, so they said. When I emailed them about cost, they said they expect to sell it for a few hundred dollars and target home user. My supervisor was interested because it would have been very useful for robotic applications. There aren't any affordable sensors on the market than I'm aware of that can capture range and colour information in real-time. A small laser range finder already cost at least $2000.
I watched the demo that I downloaded on my Xbox and I am excited about what this technology will do. This will definitely renew my interest in my Xbox 360... I still play it but not on the fanatical level that I used to play. I also like the interactive features like movie sharing.
I'm out of shape, and my reflexes aren't the best. If I wanted to punch for real everytime I played Street Fighter, I'd take up martial arts. Maybe I should anyway. Anyway, what I'm saying is I don't want to waggle my hand around to control my character. That's why I have no interest in the Wii. Even the games that I would love to play (Such as Mario Galaxy, for one) I feel would have been better if the main control scheme had been a joypad. The Wii games I enjoy the most, Brawl and Mario Kart, are easier to play with old GameCube controllers than with the Wiimote. I know that some people like the wiimote, but I'm not one of them. This whole Natal thing could be awesome, if only they have it as an option to use instead of mandatory. I mean, that's why I didn't really like Heavenly Sword or Lair all that much on the PS3 - a mechanic that I didn't enjoy was mandatory. As long as they keep releasing traditional games, I'll give it a go, but if all that's available is Natal powered games, I'll stick with the Xbox 360 and the PC thank you.
+++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot +++
And why couldn't their be an alternative control scheme with Natal that would take in to account someone with a missing limb?
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