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Details On Natal's Motion Capture Technology
An anonymous reader writes "Following yesterday's announcement of a late 2010 launch date for Natal, more details are emerging on exactly how Natal works. Alex Kipman, the project's lead developer, explains that Natal uses only 10-15% of the Xbox's resources to calibrate to a new player inside 160 milliseconds, track one or two players simultaneously, and use rudimentary knowledge of body anatomy to estimate where hands or other body parts are even when they can't be seen by Natal — for instance when they are held behind the back."
Natal sounds cool, and might just be what i'm looking for for a reason to buy a 360 to compliment my PS3. I'm still concerned about the complete lack of buttons, and am wondering if MS is going to be releasing a controller you can strap to your arm or hold with 1 hand for when you need a button to say change weapons. Also the lag issue remains to be seen. This is one possible advantage Sony's motion MIGHT have.
But in the end it's all about the games. Both techs have the potential I think to be fun, just need to see the actual implementation. And I wonder what Nintendo has in their R&D to combat this (other then that Vitality Sensor) All very interesting, although I don't see this gameplay replacing old fashioned "sitting down with a controller in your hand" gaming, just another form of entertainment.
All of this talk makes me pretty excited for what comes after this current gen...
I believe there was talk of the hardware working on the PC, too, though the hardware is pretty much just a few cameras and other sensors, leaving it up to the libraries on the Xbox or PC to do the processing. Now, if Microsoft releases an SDK (which is in their best interest, if they want PC integration) then it shouldn't be an issue.
Given how every other video game system camera fails to work correctly in typical home lighting environments, this is the thing I'm most curious about.
For instance in my home, when we want to use the Eye Toy to play something like Kinetic, we have to drag out a shop-light and a couple of reflectors to stage the room and assist the contrast detection. Otherwise, the accuracy is garbage. If this thing can't work in a dark room then this also pretty much kills playing games in a room with the lights out (which is how I generally play racing games and FPS games at night).
My expectations are less than low and I'm just waiting to hear about how ever single player to use the system will need to have a Live account (with your avatar adjusted to R/L body mass).
I'm sorry, Molyneux is the LAST person I'd trust to give a balanced review of anything.
Especially Natal.
You could also see for yourself
Tech demo? More like total fabrication. Microsoft are merely insinuating they have perfected natural language processing, natural speech synthesis, perfect motion recognition and facial recognition amongst other things.
I'm sure Milo will turn up at some point but it will be a pale imitation of this. We'll realise that you can grunt and howl at Milo and get the same reactions.