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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."
The aspect of how Natal communicates with X360 is most interesting to me, and surely many others.
It seems like it could be mighty fun peripheral for robotics projects... (and who knows, perhaps MS could even promote it, seeing that they have their robotics suite? Certainly small number of Natals not used for gaming wouldn't harm MS financially in any significant way; but they might like good publicity)
One that hath name thou can not otter
Accuracy aberrations plague a lot the new free motion input devices. Does anyone know to what degree of accuracy this works? Down to the inch? Centimeter?
... but I was skeptical of the devices ability for this accuracy. So, anyone know any concrete numbers yet?
My friend was lamenting how in Rainbow Six he could hug up to a corner or object and only expose a small part of his body when he poked out to shoot. The problem being that in Modern Warfare 2, this is not the case. You have to expose your whole body. He was hoping/speculating that with Natal, a first person shooter might be able to lock into a stationary mode (much like when one is shooting through a scope) and be able to move his head, shoulders, arms, etc as he pleases to peak (and/or) shoot around a corner when he's pinned down. He wants these games to get as close to real life as possible and I told him that it's a great idea and would increase the reality of pray and spray suppressive fire tactics
My work here is dung.
Here is a tech demo showing a Peter Molyneux demonstration of a game using Natal.
The ramifications of a system like this are pretty important I think. Honestly, this is what I had hoped the Wii would become... Not to start a Wii controller vs. Natal debate or anything, but I feel like games using full body motion capture would be much more interesting to me. At the end of the day, when I tried to play Wii tennis using proper motions and what not, I felt like an idiot after looking over and seeing someone else accomplish the same thing by flicking their wrist.
That said, I am interested to see how finely grained the sensitivity will be tuned to Natal recognizing people and motions. IE: if person A is playing a single player game and person B walks up and makes a hand motion, will Natal disregard that motion, or will it do whatever person B did? If so, it could seriously dent the efficacy of games being played by one person... Part of the benefit of having a physical controller is that someone else has to take it from you when they want to play, haha!
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...
The article states the latency for the camera to recognize a new position is 10 miliseconds, which IIRC is close to what wireless controller lag is. The better complaint is that it is only accurate to about 1.5", which is fine for large gesture based gaming, but minor refined movements won't be picked up.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
In my mind what will affect user experience the most is its accuracy, and latency. It uses a infrared camera, so I'm wondering if anyone knows the camera's specs, especially regarding resolution and latency. Without knowing these, it is difficult to evaluate what it is good for. The article quotes a several cm. accuracy, and 10 ms recognition time, but it not clear what the sensor's limits are, and how much latency there is in the processing.
The article says that 31 limbs are tracked
So even many-limbed deities like Vishnu and various spider gods can play? That's so thoughtful of Microsoft to include the divine.
Considering the Wii gang is bunch of 7 year olds, girls who don't want to break their nails, and some gay guys who just finished a sweaty game of wii cheer 2..... I think we will be fine.
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).
Sony's motion tracking technology also reportedly has sub-millimeter accuracy, which could be better for games (along with the fact that controllers could have real buttons which would give you finer action control while moving).
I'm still dubious if either system really ends up being better for games than the Wii though. It's fun to flail around for a while, but the Wii is nice in that for really long gaming sessions you don't have to exhaust yourself with full-body motion.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
31 limbs isn't out of the question if it's something like a multiplayer party game. That could be, for example, seven people, three of whom are men.
I think Natal is amazing
I dunno.. I'm kinda scared of this: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/6/5/
There are a lot of Wii motion-based games that work well. The (numerous) ones that DO suck, would probably have been just AS terrible with a controller, because they were cheap cash-in titles.
I agree that motion sensing won't kill controllers; but it will become an essential feature. Would you like to go back to using your computer with no mouse?
What is someone was missing from an elbow down? Would the system see that as someone with it pointing directly at the device?