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."

Comments

What I want to see is room lighting requirements.

[gmezero]

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).

OBPennyArcade

[schon]

I think Natal is amazing

I dunno.. I'm kinda scared of this: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/6/5/