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Checking In On Project Natal
itwbennett writes "A couple of interesting articles followed Robbie Bach's announcement at CES that Project Natal, Microsoft's controller-free Xbox 360 control system, will be shipping in time for the 2010 holiday season, writes blogger Peter Smith. First, Popular Science has a nice look at how Project Natal works, focusing mostly on the software and how 'Microsoft engineers are teaching the Natal 'brain' what various parts of the human body look like so that Natal can tell your ascot from your elbow.' Microsoft is staying mum on the hardware, although Smith notes that we know it involves an infrared camera. 'If you don't care about how the tech works but just want to know if it'll be worth buying,' writes Smith, 'you might be interested in an interview with Robbie Bach in the Financial Post. In the interview Bach claims that 70%-80% of Xbox 360 developers are working on some kind of Natal-enabled gaming software, and he assures us that first-party studios are also hard at work.'"
If I want to use my whole body to play, I'll go outside. Don't take my keyboard/mouse/controller away from me.
Gimmie a break. I'm all for innovative UIs and input, but calling it a brain is a joke and insulting to those who actually work in fields that contribute to AI research. Natal seems really cool, but lets not get out of hand.
Am I the only one who thinks all these motion controllers are a passing fad that we will one day look back on and laugh about? All the console makers seem to be jumping onboard, but it just makes my arms tired.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The more I hear about project Natal the less I want to see the actual product. It could just be that I've reached my hype threshold.
in time for the 2010 holiday season
It's okay to call it Christmas.
You know that's just going to result in an ObPennyArcade [potentially NSFW], right?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
'Microsoft engineers are teaching the Natal 'brain' what various parts of the human body look like so that Natal can tell your ascot from your elbow.'
Maybe MS ought to learn body parts. I don't recall having an "ascot".
It's a joke, don't be so pedantic all the time. Try relaxing a bit, you might even laugh in spite of yourself.
They had to develop techniques to counter certain types of misuse...
Even as you read this, your pants are strangling your loins! Aaa!
I believe Microsoft is anticipating you wearing clothes while you are playing with Natal. An ascot is a garment worn around the neck and was simply a humorous remark by the author.
Ascot in action:
It seems it's a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-of-flight_camera , made with the tech MS acquired from 3DV Systems.
In the form of Natal, certainly cheap. Mighty fun stuff; somebody will finally make, using also this thing, robotic overlords good enough to doom us all.
Assuming there will be free Windows SDK at the least, of course... (or, even better, the protocol will be clear enough to figure out easily into lib usable across platforms)
One that hath name thou can not otter
and many wrote off the GUI in general.
It is how we use the technology that will be important. It might be a fad in games but this has so many other uses and might present a cheaper method for many people to enter into this field (motion control portion not the game portion). This will probably reduce the costs of some groups immensely.
There are still lots of applications today that require hands on manipulation, even waldos, that could benefit from applications of this. Let alone all those stories many us read as kids that can come to life with this technology. Hell, look at Hollywood computer interfaces we all smirked at because they were "wrong". From Blade Runner to Minority Report, I'll take it any step, small or big we can get.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
With word coming out that they removed Natal's processor and it'll now use anywhere from 10% to 33% of the 360's own processing power, just how good will the games be? There's going to be a price in what developers can you do when you chop that much CPU time out of the system compared to a standard game.
I dunno, I like the idea, but it seems like something Microsoft should bundle with their next system and not tack on to the 360.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
I don't know if it is just me, but I'm not sure if it'll be that much fun.. The first thing that comes to my mind when I see the preview movies on how the Natal will be controlled with no joysticks is: Great, but no feedback from the controller as well... I think the "feel" of the game is an important part that was left out of the project...
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.
No. Some of us have been looking at them and laughing since day one. I would say the gimmick has, to some extent, already been exposed to most: after all, you can only keep claiming to have a brilliant new innovative technology that will revolutionize gaming for so many years before people realize you haven't actually made any innovative new games and nothing has been revolutionized. And all the AAA games are still using the "old" technology. And waggling a control may amuse your grandma for a time, but once the shiny factor has worn off, you're back to wanting actual gameplay. And that dodgy, inaccurate controls hinder rather than help gameplay.
Motion sensing is only going to work when there's feedback---not just vibration, but full motion resistance. We're a long way from having that technology. Additionally, it doesn't really make sense either when you're watching TV and you have a tiny FOV, rather than complete immersion.
Developers have had years to show otherwise. Maybe someone will come up with a magically awesome use of motion sensing, but until it stops getting in the way and actually lives up to the claims of "intuitive" and "revolutionary," it's nothing but a gimmick for marketing. Natal adds nothing.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
There is a big difference between a publisher and a developer. There aren't that many publishers out there, less than 20, so that could mean as little as 14-16 games. By contrast, if he said developers, there are lots of those...
Tactility is emerging as this year's major tech trend. For some reason, everyone seems preoccupied with touching. Touch screens, touch phones, touch tablets--touch everything. The trend was unmistakable at this year's CES, including the re-emergence of 3D entertainment, wherein you can almost "touch" the objects in the movie.
Touch has appeared before too, but it has always failed because the touch mechanism was just too dissociated from the user. The mouse itself was a touch item that wiggles as an icon on the screen. Eliminate the mouse from the equation, and you have today's touch standard.
While touch screens are hardly new, it was the iPhone that added the straw that broke that camel's back. The whole screen is a tableau, which can be moved as a whole. You make a gesture and the entire screen moves up, revealing more stuff underneath. You can flip though photos, pages, etc.
If this trend continues to play out as it is now, the mouse is dead. The mouse itself will have become just a flash in the pan. A fad. (For those readers who enjoy derisively quoting my 1984 column where I said the mouse was a sketchy new device, good luck staying on that track. How's that for irony?)
But take a look at traditional computer programs (i.e., spreadsheets, word processing, browsers, and DBMS systems), there are too many products that require the mouse. Microsoft Word is one of them. While I manage to use a Trackpoint keyboard rather than a mouse (so I can back away from the screen), most people will continue to use a mouse with the program for a long time to come. Spreadsheets can go either way, however, and can probably even incorporate voice commands.
As for the browser, nearly everyone with an iPhone or similar device will tell you that they can browse the Web easily, using their fingers as navigation tools. A lot of people are doing everything on their phone this way. So the question remains: will the PC itself become a touch device?
There are a number of things that the industry needs to overcome, if that's going to happen. The first is the grime factor. Touch screens need a grime-free surface that doesn't interface with visibility or sensitivity. I'm using a Nexus One Google phone. I caught a glimpse of the smudges in the right light, and it took a long time to wipe off all of those fingerprint smears. Big displays are already bad enough. They're magnets for dust and grime. Add human fingerprints, and all sorts of cleaning issues surface.
The other problem with the touch screen is pinpoint accuracy. You want to do all of your Photoshop editing with a Wacom or other tablet, but you can get by with a mouse in a pinch. But a finger? You can't edit photos with a finger as the pointing device. It's impractical. And while software can indeed "guess" what you're trying to do with a finger on a phone screen, this isn't the same as the accuracy required to edit photos.
So, before we all get carried away talking about touch on the desktop computer, let's be realistic--the fact is, touch has been re-introduced to take its rightful place as a useful mechanism for I/O, but all it has supplanted is the touchpad pen. When someone invents a surface that can withstand the scratching of a ballpoint pen, then and only then will I like the idea of idea of pen-based touch-sensitive displays.
In fact, I'm certain in hindsight that the little pen, which you had with the Palm Pilot and other devices, was the problem. I have blamed the dead smartphone business on Microsoft in the past, but the easily lost pen must have had as much to do with it. Whatever the case, the pen, thankfully, is dead.
The upcoming Apple tablet may give us more insight into the touch phenomenon by adding a new paradigm or two--though I think the thing will just be a giant iPod touch and not much more (what more can you really do?). That said, when Apple enters a moribund market category, it tends to show us some insightful new angle on the product, which ushers in new-found excitement. They'll probably do it again. Be prepared to be excited.
I'm not sure about the sucess of the Natal Project. The big differential from Wii is the Nintendo games.
I am neither a scientist nor an AI focused one, and even still calling everything under the sun a "brain" is perplexing and disturbing to me. My point isn't personal, but it is reasonable. Way to play into the tactics of the marketdroids.
This means:
A) Shovelware to keep in MS's good graces
B) Otherwise normal games that have a special achievement for "waving your hands at the camera" or something similar
C) both?
While Natal is interesting, the problem with it is the same with basically every "official" peripheral ever. Unless they pack it in with the system (and I haven't seen anything to suggest such), it will have a very low market penetration save for a HUGE game (such as Guitar Hero and the guitar). This means that most games will have some sort of Natal-enhancement that is not really required (and, if some Wii games are any indication, may often be completely worthless or worse than a traditional controller), and we'll see few, if any, games that take full advantage of what Natal has to offer.
On the other hand, if you thought that the plastic pieces put out by peripheral companies were bad, just wait until MadCatz or something releases a plastic version of everything under the sun. Should make LARP players happy.
After it has learned how to predict our movements, couldn't this be used to kill us with guns? There was a 60 minutes piece on the virtual fence--most interesting part for nerds was the AI system to recognize what to show to people. Apparently rolling sagebrush and various fauna were triggering too many false positives.
Good stuff.
If I wanted a joystick, I'd buy a joystick, don't put a thumbstick on my controller
If I wanted more than two buttons on my controller, I'd tape two NES controllers together.
If I wanted wireless controllers, I'd just yell instructions at my little brother as he plays using the wired controller.
If I wanted online gaming, I'd call a friend on the telephone while playing Super Mario Bros 3
If I wanted 64 bits, I'd wire 8 NESes together
If I wanted to go duck hunting, I'd get my shotgun and some ducks and my dog who laughs at me when I miss.
If I wanted to commit grand theft auto, I'd be on strike three.
If I wanted halo, I'd go to church.
If I wanted to roll things up to make new stars, I'd be working at the Large Hadron Collider.
You look like a fool with your pants on the ground.
You're also going to look like a fool buying the latest gimmicky add on. This tech is utterly irrelevant without good software.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
Microsoft is staying mum on the hardware, although Smith notes that we know it involves an infrared camera.
How is it "controller free" if it involves hardware? Isn't that infrared camera the controller?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Just think of Natal combined with three dimensional televisions. Now there is an interface that I can get behind.
The technology behind this is interesting, unfortunatly I have a bad feeling the only games for this will be silly "casual" (there's that word!) games. Maybe with just one killer app this will be worthwhile...
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso
You know, people can infer the vernacular if you actually spell the proclamation CORRECTLY.
Motion controls have been around for a long time and there is no reason for them to ever go away. Nintendo goes all the way back to the PowerGlove and Sony goes back to the early PS2 days with motion controls.
Microsoft finally jumping on the motion control bandwagon is the exception. They need something to try to salvage the 8 billion dollars they've wasted on the Xbox fiasco. Trying a Hail Mary Wii strategy(motion controls bolted on old hardware) with Sony type(Eye/EyeToy) motion technology is pretty much the only option left for them in the console market.
The Xbox 360 is dead in Japan and Europe outside of the UK just like the first Xbox marketplace failure. After the billions wasted on their failed attempts at consoles with the Xbox and Xbox 360, Microsoft really has no other option than just giving up on the who mess and going back to focusing on Windows PC gaming.
The absolutely disastrous reaction to Microsoft's motion controls so far is an amazing contrast to the incredible hype and excitement Nintendo had with the Wii. Nintendo had games everyone wanted to play with a controller that actually worked and could be used by the general public. So far Microsoft has everyone who seen tech coming away with the question why would anyone want to use this poorly implemented tech.
Maybe Microsoft can finally get their act together and avoid the humiliation of last year's E3 where they were caught by the gaming media faking their motion control demos. But so far Microsoft only has laggy tech that can't seem to find a single game that anyone would want to play with it.
This is it.
Slapping motion controls on the junk old Xbox 360 hardware is the only option for Microsoft other than just pulling the plug on the whole mess. Search is Ballmer's new baby and it is looking like it is on track to rack up Xbox style billions in losses.
Giving Robbie Bach the green light to spend the billions it would take to design and manufacture new Xbox hardware is about as likely as Microsoft switching Windows and Office to the GPL. The Xbox 360 was supposed to be the console that E&D finally got right after the first Xbox disaster. All sorts of promises were made that a repeat of the first Xbox marketplace flop and losses wouldn't happen again with the Xbox 360.
New Xbox hardware isn't going to happen. Ever.
will Natal be able to recognize the goatse guy and his body parts?
Maybe. But there's no doubt that level of interactivity has some interesting possibilities...
... thinking there would eventually be some games that I would play on it. I've purchased Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn and Final Fantasy: Chocobo's Dungeon. Sadly I haven't seen any other new games made for the platform that I want to play.
I'll wait on getting Natal until there are at least 3 games on it that I'll want to buy. Until then I'll continue using my wiimote on my computer to play console games I've had for years.
Is natal not using patented technology, or do these guys just not know how to look up a patent?
I can never figure out from all these articles whether or not Natal will have 3D based on head tracking. I am much less interested in full-body-control. Head tracking would apply to almost every 3D game, with little or no modification; full-body-control applies to a smaller subset of the games - and users, for that matter. Sure, they hired Johnny Lee but I haven't seen any explicit statement in that regard. Does anyone have any hard info on that?
(and my parent post - down...)
You are absolutely right; what an unfortunate development (on top of that MS bought out Zcam team shortly before they were to release their webcam; I think now I'm angry instead of eagerly waiting - MS doesn't dissapoint yet again)
http://www.primesense.com/category/reference_design
^this is the tech on which Natal is based; essentially it is Natal, as you can see from the diagrams. While interesting in its own right, at least for indoors usage & when geared towards noticing humans, it's certainly not what I was hoping for. I guess Cenesta is next in line in possibly providing cheap TOF system...
One that hath name thou can not otter
...while my topmost post which started this subtree of discussion - down (I feel ashamed for spreading this inaccuracy about Natal & TOF camera now)
Gotta go to sleep; and sleeping through might help ;(
One that hath name thou can not otter
-1 Redundant
Very little technology is useful 'without good software'.
However,
The various Atari input devices are a good example of hardware only being useful when coupled with good software.
I'm not disagreeing with your statement, I just think that you are stating the obvious without justification or examples (and hence not adding anything to the conversation).
You have a sick, twisted mind. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
So they're now in the process of teaching it what body parts look like, i.e. they are only this moment developing the actual platform? As in, they really have no idea what their final specsheet is going to look like because their software for the device -- the one that has been announced to operate entirely in software -- is not anywhere near complete?
What overoptimistic soldiers of fortune are developing for this thing? What's the API? Grand promises from Microsoft on what it might be capable of if practice conforms exactly to theory?
I would like to repeat for emphasis -- they are now teaching it what body parts look like. What have they been doing those demos with? What are they basing its expected resolution on? They aren't done writing the code for the thing yet. Any idiot can say "when I finish this spreadsheet it's going to automatically fill any kind of pattern you can think of" and it's another entirely to implement, optimize, and debug.
I've always thought Natal was overhyped, but it's amazing how overhyped it is, it turns out.
If I want to play a game with friends, why would they come over to my house?
Because they're already at your house for other reasons. Examples from my own life include a birthday party, a periodic family reunion, etc. Besides, they might not all own 1. a PC that they're allowed to remove from the house, and 2. a copy of each game.
It's odd how a post linking to the same cartoon two minutes later is modded +5 funny and this is just 1
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it