I think that depends on the game. A game like UFO for example could certainly benefit from a controller that allows full 6DOF navigation, as navigating height is rather troublesome with a 2D device. And a a pointer like the Wiimote has is of course very welcome as well when it comes to unit selection and such.
Even something like chess might benefit somewhat, with Natal for example you could map your opponent directly into the game. It wouldn't change the core game, but it would make multiplayer a good bit more interesting.
Overall I don't think motion sensing can do any harm to turn based games or games in general when done right, as it would then be just an additional means of control not a necessary replacement.
That said, I consider the focus on "no controller" to be a fatal flaw of Natal and even the Wiimote lacks some buttons and a second analog stick, which limits its usefulness in some games.
Which games do use Sixaxis for anything useful? By far most seem to completly ignore it, a tiny few are all motion controls (Rub a Dub, Flower) and another few do make very light use of it (MetalGear4). But overall I haven't seen a single game that uses motion controls for something that couldn't be done with an analag stick just as well. For me SIXAXIS looks like a solution waiting for a problem, but then I haven't seen all PS3 games so I might be missing something.
You can adjust the controls in MP3 to have a smaller center-area, the game plays then a good bit smoother then with the default. However that type of control setup you propose has one 'little' problem, it would make it impossible to hit something. The smaller you make the center-area the harder it is to keep the view steady, if you make it really small, it makes it impossible to keep your aim steady, so you would be constantly rotate around your target instead of actually aiming at it. The only way it works in MP3 is because you have lock-on and can thus stop the rotation from happening.
I would love to see a FPS on Wii that uses the analogstick not for strafe, but for rotate (Doom1 style), that way you could do all the aiming with the Wiimote and leave all the rotation to the stick. Having rotation and aim on the IR pointer never felt all to comfortable a control scheme.
The trouble with crowdsourcing is that you might get a handful of cool levels, but you won't get a complete game out of it. Games are fun because they work as a whole, have a carefully crafted difficulty curve, carefully introduced new items and abilities and a story on top of that. With user contributed levels you always have the problem that they start with the assumption that everything is available from the start, progress doesn't happen, the whole game loses coherence, its no longer a game, but just a random collection of levels and I really couldn't care less about those types of games.
Crowedsourcing however works when the customization is limited, i.e. everybody creating his own custom character works fine in MMORPGs, because they are enough restrictions to not break the game world. But for a whole game, no way for me.
This article mentions 48 joints, which I think is a misunderstanding, as most other mention only 48 points, which would result in far fewer joints after detection is done.
Of course when Natal could really recognize fingers precisely, that would be quite revolutionary, but considering that Natal glitched in quite a few demos just recognizing arms and legs and no demo showed finger detection I have some very serious doubt that it will get anywhere near that amount of precision.
Well, yeah, voice recognition is great, but why use Natal for that? A simple headset would work just as fine. And the spell-casting gets problematic very quickly, as you need to let go the controller, such application would make much more sense if Microsoft would release a split controller. As it, that stuff would just be awkward.
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.
Those who play more then a single type of game. Call them "core gamers", "hardcore" or whatever if you prefer, but that doesn't change the fact that the Wii target audience is a very different one then the PS3/Xbox360 one.
Does the Wii provide a "Watered-Down" game experience?
Its not doubtful, its pretty much a proven fact at this point and Nintendo's E3 presentation just confirmed it yet again. Just ask any person who has been gaming for more then a few years if they would be happy with only the Wii and none of PC, XBox360 or PS3. The answer would of course be, no, as there just aren't enough games on the Wii to make a gamer happy. That doesn't mean that there are no good games on the Wii or that a different target audience wouldn't be very pleased with the experience. But for an experienced gamer the Wii just doesn't offer enough. If you don't like to call that "watered down", call it something else, that doesn't change the fact.
Don't you think they would sell tons and tons of them?
Nope, just look at the sales. FPS sell much better on the other systems. Metroid Prime sold 1.5mil, a good FPS on PS3/XBox360 sells twice that.
The Wii is perfect for FPS games, moving from the clunky and worthless dual-analog control to a mouse+WASD compatible scheme.
I wouldn't call the Wii perfect for FPS, I have yet to see a FPS game that doesn't feel clunky on the Wii. Having rotation and aiming on the same control just doesn't really work that well. It works ok in Metroid Prime 3 only because it can cheat with lock-on, but without lock-on its pretty terrible. A more restricted control scheme like Resident Evil 4 works much better then FPS on the Wii.
All that aside its of course also a simple issue of progress. Developers want to develop the next big thing, not a game with the technology of yesteryear. Even the best possible Wii game would look rather pathetic compared to a PS3/Xbox360 blockbuster, so nobody is going to throw all resources on a Wii game, when its clear from the start that he can't compete anyway. Its much cheaper to do a quick&dirty PS2 port.
The trouble is that those games that sell good are all Nintendo games, everything third party only comes in far behind. Even worse, sales don't seem to have any connection to quality, some of the top selling third party games are ranking in the sub-50% category on metacritic. So the Wii isn't exactly a good platform to produce high quality content on, unless you are Nintendo.
The head is oriented in the correct position. It is facing her.
No. Look again. From her position the head is looking off screen to the right. Its only from the cameras position where you get the impression that he is looking at her. From her perspective its a completly different thing.
Where is the conspiracy theory? You admit yourself that the demo doesn't show genuine gameplay, but something build up for marketing purposes. If they tempered in post production or with the 3d projection matrix or whatever doesn't make much of a difference, as neither of which turns it into actual real gameplay footage.
So you believe that the game features a totally weird perspective that makes no sense when you stand in front of the TV?
yet clearly the water situation where her image is shown from the camera and rendered onto the water debunks that.
Actor in front of the TV doing motion, everything else is inserted in post production.
I am not even sure why you try to argue that. I never claimed that the technology behind the demo was fake, that might very well be real or at least close to the demo. But the demo video is certainly not authentic and has been tempered with.
You mean like the Burnout one where he uses just his foot to accelerate?
Try again. You use your leg to accelerate, not the foot, listen to the voice right at the start of this video. You can find the same info in other sources. No foot detection, just which leg is forward determines if you break or accelerate. Which again, confirms my point.
If you could at least explain why you don't think anything other than leg and arm recognition is possible even though it's demonstrated right in front of you
It hasn't been demonstrated (neutral hand position != detection) and the elephant silhouette demo shows a clear lack of precision (which you continue to ignore).
This video nicely shows why the Milo demo was faked. That said, I agree that the tech behind it might real, as its really not that special (bolt voice regonition on something like Facade and you pretty much have it).
The difference between Nintendo and the rest is that Nintendo has a complete solution, they not only have the hardware, but also the games that make use of it. Both Microsoft and Sony have little to none in that area, they have only the hardware, but not the game concepts to make use of it.
Or to put it another way: People go out and buy a Wii because it has Wii Sports, not because the Wiimote has theoretical potential to be useful for future games. At the moment nothing that Sony or Microsoft has shown has the same casual appeal as what Nintendo did, that of course might change in a year, but that still plenty of time for Nintendo to solidify their position.
Come back with some actual evidence, and you might have a point, until then, all you're doing is speculating, guessing and outright making things up.
You don't get it. You are the one claiming that Natal can do something that isn't shown in a single demo. I don't believe you because I have seen nothing that shows finger detection, thats all.
Lets try something else: Lets just assume for a moment that all Natal can do is arm and leg detection. Now go back and watch all the tech demos and the product vision videos again. Which of those demos would be impossible to produce with just arm and leg detection? Name one and you might have a point.
It would also be nice if you just wouldn't ignore the clear contradictions that I have pointed out in your argument. First you claim that Ricochet and Painting detects fingers, then your own link provides a Microsoft persons comment that they haven't actually implemented that. Yet you continue your believe its there, how so, even when its not seen in the video? You also still haven't commented an the elephant silhouette and the lack of precision it shows.
Apart from recognising exactly those motions as we've been through over and over here?
Where is the golf game that demonstrates that? Where is the tennis game? Where is the detection of wrist movement? I repeat: *NONE* of the demos showed any of that. And the elephant silhouette demo makes it very unlikely that the precision for that is there (have you even looked at that?). Ricochet doesn't show hand detection either, it simply shows a half open hand the whole time, no movement of individual fingers. I welcome a link to a video that actually shows hand and finger movement, I am still waiting.
While the headline of the Kotaku article sounds spot on, the actual text just confirms what I was saying all along:
Tsunoda said that such detection was possible, though the sensitivity would be different at different distances. He thought my fingers idea was do-able.
So in other words, when you get really close, it might work, no surprise since your hand then gets large enough, while further away precision will be a big issue. Oh, and of course there is nothing in that article that says that they have already implemented that, so much for Ricochet detecting your hands. The other article just flat out dodges the question and doesn't give any hint on how they actually think about implementing FPS controls and such and if their Burnout solution is any indication, it won't be pretty.
I think you missed the point, there's no reason you need split controllers for what I'm suggesting.
When you don't have a split controller you throw 90% of what Natal can do out of the window. Of course you can do that and it might even improve the game a little bit, but it would be a huge waste of resources and nobody is going to ever do much with that as its simply not worth it. All that ducking and dodging could have been done back then with Eyetoy, but nobody even tried, as its just not worth it.
Still, you can't see the evidence when it's right in front of you
The evidence strongly supports all the points I have made. While it provides close to zero evidence for hand & finger tracking.
so I can only assume you don't actually want it to work because of some typical classic fanboyist jealousy.
The thing you don't realize is that the fanboy is you. You see Natal as what you want Natal to be. I see Natal as what it is and what the demos have shown of that.
Six axis meaning six degrees of freedom, i.e. absolute positioning and orientation.
Well, yeah, but as the LiveMove2 video has shown that is still only a relative position and it is only precise for a few seconds or so.
Knowing how many axis the thing has, doesn't really tell you how precise the results are or for how long they will be useful till you need to reset/recalibrate. And the distance from the IR sensor also only works as long as you are pointing straight at it, as soon as you are sitting at an angle things get troublesome.
When I see a demo or a game that shows absolute position detected for long periods of time, I'll believe it, so far that hasn't happened and I consider the tech just an approximation to 1:1. Which of course is still the best consumer motion sensing tech we will have for at least another year, so there really is no shame in that.
The proof is simple: There is no data to detect the absolute position. Even the IR bar won't help, as two IR points aren't enough, in theory it could work with a new sensorbar that uses four points instead of two, which the Wiimote can detect, but that would be far out speculation and Nintendo has announced nothing of that sort.
Or to put it another way: I believe it when I see it. When no demo or game uses a feature, there is a good chance it doesn't exist. Well, most of the time anyway, the DS has a pressure sensitive touch screen and I only know that is because a homebrew drawing app makes use of it, I have never seen an official game use that feature.
In reality though, it's probably close enough to 1:1 for most games.
Yep, especially considering that Wii games don't make that much use of physics engines it is probably close enough to 1:1 for most games to not make a difference. PS3 on the other side is full of games using physics engines and there the 1:1 mapping could be much more useful, as it would allow a much more direct and non-scripted way to interact with the world.
Hmm, I'm not really sure what else to say about this as it's simply wrong.
I like how people make baseless claims. Look at the elephant silhouette demo, detection is not precise enough for real detail. None of the demos have shown finger detection, not even their advertisment video which was all a made up future-vision to begin. How do you think it can do finger detection?
It's been pointed out quite clearly that Natal and work all the way down to hands and fingers,
Where? Source please.
I'm not sure what more can be said. It can work with again 48 key joints
Its 48 *points* not joints, which doesn't really tell us much, because you might need multiple points to reconstruct a joint from the data.
I'm guessing you only saw a few tech demos?
I have seen all of them and all of them support my claims. You accelerate in Burnout by moving your whole leg forward, not by lifting your foot, not by lifting your finger. None of the demos I have seen requires anything beyond arm & leg detection. If you know one, show me.
Again, have you seen the actual promotional demos showing it in use in actual games rather than just the tech demos?
You might want to watch the videos yourself before posting, hint: bottom left corner right at the start:
"Product vision: actual features and functionality may vary"
Beside of that, as said, none of them show finger detection or the use of an additional controller, just arms and legs, nothing more.
In this video, the fighting sample near the start for example, again there's little reason the ducking and kicking couldn't work alongside a classic controller based FPS for example.
Of course it could work, but it would be awkward. Motion detection needs a split-controller to work properly, otherwise both your hands are locked in place and won't have much freedom to move.
Wii has really failed to live up to it's hype in terms of what was promised.
It lived up to my expectations perfectly well, because I based my expectations on its technical capabilities, not on what fanboys hoped it could do (i.e. my expectations where very low to begin with).
but I do not see any reason why it would work any worse than the Wii mote
With MotionPlus I can apply slice to a tennis or golf ball, Natal doesn't have any way to do that.
Its much closer to 1:1 then the Wiimote alone, but it still can't measure its absolute position in space like Sonys solution. If you look closely in the above video you will see that he never actually moves the remote completly freely through space. The remote is completly invisible till he starts a swing motion and once done it disappears again. This is due to the Wiimote not having a way to measure its position in space, all it can do is dead reckoning from a given predefined starting point and judging from that video that only works for a few seconds after which it has to reset to the neutral position.
So yeah, its a big jump from the Wiimote alone and will allow much more then the old style waggle-button-replacement, but its still limited to fast swing motions and can't really give you full 1:1 which you need for some gameplay elements (i.e. free form stacking of blocks driven by a physics engine in 3d space).
Wrist detection, exact detection of button presses, pointing and so on. Basically everything that matters. To take a step back: The way humans consciously interact with the world is for most part just with their hands, while your arms and legs and rest of the body follow more or less automatically, you simply don't think much about them when you move around. What Natal does is putting a heavy emphasis on detecting your arms and legs, i.e. all those things that work automatically, while ignoring the hands that you driving consciously. Its nice that Natal can detect the position of my elbow, but its ultimately not all that useful for gaming. Exact hand and finger movement would be much more interesting.
which means you can in fact just point at things.
Yeah, but with your whole arm. How is that better then a minimal movement of the wrist with a Wiimote? Especially considering that you don't have a button to click on things.
Effectively you can still produce peripherals like light guns, but they needn't contain any electronics and can just be plastic shells,
Very true, but thats my whole criticism of Natal. Microsoft has shown exactly none of that. Microsoft hasn't shown a complete gameplay solution, but a just techdemo that on its own just isn't all that useful. And on top of that they continually praised that you don't need a controller for Natal, so it doesn't sound like they have additional peripherals planed at this point.
Natal could effectively track you playing the guitar by being able to observe which buttons your fingers were touching so you could effectively have guitar hero with a £5 plastic guitar rather than a £40 electronic one.
It very likely couldn't. Look at the video where they form the silhouette of a en elephant, notice how rough the detection of the silhouette is, you are not being able to detect slight finger movements out of that mess.
I'm not sure why there's so much disbelief over what it can do
There is no disbelieve. I fully believe that it can do everything Microsoft has shown. My issue is that what they have shown is by far not enough for decent gameplay.
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I think that depends on the game. A game like UFO for example could certainly benefit from a controller that allows full 6DOF navigation, as navigating height is rather troublesome with a 2D device. And a a pointer like the Wiimote has is of course very welcome as well when it comes to unit selection and such.
Even something like chess might benefit somewhat, with Natal for example you could map your opponent directly into the game. It wouldn't change the core game, but it would make multiplayer a good bit more interesting.
Overall I don't think motion sensing can do any harm to turn based games or games in general when done right, as it would then be just an additional means of control not a necessary replacement.
That said, I consider the focus on "no controller" to be a fatal flaw of Natal and even the Wiimote lacks some buttons and a second analog stick, which limits its usefulness in some games.
Which games do use Sixaxis for anything useful? By far most seem to completly ignore it, a tiny few are all motion controls (Rub a Dub, Flower) and another few do make very light use of it (MetalGear4). But overall I haven't seen a single game that uses motion controls for something that couldn't be done with an analag stick just as well. For me SIXAXIS looks like a solution waiting for a problem, but then I haven't seen all PS3 games so I might be missing something.
You can adjust the controls in MP3 to have a smaller center-area, the game plays then a good bit smoother then with the default. However that type of control setup you propose has one 'little' problem, it would make it impossible to hit something. The smaller you make the center-area the harder it is to keep the view steady, if you make it really small, it makes it impossible to keep your aim steady, so you would be constantly rotate around your target instead of actually aiming at it. The only way it works in MP3 is because you have lock-on and can thus stop the rotation from happening.
I would love to see a FPS on Wii that uses the analogstick not for strafe, but for rotate (Doom1 style), that way you could do all the aiming with the Wiimote and leave all the rotation to the stick. Having rotation and aim on the IR pointer never felt all to comfortable a control scheme.
The trouble with crowdsourcing is that you might get a handful of cool levels, but you won't get a complete game out of it. Games are fun because they work as a whole, have a carefully crafted difficulty curve, carefully introduced new items and abilities and a story on top of that. With user contributed levels you always have the problem that they start with the assumption that everything is available from the start, progress doesn't happen, the whole game loses coherence, its no longer a game, but just a random collection of levels and I really couldn't care less about those types of games.
Crowedsourcing however works when the customization is limited, i.e. everybody creating his own custom character works fine in MMORPGs, because they are enough restrictions to not break the game world. But for a whole game, no way for me.
The way you accelerate/break in the racing game (Burnout) is by moving your whole leg forward or backward, it doesn't care about foot deflection.
Maybe by using an alternative controller? There is for example the Xbox360 Access Controller
This article mentions 48 joints, which I think is a misunderstanding, as most other mention only 48 points, which would result in far fewer joints after detection is done.
Of course when Natal could really recognize fingers precisely, that would be quite revolutionary, but considering that Natal glitched in quite a few demos just recognizing arms and legs and no demo showed finger detection I have some very serious doubt that it will get anywhere near that amount of precision.
Well, yeah, voice recognition is great, but why use Natal for that? A simple headset would work just as fine. And the spell-casting gets problematic very quickly, as you need to let go the controller, such application would make much more sense if Microsoft would release a split controller. As it, that stuff would just be awkward.
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.
Who's a gamer?
Those who play more then a single type of game. Call them "core gamers", "hardcore" or whatever if you prefer, but that doesn't change the fact that the Wii target audience is a very different one then the PS3/Xbox360 one.
Does the Wii provide a "Watered-Down" game experience?
Its not doubtful, its pretty much a proven fact at this point and Nintendo's E3 presentation just confirmed it yet again. Just ask any person who has been gaming for more then a few years if they would be happy with only the Wii and none of PC, XBox360 or PS3. The answer would of course be, no, as there just aren't enough games on the Wii to make a gamer happy. That doesn't mean that there are no good games on the Wii or that a different target audience wouldn't be very pleased with the experience. But for an experienced gamer the Wii just doesn't offer enough. If you don't like to call that "watered down", call it something else, that doesn't change the fact.
Don't you think they would sell tons and tons of them?
Nope, just look at the sales. FPS sell much better on the other systems. Metroid Prime sold 1.5mil, a good FPS on PS3/XBox360 sells twice that.
The Wii is perfect for FPS games, moving from the clunky and worthless dual-analog control to a mouse+WASD compatible scheme.
I wouldn't call the Wii perfect for FPS, I have yet to see a FPS game that doesn't feel clunky on the Wii. Having rotation and aiming on the same control just doesn't really work that well. It works ok in Metroid Prime 3 only because it can cheat with lock-on, but without lock-on its pretty terrible. A more restricted control scheme like Resident Evil 4 works much better then FPS on the Wii.
All that aside its of course also a simple issue of progress. Developers want to develop the next big thing, not a game with the technology of yesteryear. Even the best possible Wii game would look rather pathetic compared to a PS3/Xbox360 blockbuster, so nobody is going to throw all resources on a Wii game, when its clear from the start that he can't compete anyway. Its much cheaper to do a quick&dirty PS2 port.
The trouble is that those games that sell good are all Nintendo games, everything third party only comes in far behind. Even worse, sales don't seem to have any connection to quality, some of the top selling third party games are ranking in the sub-50% category on metacritic. So the Wii isn't exactly a good platform to produce high quality content on, unless you are Nintendo.
The head is oriented in the correct position. It is facing her.
No. Look again. From her position the head is looking off screen to the right. Its only from the cameras position where you get the impression that he is looking at her. From her perspective its a completly different thing.
This is the problem with conspiracy theories,
Where is the conspiracy theory? You admit yourself that the demo doesn't show genuine gameplay, but something build up for marketing purposes. If they tempered in post production or with the 3d projection matrix or whatever doesn't make much of a difference, as neither of which turns it into actual real gameplay footage.
It doesn't show that the demo was faked,
So you believe that the game features a totally weird perspective that makes no sense when you stand in front of the TV?
yet clearly the water situation where her image is shown from the camera and rendered onto the water debunks that.
Actor in front of the TV doing motion, everything else is inserted in post production.
I am not even sure why you try to argue that. I never claimed that the technology behind the demo was fake, that might very well be real or at least close to the demo. But the demo video is certainly not authentic and has been tempered with.
You mean like the Burnout one where he uses just his foot to accelerate?
Try again. You use your leg to accelerate, not the foot, listen to the voice right at the start of this video. You can find the same info in other sources. No foot detection, just which leg is forward determines if you break or accelerate. Which again, confirms my point.
If you could at least explain why you don't think anything other than leg and arm recognition is possible even though it's demonstrated right in front of you
It hasn't been demonstrated (neutral hand position != detection) and the elephant silhouette demo shows a clear lack of precision (which you continue to ignore).
This video nicely shows why the Milo demo was faked. That said, I agree that the tech behind it might real, as its really not that special (bolt voice regonition on something like Facade and you pretty much have it).
The difference between Nintendo and the rest is that Nintendo has a complete solution, they not only have the hardware, but also the games that make use of it. Both Microsoft and Sony have little to none in that area, they have only the hardware, but not the game concepts to make use of it.
Or to put it another way: People go out and buy a Wii because it has Wii Sports, not because the Wiimote has theoretical potential to be useful for future games. At the moment nothing that Sony or Microsoft has shown has the same casual appeal as what Nintendo did, that of course might change in a year, but that still plenty of time for Nintendo to solidify their position.
Come back with some actual evidence, and you might have a point, until then, all you're doing is speculating, guessing and outright making things up.
You don't get it. You are the one claiming that Natal can do something that isn't shown in a single demo. I don't believe you because I have seen nothing that shows finger detection, thats all.
Lets try something else: Lets just assume for a moment that all Natal can do is arm and leg detection. Now go back and watch all the tech demos and the product vision videos again. Which of those demos would be impossible to produce with just arm and leg detection? Name one and you might have a point.
It would also be nice if you just wouldn't ignore the clear contradictions that I have pointed out in your argument. First you claim that Ricochet and Painting detects fingers, then your own link provides a Microsoft persons comment that they haven't actually implemented that. Yet you continue your believe its there, how so, even when its not seen in the video? You also still haven't commented an the elephant silhouette and the lack of precision it shows.
Apart from recognising exactly those motions as we've been through over and over here?
Where is the golf game that demonstrates that? Where is the tennis game? Where is the detection of wrist movement? I repeat: *NONE* of the demos showed any of that. And the elephant silhouette demo makes it very unlikely that the precision for that is there (have you even looked at that?). Ricochet doesn't show hand detection either, it simply shows a half open hand the whole time, no movement of individual fingers. I welcome a link to a video that actually shows hand and finger movement, I am still waiting.
While the headline of the Kotaku article sounds spot on, the actual text just confirms what I was saying all along:
So in other words, when you get really close, it might work, no surprise since your hand then gets large enough, while further away precision will be a big issue. Oh, and of course there is nothing in that article that says that they have already implemented that, so much for Ricochet detecting your hands. The other article just flat out dodges the question and doesn't give any hint on how they actually think about implementing FPS controls and such and if their Burnout solution is any indication, it won't be pretty.
I think you missed the point, there's no reason you need split controllers for what I'm suggesting.
When you don't have a split controller you throw 90% of what Natal can do out of the window. Of course you can do that and it might even improve the game a little bit, but it would be a huge waste of resources and nobody is going to ever do much with that as its simply not worth it. All that ducking and dodging could have been done back then with Eyetoy, but nobody even tried, as its just not worth it.
Still, you can't see the evidence when it's right in front of you
The evidence strongly supports all the points I have made. While it provides close to zero evidence for hand & finger tracking.
so I can only assume you don't actually want it to work because of some typical classic fanboyist jealousy.
The thing you don't realize is that the fanboy is you. You see Natal as what you want Natal to be. I see Natal as what it is and what the demos have shown of that.
Six axis meaning six degrees of freedom, i.e. absolute positioning and orientation.
Well, yeah, but as the LiveMove2 video has shown that is still only a relative position and it is only precise for a few seconds or so.
Knowing how many axis the thing has, doesn't really tell you how precise the results are or for how long they will be useful till you need to reset/recalibrate. And the distance from the IR sensor also only works as long as you are pointing straight at it, as soon as you are sitting at an angle things get troublesome.
When I see a demo or a game that shows absolute position detected for long periods of time, I'll believe it, so far that hasn't happened and I consider the tech just an approximation to 1:1. Which of course is still the best consumer motion sensing tech we will have for at least another year, so there really is no shame in that.
You could be right, but there's no proof.
The proof is simple: There is no data to detect the absolute position. Even the IR bar won't help, as two IR points aren't enough, in theory it could work with a new sensorbar that uses four points instead of two, which the Wiimote can detect, but that would be far out speculation and Nintendo has announced nothing of that sort.
Or to put it another way: I believe it when I see it. When no demo or game uses a feature, there is a good chance it doesn't exist. Well, most of the time anyway, the DS has a pressure sensitive touch screen and I only know that is because a homebrew drawing app makes use of it, I have never seen an official game use that feature.
In reality though, it's probably close enough to 1:1 for most games.
Yep, especially considering that Wii games don't make that much use of physics engines it is probably close enough to 1:1 for most games to not make a difference. PS3 on the other side is full of games using physics engines and there the 1:1 mapping could be much more useful, as it would allow a much more direct and non-scripted way to interact with the world.
Hmm, I'm not really sure what else to say about this as it's simply wrong.
I like how people make baseless claims. Look at the elephant silhouette demo, detection is not precise enough for real detail. None of the demos have shown finger detection, not even their advertisment video which was all a made up future-vision to begin. How do you think it can do finger detection?
It's been pointed out quite clearly that Natal and work all the way down to hands and fingers,
Where? Source please.
I'm not sure what more can be said. It can work with again 48 key joints
Its 48 *points* not joints, which doesn't really tell us much, because you might need multiple points to reconstruct a joint from the data.
I'm guessing you only saw a few tech demos?
I have seen all of them and all of them support my claims. You accelerate in Burnout by moving your whole leg forward, not by lifting your foot, not by lifting your finger. None of the demos I have seen requires anything beyond arm & leg detection. If you know one, show me.
Again, have you seen the actual promotional demos showing it in use in actual games rather than just the tech demos?
You might want to watch the videos yourself before posting, hint: bottom left corner right at the start:
"Product vision: actual features and functionality may vary"
Beside of that, as said, none of them show finger detection or the use of an additional controller, just arms and legs, nothing more.
In this video, the fighting sample near the start for example, again there's little reason the ducking and kicking couldn't work alongside a classic controller based FPS for example.
Of course it could work, but it would be awkward. Motion detection needs a split-controller to work properly, otherwise both your hands are locked in place and won't have much freedom to move.
Wii has really failed to live up to it's hype in terms of what was promised.
It lived up to my expectations perfectly well, because I based my expectations on its technical capabilities, not on what fanboys hoped it could do (i.e. my expectations where very low to begin with).
but I do not see any reason why it would work any worse than the Wii mote
With MotionPlus I can apply slice to a tennis or golf ball, Natal doesn't have any way to do that.
Its much closer to 1:1 then the Wiimote alone, but it still can't measure its absolute position in space like Sonys solution. If you look closely in the above video you will see that he never actually moves the remote completly freely through space. The remote is completly invisible till he starts a swing motion and once done it disappears again. This is due to the Wiimote not having a way to measure its position in space, all it can do is dead reckoning from a given predefined starting point and judging from that video that only works for a few seconds after which it has to reset to the neutral position.
So yeah, its a big jump from the Wiimote alone and will allow much more then the old style waggle-button-replacement, but its still limited to fast swing motions and can't really give you full 1:1 which you need for some gameplay elements (i.e. free form stacking of blocks driven by a physics engine in 3d space).
I don't really see what it can't do?
Wrist detection, exact detection of button presses, pointing and so on. Basically everything that matters. To take a step back: The way humans consciously interact with the world is for most part just with their hands, while your arms and legs and rest of the body follow more or less automatically, you simply don't think much about them when you move around. What Natal does is putting a heavy emphasis on detecting your arms and legs, i.e. all those things that work automatically, while ignoring the hands that you driving consciously. Its nice that Natal can detect the position of my elbow, but its ultimately not all that useful for gaming. Exact hand and finger movement would be much more interesting.
which means you can in fact just point at things.
Yeah, but with your whole arm. How is that better then a minimal movement of the wrist with a Wiimote? Especially considering that you don't have a button to click on things.
Effectively you can still produce peripherals like light guns, but they needn't contain any electronics and can just be plastic shells,
Very true, but thats my whole criticism of Natal. Microsoft has shown exactly none of that. Microsoft hasn't shown a complete gameplay solution, but a just techdemo that on its own just isn't all that useful. And on top of that they continually praised that you don't need a controller for Natal, so it doesn't sound like they have additional peripherals planed at this point.
Natal could effectively track you playing the guitar by being able to observe which buttons your fingers were touching so you could effectively have guitar hero with a £5 plastic guitar rather than a £40 electronic one.
It very likely couldn't. Look at the video where they form the silhouette of a en elephant, notice how rough the detection of the silhouette is, you are not being able to detect slight finger movements out of that mess.
I'm not sure why there's so much disbelief over what it can do
There is no disbelieve. I fully believe that it can do everything Microsoft has shown. My issue is that what they have shown is by far not enough for decent gameplay.