Hands-Off Review of Natal
- Thread starter Greg Tito
- Start date
eye toy is a webcam, microsoft has one of those already. i bought it and rainbow six vegas, mapped my face for multiplayer, and still have it generating real time reflections of my living room in the xbla pinball game
natal is altogether more powerful. it can track multiple humans. something the webcam based devices could not. natal has depth sensing camera's not just colour sensing. it can recognise humans and sign in there accounts according to the promo material when it was announced... i call BS on that one. it may work but it's going to be hit and miss so it'll be cut rather than be a buggy feature at launch
for me those depth sensing camera's and bifocal camera system mean homemade mocap studio viability.i'll pick one up for the xbox and wait for the mocap software it'll inevitably generate.
natal is altogether more powerful. it can track multiple humans. something the webcam based devices could not. natal has depth sensing camera's not just colour sensing. it can recognise humans and sign in there accounts according to the promo material when it was announced... i call BS on that one. it may work but it's going to be hit and miss so it'll be cut rather than be a buggy feature at launch
for me those depth sensing camera's and bifocal camera system mean homemade mocap studio viability.i'll pick one up for the xbox and wait for the mocap software it'll inevitably generate.
...On a petty note, am I the only one who finds it odd that an Irish journalist is introduced as "British" in the article's heading?
Only time will tell on this thing... As for the physical activity required, I wouldn't mind it in active games, but I hope there will be a variety of levels of activity required.
And no, not really. I adds voice recognition and tracks specific body parts so you can't just put your hand over the camera.pnkieplly said:
Ka-BOOOM! Exactly what I told the naysayers in the "Molyneaux says Natal is next mouse" thread! Let's all just pause for a second and think about how cool it would be to control even just the XBox dashboard, with hand motions and voice controls! "My XBox," wooosh, "play music, The Ramones, all albums." All I'll need then is an XBLA game that awards me points for pogo-dancing around my living room while singing along to Blitzkrieg Bop.Greg Tito said:
And yes, I absolutely would play that game. Non-stop for five weeks. High-score, motha-fockas!
Project Natal would sound much more impressive if there was no Wii ... as it is, it sounds less exciting, even if some "promised" features sound really cool!
Oh for christ's sake. Natal doesn't MAKE you exercise, it give you the OPTION to exercise. So it's exhausting, what's wrong with that? Thing is; I HATE lifting weights. It is soooo boring. So I took up parkour and free running to stay in shape, which I love and won't stop until I'm 90. But I get injured a lot; it's just the nature of it. Natal, hopefully, will be great for conditioning in a controlled setting. Maybe I'll learn to dance, too (DDR skills do not translate well to an actual dance floor). If you guys don't want to get in shape by air-fighting ninjas or whatever, fine. I'll pick up Natal in the bargain bin.
That having been said, I don't know any 20-something that has that much room in front of their TV. Maybe Microsoft can invent a gravity-reversal device so I can do it on the ceiling.
That having been said, I don't know any 20-something that has that much room in front of their TV. Maybe Microsoft can invent a gravity-reversal device so I can do it on the ceiling.
I think short of rail games this is going to be unusually hard to get working well. Running in place is kind of a pain in the ass.
Though I do like working out and things that make that more fun are nice.
Though I do like working out and things that make that more fun are nice.
I smell a new way to exercise the masses.
Hey, maybe it can get some people off their sofas and help America get on a road to fitness.
...Or it could just crash and burn.
Hey, maybe it can get some people off their sofas and help America get on a road to fitness.
...Or it could just crash and burn.
I wouldn't mind getting more physically active in games. Seems like it would really increase the immersion factor in an FPS if you were getting physically worn down as you progressed through a level.
An experience where I'm panting and sweating as I enter a safe room in Left 4 Dead 2 would be amazing.
An experience where I'm panting and sweating as I enter a safe room in Left 4 Dead 2 would be amazing.
Microsoft is really marketing to 2 groups. All the nerds (me) want the voice activation (star trek, blade runner, etc.) and the virtual touch screens (ie they don't need touching) (mass effect, minority report, etc.) and they're marketing to families with the physical activity games which will no doubt come out.
I was to lazy to read all the comments so someone may have already made this point.
I was to lazy to read all the comments so someone may have already made this point.
This product is in the WRONG market trying to get his into people's homes.
This should be in public places like arcades, malls, shopping centres where it has a huge advantage:
1) no controller interface works easily with anyone passing by and less problems of theft etc
2) short duration of fun and largely for impressing friends
3) can use more sophisticated and controlled setup for greater accuracy
4) This inherently has advantages beyond gaming for short "ATM" style interactions like say an automated hotel check-in system.
When people get home they want to RELAX and Natal is inevitably going to lose out in terms of "time sent" to online FPS games, RPGs and similar which people can spend as long as 4 hour sessions on.
Look, that Minority Report style setup was chosen for the film because it looked COOL but lets not kid ourselves that we'd much rather have a compact, precise and efficient setup. In real life it is easier just to select "Tea, Earl Grey" from a drop down list rather than try to spell it out to barely comprehending speech-to-text program.
Another problem I see with a lot of the Natal demos is all many of them are trying to do is imitate ordinary and attainable activities like smacking balls around. You can buy an ACTUAL ball and it will do a far better job than Natal since it isn't imitating real physics, it IS real!!!
The big appeal of video games is allowing the ordinary person to experience what is either too dangerous, expensive or unlikely/impossible to actually do. Like play a soldier, go on an adventure, race at high speed or explore tombs and dungeons and so on. I mean Natal may fundamentally be a poor imitation of various physical sports but on top of that it must allow you to do the impossible or fantastical.
Otherwise I might as well just buy a Frisbee for a fraction of the price and meet some friends in a local park.
This should be in public places like arcades, malls, shopping centres where it has a huge advantage:
1) no controller interface works easily with anyone passing by and less problems of theft etc
2) short duration of fun and largely for impressing friends
3) can use more sophisticated and controlled setup for greater accuracy
4) This inherently has advantages beyond gaming for short "ATM" style interactions like say an automated hotel check-in system.
When people get home they want to RELAX and Natal is inevitably going to lose out in terms of "time sent" to online FPS games, RPGs and similar which people can spend as long as 4 hour sessions on.
Look, that Minority Report style setup was chosen for the film because it looked COOL but lets not kid ourselves that we'd much rather have a compact, precise and efficient setup. In real life it is easier just to select "Tea, Earl Grey" from a drop down list rather than try to spell it out to barely comprehending speech-to-text program.
Another problem I see with a lot of the Natal demos is all many of them are trying to do is imitate ordinary and attainable activities like smacking balls around. You can buy an ACTUAL ball and it will do a far better job than Natal since it isn't imitating real physics, it IS real!!!
The big appeal of video games is allowing the ordinary person to experience what is either too dangerous, expensive or unlikely/impossible to actually do. Like play a soldier, go on an adventure, race at high speed or explore tombs and dungeons and so on. I mean Natal may fundamentally be a poor imitation of various physical sports but on top of that it must allow you to do the impossible or fantastical.
Otherwise I might as well just buy a Frisbee for a fraction of the price and meet some friends in a local park.