Or so they say. It's a prototype of an interface that uses 3d motion capture to control things. as an idea it sounds pretty good but so far I've never seen one of these things that was reliable in anything but the broadest sense. We shall see tho
Or so they say. It's a prototype of an interface that uses 3d motion capture to control things. as an idea it sounds pretty good but so far I've never seen one of these things that was reliable in anything but the broadest sense. We shall see tho
Comments
I agree. When you saw the technical traincrash of "Lets go to the Movies", which was trying stuff orders of magnitude less complex than this (it was just trying to do background knockout, rather than full motion capture of a person), it gives you an idea about how hard this will be to actually get working, especially in the real world (i.e, not with a nice clean white backdrop).
I would also have to question if a console has enough processor grunt to do this...they have lots of graphical capability, but do they really have enough "other" to deal with the image processing required to put this sort of shit off?
I'm assuming that the various review sources will get their hands on it in some environment or other in the next few weeks, it will be interesting to see what they make of it...
Weirdly, my gripes with Natal is not the technology. Network/cell processing is easily powerful enough and you'd be surprised how easy it is to use two cameras to remove the background. Processor tech is cheap enough that what the cameras plug into could do that, the output put into the console. Or just one camera, lots of pictures and a median filter in photoshop.
What bugs me is the applications shown on the video. The skateboard game is a good example. Granted. But playing videos? You need to wave your arms around for that? Also, the fashion application is a middle-aged man's idea of what teenagers want. Furthermore, I doubt the system would be able to accurately represent the cloth on the person - not to the degree the teenage girl will require. It's a mad fallacy.
It won't kill Wii because it's not ubiquitous. Furthermore until some proper games developers get their hands on it, we won't see what it can really do.
The natal box is currently massive by the videos I've seen so there may be onboard processing going on. Eurogamer have had a go on the lionhead tech demo Milo and Kate and said it was pretty impressive http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/e3-project-natal-hands-on
here's some more stuff with milo in action http://www.eurogamer.net/videos/e3-project-natal-milo-demo
It looks an interesting concept but then as pete says things like in the movies and eyetoy have tried this sort of thing in 2d and failed miserably so adding 3d to it seems pushing it.
As always it is perfectly possible to achieve this sort of thing but with certain caveats processing power required resolution of the cameras and required environment. All the demos show living rooms the size of the moon that are carefully lit by lighting professionals while it might work under controlled conditions like eyetoy did it could well fall on it's arse in normal conditions.
The xbox360 is a pretty powerful bit of kit but does it have the processing spare to run this 3d analysis and maintain a realistic game world and what is the detection fail level which is a killer for this type of thing. Even the wii has this problem to a small degree you do a move and it doesn't detect it or does something else which just kills it's usefulness as an interface
The one thing I read about this that made me sit up and pay attention was the use of it as an interface to play Burnout Paradise, the guy was turning an imaginary steering wheel to turn and had to put his foot down to accelerate... Seems like a realistic improvement on a controller in that respect, admittedly knowing i'll need a desk to pin a steering wheel to is probably one of the greatest barriers to getting into a driving game for me.
Milo can go jump off a cliff for all i care.
It could be seen as a step away from the Wii in one (possibly rather key respect). While jumping around like a lunatic waving your arms around is all very well (indeed, could be counted as one of my hobbies) there is absolutely no tactile feedback on your actions. With the Wii at least there is some vibration and sound from the handset.
indeed and often without that feedback the motion controls are often no good. I mean look at mario kart on the wii playing it with the steering wheel is terrible it's far easier to control with the numchuck. A wheel only works with some mechanical feedback and heft that an imaginary one just doesn't have.
I have to say the Sony tech demo for their motion control stuff was pretty impressive. One thing that had me dismayed about the wii was the lack of precision, obviously motion+ may go some way towards rectifying that but I was impressed at how precise the playstationthreemote was. Perhaps now some of the big publishers will look to make something other than tripe shovelware that uses motion control as it can be applied to both the PS3 and the Wii.
It's one I'd need to see working in the real world again. For example, will it work with more than one person, and also if it's dependant on LOS from the glowy ball to the camera, lots of natural motions will block that (for example, bowling will break LOS). Watching the demo the guy is being fairly careful to always have frontal motion (hands to the front etc). The Wii mechanism loses a bit of the accuracy, but isn't dependant on image LOS.
Here's a video of sony's thing for those that haven't seen it http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8080436.stm
Sony's is an interesting if somewhat uncharateristicly low tech approach to the problem. Still has limitations but it can possibly work around them. I don't buy the "Sub millimetre accuracy" blurb as the resolution of the thing is a direct function of the resolution of the camera coupled with the distance from user to camera and what ever resolution the solid state gyro's they have in he widgets has (presumably just the same one they have in the sixaxis and dualshock3).
Sony's previous attempts at motion control have been rubbish the sixaxis gimick has been a complete waste of time something you can't turn off fast enough. This looks like it might have promise but like natal it needs real world applications not cheap nasty tech demos and imagined videos to really show what it can accomplish and if it is worth what ever ludicrous price tag it will come bundled with.
Yeah LOS would be my concern as well I presume the 3balls have a gyro in them for orientation and acceleration detection (I suspect they are hacked sixaxis controllers). Wii has it's accelerometers and gyros and with motion plus more of them so doesn't matter about line of sight. Obviously the natal system tracks the whole body so can theoretically interpolate from what it can see.
Looking at the presentation again it is very clear that the 3Balls is a very early tech demo rushed out to counter natal where as natal from what I read in the follow up and the way people are actually getting to use it now is much closer to a finished product.
Some more stuff with natal popping up here is a demo on a tv show in the states
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ5J4yXA5sM&eurl=http://offworld.com/&fea...
not sure if they are wearing the red boiler suits for natal or just because of some other inexplicable reason
Boiler suit or not, that looks like a laugh.
I think the burn out demo was more impressive than the 3d breakout thing I would imagine the level of immersion would be pretty good controlling the thing with a wheel pose
I'm gonna have to raise it again...no feedback at all. If you play a driving game without vibration these days it just feels very detached. Look how much grief Sony got when they releaseed the PS3 without vibration... I can't see an easy way to add it into Natal...
vibro gloves
"vibro gloves" you'd never leave the house.
No feedback is an issue but it's not a deal breaker. Natal is not a ubiquitous device, it's a new thing. New types of games will come along. The old ones will still use their peripherals. I'd argue that a racing game without a proper seat, pedals and a steering wheel is very detached.
I was thinking along the lines of something attached to the limb, but as soon as you do that you may as well use it for tracking (ala Sony), instead of the image analysis as they are doing.
I see the lack of feedback as a major issue... I can't think of a console game that doesn't use it in one form or another. The Wii makes massive use of it in some very subtle ways (buttons on menus, and generally hover-over actions), and it's immediately obvious when a game does not use the small tactile feedbacks. Even non-action games (such as C&C) have vibration support to add responsiveness.
With stuff like Natal while you are increasing the scope of control, in a way you are actually reducing immersion, as you are removing a sensual feedback. You'll still have visual and aural feedback (with no change in the scope of quality of them), however you are removing tactile feedback (I'm assuming here that taste and smell are not part of the current version of any new control mechanisms).
I'm not saying that a vibrating handset/steering wheel etc is the be-all and end-all of fedback systems, however it is far, far better than nothing. Your ideal scenario would be full-body force feedback, but I'm pretty certain that not coming along in the near future. Is, it, however, worth removing what you can easily attain without building monster arcade cabinets, in return for a greater degree of control? This is a decision very similar to the one Sony made when they first brought out the PS3 controller, and it bit them pretty hard. Once every gets over the undoubted technical achievements of Natal (so long as it works in a living room situation in the same way as the controlled environment demonstrations currently show) I suspect that people will note that it feels a somewhat detached and loose experience...not so much from the increased level of control, but from the dimished scope of feedback.
and more importantly as eurogamer point out "Our main concern with Natal is: how do you throw the controller against the wall if you're not holding one?"
I can think of a console game that doesn't use feedback: Dance Dance Revolution!
Is immersion important to every game? I'm not really 'immersed' as for all the senses in Lego Batman but I enjoy playing it. All the games I play on my PC don't have tactile feedback. I shit my trousers on a regular basis in L4D, heart thumping moments of dread and fear. Nothing on my desk vibrates.
Sorry, not buying it as a neccessity.
DDR is a game, not a console.
Also, there is feedback...you touch something. There is a tactile interface. Natal is a control mechanism where there is a massive lack of tactile response. Take the Breakout game in the demo. The player does not know if they have hit the ball or not without the visual clue, and they don't when when they hit it in their movement arc. The end result is players "painting" the area with moving limbs, hoping for a connection, even though they will never really know where/when they made the hit (if they do). A simple shake from a controller would very quickly add in the feedback needed to train the movement.
Is immersion important? If it's not why are they attempting 1-to-1 body mapping in a gaming system? Differing games can utilise the senses in different ways. The game you give as an example plays from the 3rd person, so there is built-in a layer of separation between the movement/actions of the characters and the player, whereas a 1st person immediately gives an additional level of depth. Natal's demos heavily show sports/interaction games, and I can see that it's very well suited for that, however I also think that for those games simple feedback is very important...
The PC is a very different system entirely (partly as the technological base is nowhere near as nailed down as the console world), hence why I didn't include it. I'm personally surprised that the many attempts at bringing out feedback mice have not caught on (it's probably down to differing technical standards between game developers), though the very fact that there are so many attempts at adding feedback shows that many people consider it important (take JD's migrane inducers he got for his birthday).
Sorry, the dance mat dancing game, available on consoles. I'm not a dance mat expert.
There isn't any feedback with dance mat games beyond standing on the floor. There is no switch, there is no click. You might as well be standing on the floor. I'd agree that for other controllers, you can feel your own input BUT THIS IS NOT FEEDBACK. Feedback is where the output is fed back into the input. Please don't argue on this, I did a Masters in Cybernetics - which is a degree in Feedback. It's the same with my PC. The only way the output of the system (the game) communicates back with me is the screen and headphones (see note at bottom about force feedback). There is no tactile feedback. None. This is my specialist subject and there are others here that know it too.
I'll admit that it is not a tightly defined way of being sure of your input but I would argue that it is something you can learn (if you can be bothered). Those fiddly thumb controllers on the PS2, XBOX (gah, I know I was late to the game on that) took me a while to get used to but I've seen people play FPS with them and they're just as good as mouse wielding PC owners.
Immersion isn't necessary for fun. You can have fun playing a game without being immersed. You can be immersed without moving your whole body. A game doesn't need to immerse you to be fun. It's ridiculous to suggest you do. Natal is an input system where you use your whole body. It's a little more immersive than using a keyboard because the character on the screen mimics your movements. You may feel more connected to what is going on but it's not really immersing you. Not like a CAVE system.
You seem to assume that (using your flawed definition of feedback):
Feedback + Immersion = Fun.
And that because Natal can't do this, it isn't going to be fun. Feedback assists in immersion but it is not a prerequisite and immersion never equals fun.
I am confused why you decide not to include the PC. It's a game machine. You play it. You're participating in a world not based in your own (like football). It had proper force feedback joysticks LONG before consoles. Flight sims are superb with a force feedback joystick as you get to feel the affect of speed on the control column was a big hit. For consoles, you have vibration that give a hint of what's goine on and on the Wii you have your own auditory feed. That's all there is and as feedback goes, it's not nearly as important and what you see and what you hear. Vibration, the more I think of it, the more it seems that it's a very poor method of feedback.
You've not convinced me. Immersion isn't necessary and Feedback beyond sight and sound is not that important either.
Despite your orders to not argue I will anyway.
Touching the floor...yes, I'd consider that feedback. Certainly a touch sensation. I apologise for my lack of doctorate in the matter, but I'm fairly sure that most creatures/walking robots etc have touch sensors on the lower limbs to work out when they touch the floor, and thus stop. Natal would have nothing apart from thin air for your arms (which, despite my lack of education, I'm fairly certain remain the main manipulators and contorl mechanisms of humans).
re: gamepad vs mouse/keyboard. I seem to remember a slight issue where one game avialable for both consoles and computers (I forget exactly which, though I think it was Doom 2 off the top of my head) had a hack introduced whereby PC players could enter consoles games. Rapes and pillages occured. Rapes and pillages, sometimes the other way round.
Thank you for arguing that Natal is not really that good or useful. Good to see you've joined my side of the argument at last :-)
As the "vibration is not that useful", you can turn it off. Try it, and see how quickly you miss it (open the Home Menu, and click on the controller at the bottom to access the options). I said right at the start that vibration is not the be all and end all of feedback, but it's a damn sight better than nothing. Try playing a driving game without the vibration...it feels both strange, and quite shallow.
I did actually say why I had excluded the PC (the lack of technical standards for peripherals, compared to the consoles). While it has had force feedback controllers, it has also had non force-feedback controllers available. Unlike consoles, which have a more controlled technical environment, and have a better oppertunity to introduce innovations (such as Natal).
Finally, I never said that immersion = fun. All the Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo peeps throw that stuff around. my point is that without feedback, there is no real precision, ending with flappy arm movements. I'd argue thats not really too much fun...
This is largely getting off topic but Pc's do have an peripheral input standard it's called direct Input and is a part of directx so long as people make their devices to be direct input compatible then they can work with any direct input game including obscure mappings. Half the problem with pc peripherals is when they don't conform to direct input spec. It's actually the same spec that xbox uses just on one it's much more rigorously enforced to get access to the controller codes that would allow you to make a game pad you have to be in microsofts good books.
I'm not sure that the closed environment of the console makes it easier to add innovative systems to it. The pc has all sorts or weird and wonderful input systems far more inventive and outlandish than anything on a console even natal. You can get vr gloves to force feedback pens to full force feedback exoskeletons 3d tracking systems of all stripes. They are not mass market sure but if someone made one with direct input capability then you could use them to play burn out or UT3 or what have you. It would be a simple matter of mapping the axis and buttons and away you go.
Personally I thing the whole argument about this thing is a little misleading Natal is never going to replace the controller as it stands and most games will not use Natal but then Natal can do things that the controller can't and if the games developers can make something compelling using that then it will sell. Since this is still early prototype work I can see that it could well evolve from what we have seen in demos maybe incorporating a set of vibrogloves or some such to give some level of force feedback.
Regarding the Direct input stuff, does that mean if I found one of the (as far as I can work out now obsolete) iFeel logitech mouses it would work with FPS games? I thought about getting one for ages, as I'd find it really handy to know when I'm being shot, however when they were out I believe they were not that well supported?
I don't know if they supported this Direct Input stuff or not. I can't find any current feedback mice unfortunately...
one of these you mean: http://www.dansdata.com/ifeel.htm
It might work as just a mouse it sounds like it used custom drivers tho not anything standard.
Touching the floor...yes, I'd consider that feedback.
That's you being the feedback system, not the floor. The floor isn't calculating your standing on it and then performing some action against you. That's you pushing down on the floor and calculating that you're standing on it. In the same way, you pushing a button on a keyboard is feedback inside you. The key isn't calculating your input and then pushing back against your finger. We're talking about the game being able to feed back against your input. Like force control joysticks, vibration, audio and visual. There is no more game-feedback with you waving your arms or pressing a button. There is only an improved input into the game by your human-feedback loop. A loop that would exist even with natal. It's not tactile, it's visual but it's certainly there.
Oh and I turned off rumble when we played NFS because it was fucking annoying!
You turned it off on NFS because it was set too high, and was constantly rumbling.
Also, you were grumpy because I was beating you :-D
Also, we are not talking about force feedback here. Thats a completely different kettle of fish. Vibration is a nice simple touch feedback (after some googling I believe they like to refer to it as haptic, which is a word that means very little to me).
The point about Natal having no feedback still stands however...waving your hands in the air gives no haptic (OK, I'm starting to like it more now) response, either from the machine or from the player.
haptic technology and force feedback are one and the same thing
haptic means sense of touch in greek
so haptics is the study of force feedback
and all controllers with any element of force feedback (vibration motion force etc) are haptic controllers
Natal has as much feedback as most other games, including all the ones on my PC.
I really don't see the problem.
Oh and yes, I agree that vibration is good in the games I play on console but don't miss it on the PC.
Sort of grabbed my eye for no particular reason.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/miyamoto-you-need-a-controller-to-hold
The proof will come in the pudding, as they say. If/when Natal is available, and games tend to be woolly, hard to grasp controls, with a feeling of detachment from the actual game, justimagine what my "I told you so" post is going to be like...
...it will probably be far, far worse than that...
It's a bold statement by Miyamoto but I think I agree with him.
I think the best thing would be to have both. Have a controller in your hand and have the thing detect your motions.
I'm not sure I agree with miyamoto, I think it's more the accuracy of the motion detection that is key. Ie Wii's current hardware is fairly rubbish it can detect broad strokes and sometimes only with a lot of prodding it's false positives rate is quite high. The wiimotion plus may well fix that but it is always where these sorts of motion control systems live or die like the wii like eyetoy both suffer from bad detection problems that can make them frustrating to play wii less so than eye toy but still.
How much natal and the playstation Balls suffer from this is still an open question. Natal has not been seen outside controled conditions (though it has been seen and tested by journo's so that's something) no one has seen or tested the playstation Balls which to me says it was a rush job and something that is nowhere near ready for a real demo.