Features// Natal: Hands-On and How it Works

Posted 24 Aug 2009 18:01 by
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He was keen to stress that the infra-red array was the key technology, adding that: “Because it’s infra-red, Natal works in bright light or total darkness.” We could see it working in real-time, with people walking in front of it, then standing still – it didn’t appear to take much longer than a second to lock on and generate a skeleton. And it can process up to four bodies.

Nor should it be put off by, say, the dog running in front of you when you’re playing; Tsunoda said: “It doesn’t mind occlusions: if it can see some of your joints, it can algorithmically work out what you are doing, even if some are hidden.”

Tsunoda added that the demos shown at E3 were built on Unreal Engine 3, and one was shown: a form of Breakout in which you look down a virtual corridor with bricks blocking the far end, that you had to smash by propelling football-sized balls with whatever part of your body seemed appropriate. You could kick them, head them, bat them with your hands and so on; move forward or back and your ghost-outline avatar displayed in the game did likewise.

And Microsoft showed a bog-standard copy of Burnout Paradise working with the system, so that you stood with hands out as if gripping an imaginary steering wheel, and moved them as if steering. Amazingly, it worked with all the necessary responsiveness. To accelerate, you just step forward with your right foot; step back to brake. It was a bit of a shame that they hadn’t implemented an imaginary handbrake.

Quite when Project Natal will come out and, especially, how much it will cost (while much of its power lies in its programming, it still has high-quality sensors and a powerful processor in it) are anyone’s guess. But the fact that it already works with such a minimal amount of fuss means that the limiting factor will be the developers currently having a whale of a time working out how best to use it. It almost seems a waste to just tack it onto existing games, but it’s definitely the sort of thing that will get developers’ creative juices frothing. Surely we’ll all be able to get our hands on it next year at some point, and when we can, Microsoft will have some serious ammunition with which to attack the Wii.
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Comments

DrkStr 24 Aug 2009 18:50
1/5
So how does it compare to the eye-toy or ps-eye or wehatever its called these days?
deleted 25 Aug 2009 19:29
2/5
@DrkStr

I think that was explained in the sense that it is its own device, has its own processor and software built into it and it is developed soley for tracking the human body in its various stance and positions, thus the device on its own is capable of doing alot without the xbox even coming into the picture.

The PSeye is a camera, just a simple camera, and as such any full body tracking would need to come from the PS3`s side, plus you wouldnt have the multi array Mic and no depth of field vision via an IR sensor,

personally i am very excited as i truly can see this doing everything we thought the Wii would do at launch and didnt, full body motion tracking holds so much possiblity and remember using a controller along side this holds so much promise from new games even FPS!!
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Joji 26 Aug 2009 12:32
3/5
Thanks Spong. Now I understand it a bit more than before. Sure, its intriguing and I'll look forward to how game designers embrace it. I reckon it'll be about £40 with a game.

I still like my control pad more, though. I feel this is more likely to get flooded with casual crap, so I pray MS use the quality control, that Nintendo avoided on Wii.
tyrion 27 Aug 2009 07:38
4/5
haritori wrote:
The PSeye is a camera, just a simple camera, and as such any full body tracking would need to come from the PS3`s side, plus you wouldnt have the multi array Mic and no depth of field vision via an IR sensor,

Actually, the PS-Eye has a multi-array mic setup;

You can see it along the top.

It doesn't have a depth sensor though.
Kirk 27 Aug 2009 13:41
5/5
@haritori

I still think when all is said and done that the PS3 solution is going to provide the better all round gaming experience.

Of all the demos I have seen for the various motion control solutions this gen Sony's one clearly looked better and more applicable to all types of games than all the others.

Natal will be great for more casual/party/novel games imo but Sony's motion controller solution will not only be good for that kind of stuff but also more core/hardcore games too, and it will be better than the Wiimote/Nunchuck too as far as I'm concerned.

Time will tell but I'm going with Sony's Motion Controllers for now.
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