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[cakefoo]

I mean, you just made the poor on-screen character lose the ability to use his legs and body to hit and block with. Obviously, Ricochet wouldn't be the same game without the ability to dance and contort your whole body to play the game with.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au4d5anfjnA#t=2m

 

[MightyHedgehog]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au4d5anfjnA#t=2m

So, how about mapping that to a 3D game character who is able to do more than sit on one screen...instead of staring at video feed of yourself hitting things in 2D? I'm not sure why you're posting that link. Eyetoy is old stuff and well-explored since. I'm talking about 3D use of your movement that would be foolish to ignore given the capability of the hardware and software that Project Natal is composed from.

 

[les papillons sexuels]

Last time he talked about it, he stressed that Milo & Kate was a real game, with content, story and it will be happening. Probably not for launch, but I could see it being a fall 2011 project.

Last I heard it was an evolution of project dimitiri, an older concept that lionhead was kicking around. Basically the goal is to let players relive moments of their lives via a virtual ai based on player input, kinda like a more linear but less intrusive version of the sims.

This might mean that milo and kate might have progressive stages through the game and possibly die.

 

[Razgreez]

So, how about mapping that to a 3D game character who is able to do more than sit on one screen...instead of staring at video feed of yourself hitting things in 2D? I'm not sure why you're posting that link. Eyetoy is old stuff and well-explored since. I'm talking about 3D use of your movement that would be foolish to ignore given the capability of the hardware and software that Project Natal is composed from.

Could you show some sort of example where PN has done that though? Even something as simple as a 3D button press i.e. fully depressed, half way depressed, completely pressed sorta thing. Just curious

 

[cakefoo]

So, how about mapping that to a 3D game character who is able to do more than sit on one screen...instead of staring at video feed of yourself hitting things in 2D? I'm not sure why you're posting that link. Eyetoy is old stuff and well-explored since. I'm talking about 3D use of your movement that would be foolish to ignore given the capability of the hardware and software that Project Natal is composed from.

Your claim was that you'd lose complete control of your body; in the Kinetic video it's demonstrating that you could have at least 2D control, which is much better than no control at all.

2D body tracking in a 3D game like Ricochet would look like this:

 

[DeadGzuz]

2D body tracking in a 3D game like Ricochet would look like this:

I bet Ricochet is already using a 2D projection of the body for interaction. I seriously doubt they are using the 3rd dimension for anything other than tracking. Otherwise hitting the ball with point like a knee or edge of the hand would produce different results from a palm or arm.

 

[derFeef]

I bet Ricochet is already using a 2D projection of the body for interaction. I seriously doubt they are using the 3rd dimension for anything other than tracking. Otherwise hitting the ball with point like a knee or edge of the hand would produce different results from a palm or arm.

Yeah, you can totally make your avatars limbs bow and stretch in 3D space with 2D.

 

[Alx]

Ricochet is obviously in 3D... even if the rebounds physics are probably simplified, we have seen on several occasions that depth is taken into account, for example with people smashing the ball toward the ground when they "serve".

 

[AndyD]

Ricochet is obviously in 3D... even if the rebounds physics are probably simplified, we have seen on several occasions that depth is taken into account, for example with people smashing the ball toward the ground when they "serve".

That can still be done in 2D. A downward movement toward the floor is what you refer to. What we need to see is a forward slow/fast arm/leg movement resulting in a slow/fast bounce.

 

[gofreak]

Sure, you can track where the Move wands are...and those act as your hands, but unless you're going to require the well-lit conditions for your playing environment that a normal RGB cam, like PS Eye, requires in order to see the player, the Move ball points are only going to provide a rough point of reference to guess where your arms, shoulders, and neck and head are. Natal has no such weak point in this way since it can work in the dark or very bright and/or unevenly-lit rooms thanks to the depth pickup inherent to its design.

I'd hold your horses on assumptions about Natal's (in)sensitivity to lighting conditions. Last I read the tracking uses RGB data also - that automatically implies at least some dependency on the quality of that data, and thus lighting conditions. It may not be exclusively dependent on RGB like eye is, but I wouldn't assume independence from it yet based on what's been reported.

The range of conditions PS eye is usable for in this context I think is also reasonable enough to allow devs to use that if they wish.

So, Move could have more accurate sub-pixel positioning of the wands to represent your hands, but has to require the buttons and triggers to act in the normal video game fashion and has limited to no sight beyond that unless you want to require well-setup lighting that I can find impossible to believe most people already have in their gaming environment.

Eyetoy didn't sell into millions of homes because they were perfectly lit. It's more robust than is sometimes suggested, and PSeye has made advances over it also.

As for buttons, you say it like it's a bad thing, but buttons at the finger tips are an advantage. If you need to trigger something very reliably, a button is still by far the best way to do that.

The detected positions in the space in front of the camera for the wands' balls and their feedback of angle is the only real data to rely on in all lighting situations...and it will have limited accuracy for everything that's estimated from that data.

This is true, turn off the lights and you just have the spheres. But turn on the lights and, again, I think the operating environment would be good enough for that not to prevent a dev from looking at data beyond the wands.

I mean, I know I'll have some reply who says 'I had to setup 20 1000W spotlights in my living room before it would work!', but I think typically most people are able to get these things working OK in their environment. A consumer product wouldn't have already spawned out of this and been successful in its own way if this were some huge showstopper.

Natal can pick up your entire body because it's tracking yourself to match a skeleton to map an on-screen avatar/game character to or just virtual hands and such while doing things like pinning your position in front of the camera a point in the game environment. That means that any number of simultaneously-tracked stances, movements, and special gestures can be acted upon and considered for input for your game character at the same time with more natural movement and control because you aren't limited to buttons and sticks.

*snip*

In any case, you could be tracked with Natal doing multiple things at once with just your body and still communicate specific spatial relationship to the game world at the same time, like walking along a virtual path on-screen that corresponds to the space in front of the camera...sort of like augmented reality without the need for the looking-at-myself-in-the-mirror effect as your avatar/game character would face into the screen, too, if that's how it was designed.

The sum of your points here seems to be that Natal can track you doing multiple different things simultaneously...but that's not really some unique characteristic. If I jump to the left and turn my head at the same time, a PSeye (with the right software...like the demo Marks did) would be able to detect that.

The bit I snipped, about putting your leg or foot in different areas around you to indicate movement in that direction, that is something a PSeye would have problems with for sure.

Move is limited primarily by its weakness of standard camera pickup which needs adequate lighting to see you and has no consistent way to track space and distance without the wands and those only represent two points, one for each controller if you are using them. It could guesstimate distance to the camera by comparing relative size versus a capture reference point before the session begins. Natal has much better vision in both hardware and software because of its focus on nothing but the player without the aid of devices or props...which it could still use if desired. It's easy to forget that there's nothing wrong with the possibility of Natal plus controller, too.

True, although that wasn't part of comparison that was offered. Regarding though spatial awareness of your body... eye's relative weakness here would be depth, but it's not helpless. If I step back, my torso will get smaller, but remain in proportion. If I step forward it'll get bigger. If I lean forward my head will get bigger and my torso shorter (or disappear depending). If I step backward my head will get smaller and my torso shorter. It is possible to track these changes and correlate them to this body movement. The difference with eye is that the granularity of depth-change detection is going to be coarser...but whether this yields a game-breaking difference or not might be different question.

A lot of eyetoy games didn't even try to identify parts of the body discretely, they just looked for motion, but as we've seen with Kung Fu Live, at least, segmentation of the body and labelling of parts with bounding boxes is possible with eye.

Oh, I know the basic gist of what I described could be achieved with Move, just as it could be done in a rougher fashion with Wii.

No, it could be done a lot better than on Wii Wii is entirely blind and the original Wiimote, at least, is like a man who is spun around every few seconds, with only passing relative knowledge of where it's at. With eye and move you can know very accurately the position in space in front of the TV of the controller (hands), and you can also track head/torso, and indeed even legs (though in a much more limited way). The difference of course is that for the parts of your body that go in front of other parts, you're going to difficulty with eye (arms and legs). With a move in your hand, though, that's solved for the arms, and then the only difference I can see between what's being done in Richochet and was done in the Marks 'robot' demo, for upper body, was how well elbows would be dealt with. Elbows are generally a pain in the ass for any tracking because there's so much potential for occlusion, so Marks' demo doesn't even bother with it. It'll be interesting to see just how reliably Natal 'gets' elbows.

There's nothing stopping prop-use with Natal, but even without it, the accuracy of position should be more than good enough for most gameplay scenarios, IMO. What if I want to elbow someone? Shoulder charge them? Grab them with my arms? Use a palm strike as opposed to a close-fisted jab or even alternate between the two? What if that palm could be tracked to trap and capture an incoming strike as opposed a closed fist that is detected as a purely offensive move? Then there are my legs and ability to dodge an incoming attack with more realistic flexibility that accounting for my whole body's movement with full skeletal tracking would. What if I want to hop over a sweep kick? Or how about the crane kick from Karate Kid? :lol Joking...

Some of those things are problematic with Move. Legs for example, because we can't really ask you to strap moves to them (whatever Sony's patents might say ). But Shoulder charge? Sure (at least where there's overt translation of the shoulder/torso). Opening and closing palm? If that were required and I was making a game for Move, I'd map that to a button. It'll probably be far more reliable/unambiguous than the state detection of your hand Natal offers as your hand moves around and becomes more or less visible (and funnily enough, in the Marks robot demo the trigger was indeed mapped to opening and closing the palm, and because it's nice and analog you can a nice range of open-ness and closed-ness). Elbow? Very tricky with move. Jumping could actually I think be detected with eye. Ducking certainly.

Sure, man. But again, it's a bit too simple to simply lop off the level of body tracking and estimation Natal brings to the table in order to make Move look better in the comparison. I mean, you just made the poor on-screen character lose the ability to use his legs and body to hit and block with.

I'm not and didn't intend that. I intended to make the comparison on what eye and move in total could offer beyond just the hands, though I thought it was worth noting that for the hands, having a controller here I think is an advantage, and will probably remain so for a while. As I said in my first post, the rest of the tracking is not as good or as general as Natal, but it's also not absent, and if you're wanting to make a game with more full body awareness in tandem with the controllers, you definitely have options.

As I also said, though, Sony isn't as interested at the moment in encouraging development along those lines - or so it seems. They seem to be focussing on building a bridge to Wii which strategically might make sense, since that's where the target content's at right now. But as a technological comparison it's a bit more in the middle between the two approaches (camera | controller).

 

[Vinterbird]

Last I heard it was an evolution of project dimitiri, an older concept that lionhead was kicking around. Basically the goal is to let players relive moments of their lives via a virtual ai based on player input, kinda like a more linear but less intrusive version of the sims.

This might mean that milo and kate might have progressive stages through the game and possibly die.

Dimitri was once, back in 04, a game that later turned into a AI concept/project around 06 that evolved into Milo & Kate. So yes, it originates back to Dimitri, but there's not a lot of that idea left a part from "true character interaction".

 

[Alx]

That can still be done in 2D. A downward movement toward the floor is what you refer to. What we need to see is a forward slow/fast arm/leg movement resulting in a slow/fast bounce.

Couldn't find better than this :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE9NVo7fdQ8

At 0:18 you can see that a motion in the Z direction results in a faster ball, while when it comes back, it only bounces on the static knee and is slower...

There is zero chance that Ricochet is only 2D : it's the main technical demo, its only purpose is to show the point of Natal as a 3D sensor.

 

[cakefoo]

Couldn't find better than this :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE9NVo7fdQ8

At 0:18 you can see that a motion in the Z direction results in a faster ball, while when it comes back, it only bounces on the static knee and is slower...

There is zero chance that Ricochet is only 2D : it's the main technical demo, its only purpose is to show the point of Natal as a 3D sensor.

You'll want to direct your responses at DeadGzuz. He's the only one who made the claim that Richochet was 2D. All Andy and I were saying was that Eyetoy could pull off a pretty good Richochet game, and as a counter to MightyHedgehog's claim that Eye can't track the body.

 

[les papillons sexuels]

I bet Ricochet is already using a 2D projection of the body for interaction. I seriously doubt they are using the 3rd dimension for anything other than tracking. Otherwise hitting the ball with point like a knee or edge of the hand would produce different results from a palm or arm.

considering they're measuring the force of how hard you hit the ball, they would need to track acceleration of your body movements, and I can't really thinkg of 2d way the measure that...

(maybe using a grid near the hand and calculating the speed at which the hand covers the grid?)

 

[DeadGzuz]

Couldn't find better than this :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE9NVo7fdQ8

At 0:18 you can see that a motion in the Z direction results in a faster ball, while when it comes back, it only bounces on the static knee and is slower...

There is zero chance that Ricochet is only 2D : it's the main technical demo, its only purpose is to show the point of Natal as a 3D sensor.

Good point, though it is still probably not using the 3D contour of the body. I doubt the ball would deflect sideways off something round like the side of a head or belly. They probably collapse the 3D data into a 2D cloud with velocity components.

 

[Dabanton]

Good to see this thread is back on track.

People are actually debating again.

 

[PSGames]

I'd hold your horses on assumptions about Natal's (in)sensitivity to lighting conditions. Last I read the tracking uses RGB data also - that automatically implies at least some dependency on the quality of that data, and thus lighting conditions. It may not be exclusively dependent on RGB like eye is, but I wouldn't assume independence from it yet based on what's been reported.

It's been reported on several occasions that Natal works in complete darkness. There are even impressions where the lights were turned on and off and Natal still worked.

 

[Dabanton]

It's been reported on several occasions that Natal works in complete darkness. There are even impressions where the lights were turned on and off and Natal still worked.

Yeah i seem to remember there is video of Kudo playing it and demonstrating that it works in different light situations.

 

[derFeef]

Yeah i seem to remember there is video of Kudo playing it and demonstrating that it works in different light situations.

Hm, I do not know about that as I have yet to see a non-glitchy Natal video. Hope we get that at E3.

 

[professor_t]

I'm almost completely bereft of enthusiasm when it comes to Natal. However, even from my pessimistic perspective it seems peculiar that some posters are spending an AWFUL lot of time and effort trying to downplay any possible upside of the device.

Fuck, if I were PAID to do it, I don't think I could post as much as they do about something that ostensibly doesn't interest me and, in my opinion, is a lock to fail miserably. Very interesting.

 

[Graphics Horse]

Good ricochet video up there, shows it off much better than any of the other videos.

It's been reported on several occasions that Natal works in complete darkness. There are even impressions where the lights were turned on and off and Natal still worked.

Yes the tracking should work perfectly fine, but Milo will start to ask why you're always wearing black.

 

[soco]

Hm, I do not know about that as I have yet to see a non-glitchy Natal video. Hope we get that at E3.

there've been a few non-glitchy ones out there, but the system will be glitchy even after launch. the wii still has shitloads of problems, but people just overlook them or adjust things to get it better.

 

[derFeef]

there've been a few non-glitchy ones out there, but the system will be glitchy even after launch. the wii still has shitloads of problems, but people just overlook them or adjust things to get it better.

No doubt. The system itself seem to work perfectly, there is just that "limbs out of bounds" that bothers me because I see it on screen (in that ricochet game at least).

 

[2 Minutes Turkish]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but do the people bemoaning the rumoured price understand that you only have to buy ONE of them?

I mean, you pay once, and up to four people (or more depending on the game?) can play straight away.

With Move/Wii, if you want more than one person, you keep paying. Even for 2 people with ywo Move/Wii remotes and two nunchucks would be more expensive than Natal.

So I don't see how it can be 'too expensive' even at $150US. It's not exactly cheap at that price, but given you only buy one and it covers 4 people, it doesn't seem so bad in context.

 

[Diablohead]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but do the people bemoaning the rumoured price understand that you only have to buy ONE of them?

I mean, you pay once, and up to four people (or more depending on the game?) can play straight away.

With Move/Wii, if you want more than one person, you keep paying. Even for 2 people with ywo Move/Wii remotes and two nunchucks would be more expensive than Natal.

So I don't see how it can be 'too expensive' even at $150US. It's not exactly cheap at that price, but given you only buy one and it covers 4 people, it doesn't seem so bad in context.

Too expensive for me to even think about it, even if I only ever have to buy one.

If 360 controllers were £100 i'd also only own the one that came with my console, bad logic.

 

[derFeef]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but do the people bemoaning the rumoured price understand that you only have to buy ONE of them?

I mean, you pay once, and up to four people (or more depending on the game?) can play straight away.

With Move/Wii, if you want more than one person, you keep paying. Even for 2 people with ywo Move/Wii remotes and two nunchucks would be more expensive than Natal.

So I don't see how it can be 'too expensive' even at $150US. It's not exactly cheap at that price, but given you only buy one and it covers 4 people, it doesn't seem so bad in context.

Uh no I have said that many times, it´s a very good point. For that MOVE boxing game you need two MOVE sticks afaik, so....

Too expensive for me to even think about it, even if I only ever have to buy one.

If 360 controllers were £100 i'd also only own the one that came with my console, bad logic.

I still think that price is wrong. If not, its a bit too high I agree there.

 

[FrankT]

E3 2010: Milo Will Be in Attendance

Lionhead gets sarcastic, people get confused.

Earlier today Lionhead decided to get a little crazy on Twitter and try sarcasm on for size. The group tweeted "No we are not showing ANYTHING at #E3 no #Fable3 no #Milo no-thing, not even an announcement. NOTHING. You got that? We're not even going."

Some people took that at face value and did the Internet equivalent of weeping. It was, of course, sarcastic and Lionhead will indeed be at E3. Things were later cleared up. Hooray!

We already knew that Fable III would be at the show, but this comes as the first confirmation of sorts that Milo will make another appearance. Milo, a game where you interact with a virtual boy via Project Natal, was unveiled at E3 of 2009 but has not been heard from since.

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/109/1095582p1.html

 

[CrunchinJelly]

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/109/1095582p1.html

Come on, man... we all knew Fable and Milo would be there.

 

[2 Minutes Turkish]

If 360 controllers were £100 i'd also only own the one that came with my console, bad logic.

This makes no sense.

If regular 360 controllers were that much, of COURSE you'd only own the one. But that one controller would only allow ONE person to play.

This 'controller' allows 4.

How many pound would 4 360 controllers be?

In Australia, 4 360 controllers would set you back $240. If Natal releases here for $150AU, I don't think that's such a stretch.

 

[FrankT]

Come on, man... we all knew Fable and Milo would be there.

Fable yea. Milo heh I wasn't so sure about. I mean that was certainly one of those things that we could see about/hear about like once from MS then gone.

 

[kadotsu]

This makes no sense.

If regular 360 controllers were that much, of COURSE you'd only own the one. But that one controller would only allow ONE person to play.

This 'controller' allows 4.

How many pound would 4 360 controllers be?

In Australia, 4 360 controllers would set you back $240. If Natal releases here for $150AU, I don't think that's such a stretch.

This argument is, while factualy correct, flawed. I remember a similar argument was made when the PS3 was in the 400+ pricerange. The complete featureset and its inherent value was in fact higher than that of competitors, but the initial price was too high of a barrier for the consumer and value did not matter.
The rumored price of 150$ is IMO too high for market success even 120$ might be too high. Nintendo could probably drop the price of the base Wii SKU to 99$ at this point and still make a smal profit. They also have a better brand and the value seems alot higher if you compare a console against a periphal.

But until I have seen what Natal (and more importantly Natal Games) can really do and its final retail price I'm doomed to talk out of my ass.

 

[2 Minutes Turkish]

This argument is, while factualy correct, flawed. I remember a similar argument was made when the PS3 was in the 400+ pricerange. The complete featureset and its inherent value was in fact higher than that of competitors, but the initial price was too high of a barrier for the consumer and value did not matter.
The rumored price of 150$ is IMO too high for market success even 120$ might be too high. Nintendo could probably drop the price of the base Wii SKU to 99$ at this point and still make a smal profit. They also have a better brand and the value seems alot higher if you compare a console against a periphal.

But until I have seen what Natal (and more importantly Natal Games) can really do and its final retail price I'm doomed to talk out of my ass.

Ironically I was someone who defended the PS3s price. :lol

 

[les papillons sexuels]

This argument is, while factualy correct, flawed. I remember a similar argument was made when the PS3 was in the 400+ pricerange. The complete featureset and its inherent value was in fact higher than that of competitors, but the initial price was too high of a barrier for the consumer and value did not matter.
The rumored price of 150$ is IMO too high for market success even 120$ might be too high. Nintendo could probably drop the price of the base Wii SKU to 99$ at this point and still make a smal profit. They also have a better brand and the value seems alot higher if you compare a console against a periphal.

But until I have seen what Natal (and more importantly Natal Games) can really do and its final retail price I'm doomed to talk out of my ass.

what if MS throws in a game, then the pricing structure is near that of rockband/world tour, and I don't think those games suffered too heavily from it's price range.

 

[SlaughterX]

So I heard you have to put stuffs on the floor around you to make this thing work... any truth to that?

 

[gofreak]

So I heard you have to put stuffs on the floor around you to make this thing work... any truth to that?

No...

 

[chespace]

So I heard you have to put stuffs on the floor around you to make this thing work... any truth to that?

Nope.

 

[ViolentP]

So I heard you have to put stuffs on the floor around you to make this thing work... any truth to that?

Dignity.

 

[Graphics Horse]

So I heard you have to put stuffs on the floor around you to make this thing work... any truth to that?

You're thinking of the Sega Activator.

 

[REMEMBER CITADEL]

So I heard you have to put stuffs on the floor around you to make this thing work... any truth to that?

Yes, you have to light five black candles positioned at the tips of an imaginary pentagram.

 

[Mr.Green]

So I heard you have to put stuffs on the floor around you to make this thing work... any truth to that?

Dignity.

:lol

I'm a proud member of the Natal Defense Force but I literally laughed out loud.

 

[ViolentP]

:lol

I'm a proud member of the Natal Defense Force but I literally laughed out loud.

You sir, make me proud. One of the few left that still know how to take a joke. Well done.

 

[Mr.Green]

Nope.

AH HA! You didn't expect to go unnoticed eh?

So Che, Natal Head-tracking in Forza 3 confirmed?

 

[Kafel]

che, you're going to E3 ?

 

[Stinkles]

So I heard you have to put stuffs on the floor around you to make this thing work... any truth to that?

Just Faberge eggs.

 

[shinnn]

che, you're going to E3 ?

E3 party celebrating the history of the Forza franchise and a peek at the future of racing games.
http://forums.forzamotorsport.net/forums/thread/3982449.aspx

Natal in FM4 confirmed

 

[InaudibleWhispa]

Wouldn't surprise me. Back in 09, Forza Motorsport 3 director Dan Greenawalt said

The thing that excites me the most is Natal. To me it all comes down to that core vision I pitched back in 2002 - turn gamers into car loves and car lovers into gamers. What really excites me as a designer is that car passion.

What gets me excited about Natal is getting people involved with cars - touching cars, opening doors, smashing cars, taking parts out, that visceral feeling of moving and playing inside a car. Is that what Forza 4 is? I have no idea, but I'm excited about it because I can get the controller out of the way and get people even more excited about cars.

The in early 2010, a job listing went up at Microsoft Game studio's looking for a Business Development Manager at Forza's Turn 10 Studios who will "drive high quality game content for our Next Generation games including the Natal platform".

 

[Skiesofwonder]

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/109/1095582p1.html

Fuck yeah!!

 

[Mr.Green]

The hell with Milo. I'd rather play Claire.

 

[a Master Ninja]

The hell with Milo. I'd rather play Claire.

 

[TheOddOne]

E3 party celebrating the history of the Forza franchise and a peek at the future of racing games.
http://forums.forzamotorsport.net/forums/thread/3982449.aspx

Natal in FM4 confirmed

Moah like Natal in PGR CONFIRMED.