I know there's already an E3 thread, but I felt this deserved it's own.

Now, is it just me, or are Microsoft basically taking motion capture technology, which has been around for a long, long time, even before Sony's EyeToy which this reminds me of, and trying to repackage it as some newly found technology which will "change the gaming industry".

Furthermore, I really don't see why we'd want motion capture technology anyway. I know it must be great for people with living rooms the size of most palaces, but for people like me, who actually have furniture, it's going to be incredibly hard to find the motivation to get everything out of the way so I can interact fully with a video game.

This brings me onto another point. I am lazy. I know you must be thinking "lolmetoo, but what's that to do with video games, you handsome and charismatic man?" Well, I'll tell you. I don't want to move. Infact, preferrably, I'd like some wireless technology that I can use whilst comfortably snuggled under a nest of covers.

My friend has a Wii, and for some reason, his living room was the perfect size for me to test out some of Japan's finest exports safely. Through my very scientific, and quite often loud and obnoxious tests, I discovered that after playing a game (Madworld in particular) I suddenly, after 20 minutes of playing, had no motivation to continue the game, infact, I wanted a nice sit down, and perhaps a plate of sandwiches. With the rediscovery of motion capture technology upon us, I feel inclined to simply just read books instead of having to expend a pyramid's worth of effort on a hobby which I'm afraid I have been neglecting of late.

As a wise man once said; "If I wanted to use my preciously hoarded energy to play sports games, I'd have bought a ball"


Now that I've said all of that, does anybody have any opinions on Project NATAL, or indeed motion capture technology on the whole?

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I only wrote this because I hate you.

I think the true strength of NATAL is going to come from a combination of motion capture, speech recognition, and the standard Xbox controller.  On it's own I agree that it isn't all that appealing. 

It's the small things I'm looking for.  Maybe playing 'Call of Duty: Still Milking WW2' and shouting out, "I'm out of ammo" and watching a fellow soldier toss a magazine to my character.  From your first person perspective you see a hand reach out to catch it if you reach out irl.

Back when BioWare was showing off Mass Effect a few years ago they had a system in the dialogue trees that altered the cut scenes with your characters actions.  Such as cutting a NPC's speech off by choosing the aggressive option and physically threatening them.  Something like that could be done using the motion camera and player gestures.

Assuming NATAL is capable of detecting hand gestures accurately and consistantly, it could also be the solution to every game that has struggled to get their controls onto the few 360 controller buttons.  It may be possible for games that have dozens (or hundreds) of spells/attacks/actions to map all of them to a unique hand gesture.

Things like that are what make me excited for NATAL.

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Are you an ODST (fanboy)?

Holy mother of god, you've just sprung a thought into my head.

If the motion capture is , you could interact with the HUD/UI on RTS games, and it'd be more realistic, and you'd feel more like a genuine leader.

Awkwardly, that would take away from what Peter Molyneux originally envisioned with Black & White when he wanted a completely menuless interface.

I still remain skeptical though, but I've certainly opened up to the idea after considering some of your thoughts.

And hell, I know it's been said to death about a billion other control mechanisms, but OMG LIGHTSABRE COMBAT.

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I only wrote this because I hate you.

I certainly like where NATAL is heading. It's very much a direction I want to see home control interfaces taking, once the industry gets over the whole flappy-arm energy game thing and starts doing something sensible with it. My problem with it is that the Motion Capture is, well, a bit flakey. Alright, a lot flakey. The MoCap demo with the microsoft bloke waving his arms about and the Mii thing (sorry, i genuinely can;t remember what the Xbox avatar things are supposed to be called) really didn't work very well at all.

My problem is that it lacks any sort of fine control and - I suspect - takes up a fair amount of processing power in doing this, so I've got to question just how it will be in terms of game use. Well, in terms of the kinds of games about at the moment - obviously the mocap/voice interface allows for other kinds of games to be developed around the input system, which in the long term is simply priceless. Once it works

Conversely, Sony's system seems to offer a genuinely level of accuracy - certainly enough to play RTSs and other games traditionally needing mouse-levels of fine control to play if the brief demo is anything to go by. I'd need to see more before I believed it though. And, to be frank, my big problem with Sony's system is that while it seems to work very well, it's just not as ambitious as Microsoft's MoCap system.

I'd love to see Natal work though. Unfortunately I just don't think Microsoft will be able to make MoCap work well enough to allow for much more than basic coarse input, so I question it's usefulness in gaming terms for the forseeable. But I really, really hope they prove me wrong.

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AND - just to rant a little - Screw You, emontional recognition!

So I'm playing Civilization 5 on Quite Tricky mode, and because of my usual grasp of the subtle interplay of political mechanisms I'm now fighting a terrible war on nine fronts. My last hope for salvation is to ally myself with the might of the German War Machine, so in desperation I call a parley with Count Otto von Bismarck. It is a tense and serious moment. The entire of my nation is depending on my delicate handling of this.

Only I can't keep a straight face because Bismarck has a big nose, Pepto Bismol adverts keep popping into my head, and I'm still giggling because I'm unreasonably pleased with myself for calling my leader Mr Wonk.

The Emotional recognition systems built into the game's diplomacy engine notice this, and a terrible affront is played out. Seas of enormous Panzers hove into view over a new tenth front, and I'm now completely encircled by squads of armoured bastards.


Meanwhile on Call of Duty 18 the horror of war stalks the land casting a dark pall on one and all. I should look like I've got seven different kinds of shat-my-pants going on. Only I'm having far too much fun and grinning like a loon because the explosions are really ace, so my squad won't take any of my orders seriously. Eventually one of them gets it into his head that it might be a idea to ditch the smiling freak, and the whole team makes a sudden break for the Swiss border, leaving me to the tender ministrations of the Nazi Shocktroopers who also can't figure out what I find so amusing.


The point is, I find games fun, and I probably look and sound like I'm enjoying myself during them. I don't want to think about the expression on my face, or the tone of my voice, each time I want to do something when I'm playing. I'm not a bloody actor, and I have no desire to have to concentrate on trying to be one every five minutes - it's just going to drag me out of the game world.

So screw you, emotional recognition.







Yes, I am aware that this is almost completely missing the point and Emotional recognition is something that would obviously only be used in appropriate situations, but I was bored and felt like having an unjustified rant. But the instant I have to start gurning at a camera during an Elder Scrolls game conversation, someone is getting Bethesda Blu-Ray straight through their forehead.

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So what do you think then which is better,
Project Natal or Sony's motion controller.

Personally I think Natal has some nice features: facial and voice recognition, full body and 3d space tracking.

However I think sometimes I would just rather have some buttons in my hands, I must say I was very impressed by the precision of the sony controllers and the archery looked cool.

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PM me if you want an invite to lockerz!

matneee:

AND - just to rant a little.

Actually my first thought when I read about it was similar. I don't want to act all the time and I actually think I am not a actor either. Would this mean I would totally suck at such games then?

On another point, there is a question that really interests me about the motion capturing and the voice recognition. How do you make sure the gestures you make are meant to be game commands rather than you scratching your nose? How do you make sure that not every word you say is interpreted as a command because you talk to somebody else in the room? Maybe they introduce somethin like in the Holodeck of StarTrek where they have to say "Computer" to make sure there is a command following ... difficult I would say.

Sonys approach seems more secure in this respect because you still have some kind of controller dildo in your hand.

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"*** the World and drop the Neutron!"

I like 'em both, really. Natal looks like it could produce some interesting stuff, interesting like some of the things on PSN are. Fl0wer, for example. I'm thinking short, novel 'toylike' experiences rather than traditional games. I have my reservations about it being useful in 'gamer' games though.

Sony's stick looks like it could almost be the 3D mouse that finally gets rid of the desk that I was on about a few weeks back. The one that was - according to one eejit - utter fantasy Looks a lot more useful in 'game' terms, and the level of control it looks like it may offer opens up quite a few more possibilities than the basic Wiimote has thus far.

Not that any of this matters, mind you - the things would only get any kind of significant 3rd party support if they were released with a console so that all users had them. If they're just optional add-ons then there's really not going to be much produced for them. I'd certainly be surprised if anything dedicated for them came out from a 3rd party. Maybe next gen consoles will have them as standard, then we can see some real use.

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Project Natal has to be one of the coolest things I've seen at E3, so yea I love the idea. I can understand where your coming from though Motivator. I would have to jostle around a couch or two to make room to stand in front of my TV as well, and some mornings those nice warm covers are just too much of a hassle to move. I still love the idea though. The immersion and level of control that is possible for some games is unbelievable. The first thought that came to my mind when Peter came out to demonstrate it with Mylo was how awesome a Black and White game would be with it. Actually using your hand for all the actions. Getting to really slap your creature around, or tickle if that's what your in to. Of course it would have to be put on the 360, but with Natal it wouldn't be such a big deal, it gives you the level of control that hand controllers can't, making RTS games possible for systems. It might even work off my freshman 15(more like 40) that I have put on.  Definitely my favorite part of E3 this year, even though it probably wont be around till 2012, and then the world is coming to and end, so I guess Natal is the doom of us all.

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http://community.lionhead.com/forums/thread/2865424.aspx

If they do it right, they could even have your entire face, gurn and all scanned onto your characters head in multiplayer games, that would certainly be weird.

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I only wrote this because I hate you.

For those who are interested, the 1up cast questions Todd Howard, Fallout 3 and Elder Scrolls series executive producer (Bethesda), about what he thinks games will do with NATAL.  It's at about the 27 minute mark, link.

Basically he thinks creating virtual characters is a long way off; "the whole interacting with another character is the thing we are furthest from".  He thinks that games will use it for simple things, like giving squad commands in Rainbow Six with your hands rather than the d-pad.

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Are you an ODST (fanboy)?

fablier:

For those who are interested, the 1up cast questions Todd Howard, Fallout 3 and Elder Scrolls series executive producer (Bethesda), about what he thinks games will do with NATAL.  It's at about the 27 minute mark, link.

Basically he thinks creating virtual characters is a long way off; "the whole interacting with another character is the thing we are furthest from".  He thinks that games will use it for simple things, like giving squad commands in Rainbow Six with your hands rather than the d-pad.

I would have though they'd have used it for sword and sheilds attacks lol. but hey there you go, what about voice commands, any news on that.

Anways onto the natal thingy mijig,

first off how much do you think this is going to cost, I'd estimate at about £80/$130 optimisticly of cource.

 Also as I mentioned on another thread, will natal actually work??, When I'm in a fighting game, and I just start waving my hands around, how does it know wether I'm attacking or just flapping around, same with when I throw a kick. This is the problem the eye toy had that kept it from being brilliant.

The voice recognition will also be a ***, will you have to say stuff extremely clearly for it to understand and will it understand different accents, this was the main problem in Tom clancys End War, When ever i'd ask it to do some think, like Unit1=Attack=unit3 with my Barnsley accent it wouldnt understand me and it had me sending units all over the place becuase it couldnt understand. 

These little problems are whats niggeling at the back of my head that sort of lowers my expectations of it, although I do really hope it is like the tech demo showed lol.

If it works like it should work though it will probably destory the Wii lol.

The fact that I'm a martail artist and I enjoy martial arts give me an idea perfect for this little natal project. A game that can teach you martial arts, Imagine it, getting a set of instructors concidered to be the best at each style to do it for you, basicly it would be like an interactive exercise movie with the instructor of which style you picked talking to you and showing you what to do and instructing you, but becuase of the capabilities that this gadget says that it can do, it would be able to monitor your peformance to see if you are it right or wrong and be able to correct you, it would place minigames in there for you to try out the moves learned during training, little sparring matched with virtual sparring partners. The game probably only be able to do stand up styles unless of cource your with a partner, as I dont think it would be able to track takedowns and submission moves. Also clinch moves would be a pain but I think it would be able to pull it off sorta. Of cource the game wouldnt be as as going to a gym and learning it, but it would be for people who dont want to go to the gym or can be bothered going to a gym, it would also be for me when I miss training to catch up alittle lol.

 

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"IrishMorn"
If Adon and Sagat step in....ah, what the hell, I'll get drunk and join in on that one.

Sovvolf:

If it works like it should work though it will probably destory the Wii lol.

Even if it works well I don't think it will really hurt the Wii.  I think they will have to release a new console with the motion camera included in order to stand a chance.

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Are you an ODST (fanboy)?

fablier:

Sovvolf:

If it works like it should work though it will probably destory the Wii lol.

Even if it works well I don't think it will really hurt the Wii.  I think they will have to release a new console with the motion camera included in order to stand a chance.

The reason I say it will destroy the Wii, is that most poeple play the we becuase of the novelty, mostly a partys or when drunk, your mum plays it, your grandmum plays it, but its becuase of the whole motion sensor its got built in, but really all you really doing is pointing an advanced laser pen at a camera, with natal your actually in the game, it tracks you not a laser, unless Nintendo has somethink like this on the build people are going to switch over to the 360 for this. Thats my thoery any way, I could be wrong lol.

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"IrishMorn"
If Adon and Sagat step in....ah, what the hell, I'll get drunk and join in on that one.

Sovvolf:

fablier:

Sovvolf:

If it works like it should work though it will probably destory the Wii lol.

Even if it works well I don't think it will really hurt the Wii.  I think they will have to release a new console with the motion camera included in order to stand a chance.

The reason I say it will destroy the Wii, is that most poeple play the we becuase of the novelty, mostly a partys or when drunk, your mum plays it, your grandmum plays it, but its becuase of the whole motion sensor its got built in, but really all you really doing is pointing an advanced laser pen at a camera, with natal your actually in the game, it tracks you not a laser, unless Nintendo has somethink like this on the build people are going to switch over to the 360 for this. Thats my thoery any way, I could be wrong lol.

There is still the price difference! Wii wins because it has everthing in the package you need and is cheaper. It could work if they make a package for the 360 with the camera and some games, the category of Wii-Fit, and sell it at the price of the Wii. But they already lost the casuals to Nintendo and I think it is too late to get them back in this generation of consoles. Most Wii owners also don't seem to buy a second console just for the sake of it or improved features.

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"*** the World and drop the Neutron!"

The Wii also has the benefit of being a household name for casual gaming, like the iPod has for mp3 players. It would be difficult to shift the public consciousness to the Xbox for games that the Wii offers.

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The only thing worse than beating a dead horse is betting on one.

True somethink small would be difficult, I doubt the fact that the 360 is getting sky on it would shift them or that you can order movies, but some think like this project natal if its working how its meant to, I honestly think it could do it, Like I said most people by the Wii becuase of the novelty the feel of being in the game, this natal thing is the same but more advanced then putting a laser pen to a motion sensor.

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"IrishMorn"
If Adon and Sagat step in....ah, what the hell, I'll get drunk and join in on that one.

If we can really scan in everything it would be damm fun to use your *** as a sword in some game.

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maggot:

If we can really scan in everything it would be damm fun to use your *** as a sword in some game.

lmao I know it sounds immature but I think i'd try some think like that for shits and giggles lol, but ive also got my own sword at home lol. The problem I see with all this scan thing is that it more the likely takes a picture of the item and apllies it as a texture, so If I was to do my sword I would have to hide my fingers, and whats to stop it from taking a picture of the background instead.

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"IrishMorn"
If Adon and Sagat step in....ah, what the hell, I'll get drunk and join in on that one.

Personally I wouldn't even want to see NATAL used for casual games like the Wii. Let them try this technology in more serious and subtle ways. Xbox was never marketed towards the same crowd as the Wii nor should it be. I'd think the majority of Xbox gamers don't want to flap their arms around like crazy to move around some cutesy character that resembles Mario. I hope that game designers who plan to use NATAL agree with me there. We allready know what motion capture can do for the casual gamer's mom. Now I'd like to see what this technology can do for the more serious gamer.

I find it incredibly lame that MS and Sony are following Nintendo, I know that casual and non gamer crowd pool is huge, but come on now...

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I like the idea of where natal, and the games industry is headed. I liked natal better than Sony's motion controller for 1 main reason. Video games have always been about pushing the bar in interactivity. While I admit, Sony's motion controller would have a more practical application to begin with and will definitely be more precise, natal is headed in a totally new direction. Sony's strikes me as a super wiimote. That's a shallow comparison, but that's the impression I got. It focuses on detecting the wand, not on the whole body. Microsoft's just seems more revolutionary, with more application in the future. And that scanning thing is pretty cool too.

Am I the only one who doesn't like where NATAL is heading. When I play my Xbox (even though it has the RRoD) it is a relaxation method not a get fit plan. With the controller in my hand I am able to do things that I cant in real life plus with minimal effort. Call me lazy but you'd be pretty p*ssed if you had to power your TV by using a treadmill and change the channel with star jumps. When the Guardian reported on it (even though they know nothing about games as they are stuck up ars*s, they think GTA4 was , they just stick to the main stream because they think thats what the "youth" wants to hear when I'm the only youth that even reads it..... anyway, sorry) they said it may replace the controller completely or at least call the end to the controller. Yes, Milo was but please do not get rid of the controller, we need it to be that hero who saves the day in every game.

P.S I'm back from my ban and exams, ain't it ....

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"Sell a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man how to fish, you ruin a wonderful business opportunity." - Marx

I#m actually looking forward to the 360 brining fitness style games out and what not, but yes I do understand were your coming from Pat, I like to relax and just play games confortably, I'm sure that they wont make Natal mandatory for most 360 games, like ive said before, most poeple like you've said just like to relax when playing games, and not every one will be able to afford this Natal device, but it will have some interesting games I should think, for when people are in the mood to play them, games like fight night or mortal kombat would be awsome for this lol.

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"IrishMorn"
If Adon and Sagat step in....ah, what the hell, I'll get drunk and join in on that one.

But lets just say that they made Street Fighter IV (for example) compatable with NATAL. Could you, with you current fighting ability and flexibility beat Sagat on hard. I know I couldn't.

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"Sell a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man how to fish, you ruin a wonderful business opportunity." - Marx