Details On Natal's Motion Capture Technology

An anonymous reader writes "Following yesterday's announcement of a late 2010 launch date for Natal, more details are emerging on exactly how Natal works. Alex Kipman, the project's lead developer, explains that Natal uses only 10-15% of the Xbox's resources to calibrate to a new player inside 160 milliseconds, track one or two players simultaneously, and use rudimentary knowledge of body anatomy to estimate where hands or other body parts are even when they can't be seen by Natal — for instance when they are held behind the back."

How obfuscated protocol?

[sznupi]

The aspect of how Natal communicates with X360 is most interesting to me, and surely many others.

It seems like it could be mighty fun peripheral for robotics projects... (and who knows, perhaps MS could even promote it, seeing that they have their robotics suite? Certainly small number of Natals not used for gaming wouldn't harm MS financially in any significant way; but they might like good publicity)

Anyone Know How Accurate Natal Is?

[eldavojohn]

Accuracy aberrations plague a lot the new free motion input devices. Does anyone know to what degree of accuracy this works? Down to the inch? Centimeter?

My friend was lamenting how in Rainbow Six he could hug up to a corner or object and only expose a small part of his body when he poked out to shoot. The problem being that in Modern Warfare 2, this is not the case. You have to expose your whole body. He was hoping/speculating that with Natal, a first person shooter might be able to lock into a stationary mode (much like when one is shooting through a scope) and be able to move his head, shoulders, arms, etc as he pleases to peak (and/or) shoot around a corner when he's pinned down. He wants these games to get as close to real life as possible and I told him that it's a great idea and would increase the reality of pray and spray suppressive fire tactics ... but I was skeptical of the devices ability for this accuracy. So, anyone know any concrete numbers yet?

Sounds pretty cool

[Reapman]

Natal sounds cool, and might just be what i'm looking for for a reason to buy a 360 to compliment my PS3. I'm still concerned about the complete lack of buttons, and am wondering if MS is going to be releasing a controller you can strap to your arm or hold with 1 hand for when you need a button to say change weapons. Also the lag issue remains to be seen. This is one possible advantage Sony's motion MIGHT have.

But in the end it's all about the games. Both techs have the potential I think to be fun, just need to see the actual implementation. And I wonder what Nintendo has in their R&D to combat this (other then that Vitality Sensor) All very interesting, although I don't see this gameplay replacing old fashioned "sitting down with a controller in your hand" gaming, just another form of entertainment.

All of this talk makes me pretty excited for what comes after this current gen...

Re:I just want to try it

[flitty]

The article states the latency for the camera to recognize a new position is 10 miliseconds, which IIRC is close to what wireless controller lag is. The better complaint is that it is only accurate to about 1.5", which is fine for large gesture based gaming, but minor refined movements won't be picked up.

Re:How obfuscated protocol?

[AndrewNeo]

I believe there was talk of the hardware working on the PC, too, though the hardware is pretty much just a few cameras and other sensors, leaving it up to the libraries on the Xbox or PC to do the processing. Now, if Microsoft releases an SDK (which is in their best interest, if they want PC integration) then it shouldn't be an issue.

What I want to see is room lighting requirements.

[gmezero]

Given how every other video game system camera fails to work correctly in typical home lighting environments, this is the thing I'm most curious about.

For instance in my home, when we want to use the Eye Toy to play something like Kinetic, we have to drag out a shop-light and a couple of reflectors to stage the room and assist the contrast detection. Otherwise, the accuracy is garbage. If this thing can't work in a dark room then this also pretty much kills playing games in a room with the lights out (which is how I generally play racing games and FPS games at night).

My expectations are less than low and I'm just waiting to hear about how ever single player to use the system will need to have a Live account (with your avatar adjusted to R/L body mass).

Re:Natal Demo

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, Molyneux is the LAST person I'd trust to give a balanced review of anything.

Especially Natal. [blorge.com]

You could also see for yourself [google.com]

Amputees

[Anonymous Coward]

What is someone was missing from an elbow down? Would the system see that as someone with it pointing directly at the device?

Re:Natal Demo

[DrXym]

Here is a tech demo showing a Peter Molyneux demonstration of a game using Natal.

Tech demo? More like total fabrication. Microsoft are merely insinuating they have perfected natural language processing, natural speech synthesis, perfect motion recognition and facial recognition amongst other things.

I'm sure Milo will turn up at some point but it will be a pale imitation of this. We'll realise that you can grunt and howl at Milo and get the same reactions.

Re:Sounds pretty cool

[Dalambertian]

Despite what they keep showing in the press releases, I don't think the gesture control is what the big titles will be using it for. Remember Johnny Lee's wiimote hack at TED? http://blog.ted.com/2008/04/wii_remote_hack.php [ted.com] According to his blog, he's been working on Natal and seems very impressed with the specs. http://procrastineering.blogspot.com/2009/06/project-natal.html [blogspot.com] Anyway, I'm guessing it's new camera controls like his that would really sell this thing for the "serious gamers" and not necessarily the motion sensing.