Natal
polycounter lvl 18
Wow...
If it works how they showed it at the E3 presser, natal looks pretty kick ass.
I remain slightly skeptical, as I do with most stuff like this. But it looks worlds better than any other motion control stuff I've seen, and there seem to be a tonne of possibilities in how it could be used to some really positive results.
What do you guys think?
PS - wtf is with the name natal? Does this thing have something to do with giving birth? :P
If it works how they showed it at the E3 presser, natal looks pretty kick ass.
I remain slightly skeptical, as I do with most stuff like this. But it looks worlds better than any other motion control stuff I've seen, and there seem to be a tonne of possibilities in how it could be used to some really positive results.
What do you guys think?
PS - wtf is with the name natal? Does this thing have something to do with giving birth? :P
Replies
Especially the part where they show the demo with the kid and catching fish...
Might just be a next thing in gaming
hmm just when computer games are becoming socially acceptable along comes this, i cant see this fully catching on for a long time.
I mean look at the Wii... bleh.
tons of potential though
"ever wonder what the bottom of an avatar's foot looks like?"
umm why no, no i haven't, and i still don't know, because the character just turned into a pile of spaghetti... cant wait till happens mid game.
looks pretty impressively cool, would like to see it in action!
But it does look awesome. I kept waiting for them to show a FPS game on it, which was sadly not there
Still, its interesting
"Literal point-and-click adventure games!?"
Seriously though, I'm praying they incorporate this control scheme option into the new 360 version of Secret of Monkey Island.
Also, I like the idea of dashboard navigation and face recognition.
Milo? Either Lionhead has come up with the most revolutionary speech synthesis engine ever, not to mention the most advanced AI ever, or they pre-scripted and pre-recorded a very specific set of events which really didn't require any input to begin with. Taking a little look at Lionhead's track record should give you a pretty good idea of which one is the truth.
Not that moving the water around with your reflection isn't cool, but it's an extremely minor tech demo in the middle of a bunch of bullshit smoke and mirrors... and is showing off something that we've been able to do for over a decade.
A year from now we'll all be whining about how the 360 is flooded with stupid mini-games and no one is using the tech for games we actually care about and the tech is way more flawed than we thought when they announced it. Feel free to yell at me later if it doesn't happen, but I'm pretty confident.
I assume you're only talking about the Lionhead 'demo'?
As far as I could tell, all the on stage stuff was real time.
I agree with you, however... I still see this as a very real, tangible start of some exciting future developments. The "Interactive AI Avatar" who really sees & hears its user is coming, and sooner than many think. Imagine an entire game world populated by such characters.
i'm sure it was real time. I'm sure it reacted to what was said and done. I'd also be willing to bet that the program only had one path it could take for this demo.
no no, I meant the minigames they played on stage, not the Lionhead demo.
Heres a vid of the onstage demo
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-09-project-natal/50038
I am curious how an FPS might control. Track my head movement and let me turn my head to look around? How do I "walk" or "turn"?
Imagine combining this with holding a wireless controller. Like a gun/sword/chainsaw/whatever with a trigger and a dpad on it. They could even color the thing so they can better detect it and make it extremely accurate.
Imagine a Guitar Hero where your hero mimics your rocking out or giving the devil horns, and that shit can be relayed real-time to your friends online. Imagine giving your AI or human teammates hand-signals in a military game. Imagine dealing a deck of cards and holding your hand in a card game, throwing down the card you want to play, or rolling out dice. Imagine "sculpting" a spore character with your hands. Imagine sneaking up on someone and snapping their neck. Imagine a sword/shield combo game, where your individual arms can control each component. Imagine the Fight Night series with something like this. Or Wii Fit without the Wii fit, dude. Dead Rising would be so awesome! I want to light & throw molotov cocktails and chainsaw zombies, then drink my orange juice and grab a hockey stick for some fun. FUCK YEAH.
This can be pretty amazing if utilized properly and actually accurate. We've seen that the mocap works pretty well from the live demo. Hopefully finer motor controls work just as well. Real-time Motion Capture has A LOT of potential for games.
haha
Video games shouldn't take the place of people leaving there house and trying these activity's for themselves.
Sure its cool to get people more active when they would normally just veg out on the couch but hey I like that. After a hard day I dont want to come home and have to exercise to play my game, I just want to turn it on and be a lump for a while and enjoy the game and not look like some ridiculous loonatick flayling around.
(speaking of skating, that skateboard game and controller looks a bit over the top)
Not to mention that it looks too cool to be true, which means that it will remain that way for another 5-10 years and another generation of hardware. I'm envisioning a lot of "No, NO, I waved my hand like THIS you STUPID PIECE OF CRAP!" moments, without the satisfaction of being able to blame a physical object that's in your hand.
If you want to drive formula one cars, get your license and invest years practicing.
If you want to shoot Nazis, get a time machine.
I played Manhunt quite a bit....
But hey if it all works, then we are one step closer to the Holodeck!!
I really wish the controls work like advertised because useing a controller is really a barrier when you think of all the possibilities of a humans body movement, but then again the human is naturally lazy so he will go back to controlling everything only with his fingers and pressing buttons!
book my pay-per-view and order my pizza please!
Also, Star Wars: force push, force choke... BY DOING WHAT DARTH VADER DID?!?! A bunch of nay-sayers in here, use your imagination :P
In fact this may have been the plan all along, to win over the Japanese market, lol...
WTF is spore? Mudbox or Zbrush with real life hand sclupting...i think it's time to start drooling
I could combine those two ideas into one game. Chiki chiki bawa chiki chiki buawa
This is all fine and dandy. More games I'll never get to play because i'm working 10 hours a day.
http://kotaku.com/5275204/testing-molyneuxs-milo-a-virtual-boy-with-yes-a-dog
So yeah. Some working tech with a lot of smoke and mirrors at this point.
All cynicism aside, it's always good to see people experimenting with new things, new directions for interactive entertainment, etc. Molyneux might seldom deliver entirely what he promises but he is yet to create anything that wasn't at least intriguing to try. I think we need guys like him in an industry that's often so creatively morribund. I'll certainly be looking forward to giving Milo a try, even if/when it doesn't turn out to be everything that it says on the box.
This also popped up in the last couple of hours.
http://kotaku.com/5275484/spielberg-natal-changes-the-way-i-write-for-games
I'm not really sure how Natal is going to help in that particular respect, but if Senior Spielbergo can knock out a truly emotive narrative with it then I'll by lining for my Natal unit.
I mean, how do you plan to play FPS? Walk in-place to make your character move? How are you going to shoot? How are you going to walk and look around? Unless it's something like Time Crisis, where you just shoot at things and it automatically moves to to the next stage, hmmm...and how's it going to know what you're pointing at? A lot of questions I want answered....the facial recognition was sick though, wish the PS3 had that.
And if I want to drive 300 mph along some 1 lane winding road through a pack of bicyclist, then off a cliff into a alien overlord mother ship only to parachute out at the last min and pick off the remaining fight cowboy, ninja, space aliens, as I gently float to the ground I guess I should wait for them to invade?
hell Rick beat me to the punch...
(Note to self: read entire thread before posting)
I imagine there could be some cool stuff done with that.
http://procrastineering.blogspot.com/2009/06/project-natal.html
This will never be a replacement to games as there's no physical precise interaction, and I doubt the camera is good enough to see if your rear-positioned and probably covered by front hand trigger finger is pulling it to fire. It may be able to see in X-Y-Z axis but it won't be an xray machine.
Anyways, I'll read the reviews once this comes out to decide whether it's worth investing my money into it or not.
hahahhaa Man great post!
Personally I want an FPS where I can bayonet people by shoving my controller forward. Or punch a man in the face until blood squirts all over the screen. Maybe even a minigame where you unjam your gun, or pumping a shotgun.
No reason to reserve one at gamestop. But plenty of reasons to be excited.
Wait, so you're saying to still use the controller...while using Natal for an FPS? I know I wouldn't spend money on it if I still had to use the controller...I thought the whole purpose of this thing was to NOT use the controller. Plus it be weird to play an FPS with a controller while bobbing and weaving like your playing a boxing game.
Anyways, hasn't the Eye-toy already done this? I remember seeing kids playing at wal-mart where they just move their hands around to hit shit on the screen....this Natal thing just seems like an improvement on the eye-toy.
Edit: My bad, I read your post wrong, lol. In my head I had pictured using Natal with the standard 360 controller, not a gun, lol.
Why would that be weird? That's exactly what I want to see.
it seems like this technology is more suited towards those wii-type games wehre your character doesnt really move around the map, instead you do poses in place.
Right on, brotha!
And even then...you still wouldn't aim accurately...The Wii uses it's controller to aim and point at shit....how the hell would you do it with this? You'd have to see your outline like in that ball game constantly to know what you're hitting.
I mean it's pretty cool to navigate through menus with your hands, and facial recognition is rad...but towards games...I just don't think it's ganna be all that great.
Is it at all possible that Peter Molyneux had a son named Milo? Possibly died horribly? Because then we could give that AI a robot body with rocket boots, Yeah.
maybe if they figured out some way to implement the movement keys inside the gun so that you move your guy around with one hand and shoot with the trigger finger. still would be pretty weird.