Project Natal: MS Full Body 3D Motion Detection

[thatdude90210]

The Jimmy Fallon clip is already online. MS is going for mindshare early. Fallon is like a kid in a candy store.
http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/blogs/2009/06/kudo-tsunado-demos-project-natal/

 

[TheChefO]

The Jimmy Fallon clip is already online. MS is going for mindshare early. Fallon is like a kid in a candy store.
http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/blogs/2009/06/kudo-tsunado-demos-project-natal/

Yeah, not sure how many people watch that show or what that demographic is though.

They were sure to mention it isn't the Wii and tying it in with xb360.


Seems the only thing I can hope for is a natal xb360 bundle.

 

[quest55720]

The Jimmy Fallon clip is already online. MS is going for mindshare early. Fallon is like a kid in a candy store.
http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/blogs/2009/06/kudo-tsunado-demos-project-natal/

I was very impressed with the Demo on the Fallon show last night. They were able to transition from player to player seamlessly. Burnout looked like it would be fun with out the controller. There was some lag with large movements and the avatar spazed out a few times. Even with those few problems I was very impressed with Natal at such an early stage. They still have over a year to work out the glitches assuming a fall 2010 launch. The host and crowd ate it up a very good night for MS.

 

[catisfit]

Get the buzz started early in case your competitor is out of the gate first?

They're a few years too late for that

 

[upnorthsox]

IMHO it's more a fishing expedition to see if there's really a market out there rather than planting seeds for a product 1+ yrs from launch. They're leary (and rightfully so) of reading too much into the buzz by an insulated community of those following E3.
Another way to read things is that we're reaching the crest of the current gen and thus people are looking for the next new thing or whatever to keep it going. Once we're on the backside of that everything devolves down to a price war until the next gen kicks in.

 

[ShadowRunner]

Never seen the Jimmy Fallon show before, what are the red boiler suits all about? Is it part of the show normally or was it just for the demo of natal?

The one thing im worried about with both camera based controllers (natal and PSMC) is i mite not be able to use them due to me doing all of my gaming on a projector, no fair!

 

[Arwin]

The one thing im worried about with both camera based controllers (natal and PSMC) is i mite not be able to use them due to me doing all of my gaming on a projector, no fair!

Why are you worried about that? The camera is looking at you, after all, not the TV?

 

[ShadowRunner]

Why are you worried about that? The camera is looking at you, after all, not the TV?

Im assuming natal would have a hard time in a totally blacked out room, unless its just the depth data used for all its functions.

Also im not sure how woth natal and PSMC would react to a totally dark room but with a projector shining brightly directly in its field of view.

With the bulbs on the PSMC im guessing that would have the best chance of actually working with games that dont require the eyetoy style image processing stuff but even with the bulbs there is still a chance the light from the projector could screw with it.

 

[Arwin]

Im assuming natal would have a hard time in a totally blacked out room, unless its just the depth data used for all its functions.

Yes, I also think that Natal may not see very well in the dark.

Also im not sure how woth natal and PSMC would react to a totally dark room but with a projector shining brightly directly in its field of view.

With the bulbs on the PSMC im guessing that would have the best chance of actually working with games that dont require the eyetoy style image processing stuff but even with the bulbs there is still a chance the light from the projector could screw with it.

I also think the PSMC shouldn't give you much problems in those scenarios. They're probably also made from a material that mostly absorbs light rather than reflects it, and even then I think the Cell image processing can probably handle some lights on the bulb.

 

[TheChefO]

IMHO it's more a fishing expedition to see if there's really a market out there rather than planting seeds for a product 1+ yrs from launch...

Isn't that what focus groups are for?



I did like the fact they showed Burnout Paradise with Natal.

It was clearly something not possible on Wii... both Graphically and Physically.

 

[TheChefO]

Yes, I also think that Natal may not see very well in the dark...

I think the red suits were the opposite.

TV Show lighting is very bright. Perhaps too bright for Natal.

That's why they wore a darker solid color to help the system pickup their bodies faster and more reliably.

On the morning show the system had no problems with regular clothes.

 

[dabomb665m]

I'm also curious why they were all in orange jumpsuits and why that wasn't mentioned. It was obviously for Natal for one reason or another. Normally they just wear normal clothes on the show.

I wonder if it's because of the abnormal lighting conditions found on a recording set. I'm curious what it is that the "orange" does for Natal. Anyone proficient in the field feel like chiming in on the matter?

 

[goonergaz]

could it just be that orange is a colour that not many people woule wear (can't think I see much orange day to day) and therefore would make it easy for Natal to detect and follow? Also orange might just been the sweet spot for the tech to detect.

 

[AzBat]

Yes, I also think that Natal may not see very well in the dark.

It works in the dark...

http://gizmodo.com/5277954/testing-project-natal-we-touched-the-intangible

http://www.viddler.com/explore/gamertagradio/videos/77/

I thought I read a review somewhere else where they tested in the dark & it worked fine. Gizmodo article mentions flipping the lights off, but I don't think that's the one I'm thinking of. All the tracking seems to be done by the infrared camera.

Tommy McClain

 

[Scott_Arm]

natal should work in the dark because it floods the room with IR. The RGB camera might not work well, but it isn't used for any of the motion tracking.

I don't know what was with the orange jump suits, but all the other demo videos I've seen the people wore regular clothes and it worked just about the same.

The demo was a little glitchy and obviously laggy, but overall it's pretty impressive. A year is a lot of time to work out kinks in the software.

 

[Arwin]

Ah right. As they summarize:

How Natal Works
The test system was an ordinary Xbox 360, connected to small PC and camera that simulates the final Natal rig. There are two cameras—one RGB, for face recognition and display video, and one infrared, for tracking movement and depth. Why infrared? The eye doesn't see infrared light. And when you combine an infrared camera with an infrared emitter (also part of Natal), a room is flooded with a spectrum of invisible light that works in the dark.

Natal also has its own internal processing system handling an unspecified amount of the heavy lifting behind Natal's cleaver image and speech recognition. It breaks the human body into 48 points tracked in real time, and it can sense your whole body in Z space, or depth. In fact, on a heat map that measured depth, my hands appeared hotter than my shoulders—because they were closer.

Natal is so smart, in fact, that, if your room is narrowed by a pair of couches, it can signal to a game to narrow the level. It can see about 15' x 20' of a room, according to project leader Kudo Tsunoda's informal estimation.

I still get the impression though that it would lose some precision in the dark, but I don't know - the emission of the infra-red light may be pulsating to help time how soon the heat of your body is picked up. So that could be reliable enough in total dark. That assumes though that in normal circumstances the RGB camera isn't even necessary. Maybe if the light is there, it may use it to enhance precision?

But now I think I also understand a bit better why hot lamps in the background (like the studio lamps in the Jimmy Fallon performance) could cause trouble for Natal in some circumstances, if for instance the emitted infra-red light isn't pulsating - it would then be harder to make out the body. If the infra-red part is more important than the RGB, then a heat-source could be more confusing than lack of light, so that's interesting.

 

[ShadowRunner]

But now I think I also understand a bit better why hot lamps in the background (like the studio lamps in the Jimmy Fallon performance) could cause trouble for Natal in some circumstances, if for instance the emitted infra-red light isn't pulsating - it would then be harder to make out the body. If the infra-red part is more important than the RGB, then a heat-source could be more confusing than lack of light, so that's interesting.

If thats the case then using natal with a projector could still be a problem for me, even if it does work in the dark. There definately is something with the orange jumpsuit because the guy was waering one in the MS press conference also. Doesnt make much sense though because on the same stage it was demoed with normal cloths...

 

[patsu]

Apparently, it didn't work well for N'Gai Croal: http://bitmob.com/index.php/mobfeed...eet-Arms-Legs-Torso-Heads-On-Impressions.html

When game consultant and former Newsweek writer N'Gai Croal gave Paradise a test drive, however, the game had trouble reading his steering actions. The footwork (gas and brakes) worked fine, but Croal couldn't steer his car at all. It wasn't clear whether this was a problem of calibration differences between Tsunoda and Croal's very different body types, or if Croal's crazy dreadlocks threw Natal off. But it was working just fine when Tsunoda was at the "wheel."

...sparking theories that the near-infrared sensor does not work well with dark skinned people:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=16238852&postcount=1

I have no idea whether this is true (funny ), but they can probably work it out (or use RGB camera to complement the infrared one in the worst case).


As a start, I agree that Natal games and applications should be established as a different "school" of gaming ideologies. Retrofitting it into hardcore gaming will take more convincing.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Apparently, it didn't work well for N'Gai Croal: http://bitmob.com/index.php/mobfeed...eet-Arms-Legs-Torso-Heads-On-Impressions.html

...sparking theories that the near-infrared sensor does not work well with dark skinned people:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=16238852&postcount=1

I have no idea whether this is true (funny ), but they can probably work it out (or use RGB camera to complement the infrared one in the worst case).


As a start, I agree that Natal games and applications should be established as a different "school" of gaming ideologies. Retrofitting it into hardcore gaming will take more convincing.

There's already a video on here of Sugar Ray Leonard and other people with darker skin using Natal just like anyone else.

 

[patsu]

They still have to figure out why it didn't work for Ngai. Best is to understand the differences in the environments (The Sugar Ray Leonard video may be taken under different conditions).