Head tracking, for a 3D effect, could be fantastic for a racing game. It should add a perception of depth and make cornering easier.
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Head tracking, for a 3D effect, could be fantastic for a racing game. It should add a perception of depth and make cornering easier.
Invizimals: Whistle While You Play
http://kotaku.com/5341760/invizimals-whistle-while-you-play
Cute idea. I wonder if it allows some form of co-op for boss creatures.
http://kotaku.com/5341760/invizimals-whistle-while-you-play
Cute idea. I wonder if it allows some form of co-op for boss creatures.
Eurogamer gets to test Natal. The full body sensing has terrible lag still (more like tenths of seconds than milliseconds!), but the racing bit seems to work fine.
http://www.eurogamer.net/videos/exclusive-eurogamer-plays-natal?size=large#justposted
http://www.eurogamer.net/videos/exclusive-eurogamer-plays-natal?size=large#justposted
Prophecy2k
Veteran
Do we know if the hardware specs for the Natal unit are 100% finalised? Are these issues going to be ironed out in software?
Yeah, I'd peg it at around a fifth of a second (observation, not measurement!), 200ms, from the lag shown when the girl plays. The swap-over was very effective though, and the filtering of noise clearly works. I think they'll need to solve the lag issue if they are to get hardcore gamers using Natal. I don't think anyone with game experience will be comfortable with that level of delay. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a software delay and the full hardware implementation improves on this.
Hmm... the lag is rather noticeable right now. MS should be able to speed it up by throwing more resources at it though. They are going to make it usable for PC, console and other general markets. So the investment should be justifiable.
For a start, MS may look at applications that don't need superfast response. I think they have a lot of opportunity in classrooms and daycares. They do need to find a better demo. Flailing is not going to cut it by end of the year.
For a start, MS may look at applications that don't need superfast response. I think they have a lot of opportunity in classrooms and daycares. They do need to find a better demo. Flailing is not going to cut it by end of the year.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
That right there is the best thing about GT5, and immediately puts it at the top of my next gen racers list. Assuming it's done well, which I expect it will be.
Regards,
SB
The stepping back and forth in Burnout to control speed is very unnatural. Goes against their everyone knows when you drive a car you grab a steering wheel philosophy. It also doesn't give you a "centerable" control.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
It's to demo the responsiveness of the controls and ability (if a dev wished) to retrofit any game to use Natal since it's treated as a simple controller. Not as an indication of what it will be used in.
It's odd when comparing the Burnout demo to the Breakout demo. The input lag appears to be far less in the Burnout demo. Perhaps because there's less data being sent from Natal to X360? And with less data, less debugging software slowing things down?
Regards,
SB
As the article suggests, the lag may be due to lousy programming on the Breakout demo side. I think actually that the Breakout demo runs on the Unreal Engine, where Epic has added Natal driver support already.
My suspicion has always been that since the Breakout game provides an on screen representation of your body performing your motions any lag will be very obvious in a way that it isn't in Burnout. And isn't the Breakout game doing image processing for background replacement to create your silhouette as well? That may contribute to the difference.
I expect that. The lag on small arm rotations affecting a subtle progressive steering won't be at all as noticeable. It's not as if when you turn a car wheel it veers off 90 degrees in an instant!
I believe that's an Avatar of you.
Grandmaster has his impressions. He mentions (if I read this right) the avatar is auto-generated for the player, which is pretty cool.
Also I point people to this quote and refer to mine own observation above.
The Burnout game probably has some steering assist setting programmed in just for the Natal.
http://kotaku.com/5344119/sonys-interest-in-augmented-reality-gaming-expands
Actually, I prefer real pets like cats and dogs. If they could make a DLC for 'em, I'll be all over it. My favorite pet died years ago in my right arm while I raced towards the pet hospital. As it stands, EyePet's just a game for my kid.
For invizimals...
More interesting than I first thought. I think augmented reality as a party game is more impactful, especially for outdoor PSP games. Music (art performance) games is another area.
I went to a Yamaha shop yesterday to get a digital piano. Want to try Guitar Hero 4 with it. The built-in Yamaha music software already allows me to play with an orchestra by downloading scores from the Internet directly. My wife and kid were elated as they stumbled through a Beethoven with a full-sounding and *very patient* orchestra. The result still sounded great (although out of beat).
Too bad there is no wireless MIDI connection (to pipe date into the PS3), or integration between these instruments and PS3 so that I can see or participate in others' performance over the net.
Actually, I prefer real pets like cats and dogs. If they could make a DLC for 'em, I'll be all over it. My favorite pet died years ago in my right arm while I raced towards the pet hospital.
As it stands, EyePet's just a game for my kid. For invizimals...
More interesting than I first thought. I think augmented reality as a party game is more impactful, especially for outdoor PSP games. Music (art performance) games is another area.
I went to a Yamaha shop yesterday to get a digital piano. Want to try Guitar Hero 4 with it. The built-in Yamaha music software already allows me to play with an orchestra by downloading scores from the Internet directly. My wife and kid were elated as they stumbled through a Beethoven with a full-sounding and *very patient* orchestra. The result still sounded great (although out of beat).
Too bad there is no wireless MIDI connection (to pipe date into the PS3), or integration between these instruments and PS3 so that I can see or participate in others' performance over the net.
I expect that. The lag on small arm rotations affecting a subtle progressive steering won't be at all as noticeable. It's not as if when you turn a car wheel it veers off 90 degrees in an instant!
I believe that's an Avatar of you.
Grandmaster has his impressions. He mentions (if I read this right) the avatar is auto-generated for the player, which is pretty cool.
Also I point people to this quote and refer to mine own observation above.
I find it interesting when he mentions lag in Halo3, GTA4 and Killzone2 being close to Natal. The lag in Natal is more obvious, because you can easily see the delay in motion between the person and the avatar. It's harder with button presses and slight adjustments to the analog stick. Having lag in a game like that Breakout Demo would weird, and I think it would be more harmful than in a game like Halo or Killzone. That seems kind of backwards, because Halo and Killzone are "hardcore" shooters, but I think the fine motor skills you use don't have as much natural lag to compound the problem, if that makes any sense. In a game like Natal, you actually have to move your entire arm to do something, so if you add 200ms of lag on top of that, from the type you start to react, to when it actually happens on screen will be strange. Here's hoping that this can improve via software/hardware before release.
grandmaster
Veteran
I think the thing to point out is that it *might* be similar. Latency measurement was one of the key things I wanted to test in my Natal demo (and I really was fortunate that we were allowed to film the session as few people were) but as I stated in the piece, this was only a test of the Breakout demo and therefore only an indication of its general performance, not a definitive analysis. For that, we would need to perform like-for-like testing.
Burnout might appear more responsive, but it may well be the case that it is only scanning a reduced skeleton - hands and feet - versus the full body scan of the Breakout demo. Right now we don't really know. I have to admit that both myself and Tom Bramwell (Eurogamer editor) found the Burnout demo to be cool from a technical perspective, but a bit unsatisfying to actually play - as I stated in the feature, the one thing that Natal can't engineer around is the fact that moving your full body about incurs more "latency" simply through the fact that moving your body and your limbs takes longer than moving your fingers! In this respect I am not sure choosing a 60fps twitch game would've been the smartest move when something like Forza 2/3 or even a 30fps game like Project Gotham 4 would've been more suited to the control scheme.
But one other thing I really want to point out is that Natal is absolutely wonderful. When you see the tech screen with all the skeletons in play, the IR scan, etc, I mean... the technology here is absolutely unbelievable. It's effectively full body motion capture in a consumer-level piece of kit and it works. The implications of this tech in the hands of people with the imagination to make the most of it are going to be staggering.
Burnout might appear more responsive, but it may well be the case that it is only scanning a reduced skeleton - hands and feet - versus the full body scan of the Breakout demo. Right now we don't really know. I have to admit that both myself and Tom Bramwell (Eurogamer editor) found the Burnout demo to be cool from a technical perspective, but a bit unsatisfying to actually play - as I stated in the feature, the one thing that Natal can't engineer around is the fact that moving your full body about incurs more "latency" simply through the fact that moving your body and your limbs takes longer than moving your fingers! In this respect I am not sure choosing a 60fps twitch game would've been the smartest move when something like Forza 2/3 or even a 30fps game like Project Gotham 4 would've been more suited to the control scheme.
But one other thing I really want to point out is that Natal is absolutely wonderful. When you see the tech screen with all the skeletons in play, the IR scan, etc, I mean... the technology here is absolutely unbelievable. It's effectively full body motion capture in a consumer-level piece of kit and it works. The implications of this tech in the hands of people with the imagination to make the most of it are going to be staggering.
grandmaster
Veteran
A bit off topic, but another latency test I have some video of is Forza 3 in dashboard view being played with the steering wheel. I've not reviewed the clips yet but this is interesting in that the human hands and the on-screen hands are in plain view on the clip. Again, I could spot obvious latency while doing the filming and yet the kids playing the game weren't having any problems with it.
I should be getting my Xbox 360 controller latency board in early next week by the way, as made by Ben Heckendorn and as used by Infinity Ward, so I can finally get on with the latency testing feature I've been promising/threatening for so long... but I strongly suspect that the overall conclusion of this feature will be that we've been conditioned to latency so strongly that there is quite an open window of time that developers have to play with.
I should be getting my Xbox 360 controller latency board in early next week by the way, as made by Ben Heckendorn and as used by Infinity Ward, so I can finally get on with the latency testing feature I've been promising/threatening for so long... but I strongly suspect that the overall conclusion of this feature will be that we've been conditioned to latency so strongly that there is quite an open window of time that developers have to play with.
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