Old Discussion Thread for all 3 motion controllers

[Silent_Buddha]

Strikes me as an odd solution. We already have clear rules on what human movements are possible because of anatomical limits. If they have a fulled rigged skeleton, surely it's just a matter of mapping the joints to the locations found in the IR image? And because humans move at a relatively limited speed, you can expect any extreme changes from the previous image to be wrong. Yet from the sounds of it, and looking at the image, the points being tracked aren't actually attached to a skeleton system, and the skeleton is built up between them, or something. Rather than starting with a skeleton and mapping its joints to the point locations.

It isn't so much about tracking an absolute 100% relation of "skeletal points" to actual joints/locations on the human body. Natal is currently tracking what it "thinks" are most likely joints and whatnot, then out of a probability matrix chooses the points it "thinks" are the correct one that most likely correlate to a possible joint, etc.

The millions of images are to allow it to recognize more possible configurations, especially when you introduce clothing. IE to allow it to estimate with better accuracy where a possible joint may be buried under an unknown layer of clothing. Tight clothing probably doesn't pose much of a problem. But imagine extra baggy pants and maybe a baggy sweatshirt. A woman in a dress?

They combine that with established kinematics to then predict where those joints and skeletal points will be and how they will move if those points are obstructed at any moment.

Edit : Also the Kotaku article mentions a "50 MB software" solution. Is that reference data that needs to reside in RAM? If so, that's a 10% resource consumption tying in with the disclosed system requirements figure 10-15%.

Hmmm, interesting point. So if one were to assume that a 50 mb TSR is required on the console, it may be that the Natal unit is still doing the lions share of the processing.

Or in other words, we're still in blind speculation mode.

Regards,
SB

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Marginally. And at what cost? Natal is accurate to within ~+/- 8mm in three dimensions, and the optical solution is accurate to ~ +/- 11mm. 6mm less error is enough to make finger tracking slightly more plausible on Natal, but the 16mm's noise is still quite a hurdle - you finger could be juddering about it's own width between frames, based solely on depth samples.

The juddering isn't that much of a problem. There is already quite a bit of judder that Natal deals with in regards to just plotting the tracking points in the skeletal cloud (where is the person's knee in really baggy pants or under a dress for example). It applies a probability to each possible likely location and then chooses one based on whatever special algorhythm MS is cooking up.

There's been various small blurbs by MS reps that they "could" track finger movements, but that they aren't focusing on it. I'd imagine there's a lot of reasons for that.

Like they need to at least somewhat perfect the whole body tracking thing with consistency. Having Natal go bonkers on the occasional person while demoing at last E3 isn't a problem, but having it do that in a home setting would be. Possibly needing the hands to be closer to the camera.

Possibly needing more computing resources than they wish to allocate to Natal to do the same probability matrixes as it needs to do for the whole body. This might be the biggie, as building and tracking each finger can easily double the points in their skeletal cloud. Which would have the potential to double the amount of calculations the unit is doing.

Regards,
SB

 

[LightHeaven]

Assuming that natal actually doesn't really do any internal processing anymore, can usb 2.0 realistically offer the bandwidth for this, or it could be the reason natal is (now?) limited to 30fps? (I say now, because 3dv systems claimed that Zcam would be a 60fps camera.)

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Assuming that natal actually doesn't really do any internal processing anymore, can usb 2.0 realistically offer the bandwidth for this, or it could be the reason natal is (now?) limited to 30fps? (I say now, because 3dv systems claimed that Zcam would be a 60fps camera.)

Natal has always been advertised at 30 fps input.

Regards,
SB

 

[grandmaster]

There's been various small blurbs by MS reps that they "could" track finger movements, but that they aren't focusing on it. I'd imagine there's a lot of reasons for that.

Kudo Tsunoda told me that it couldn't track finger movements reliably and pointed out that children are likely to have very small fingers which couldn't be tracked at all, so I'd say that the chances of this happening are slight.

As an aside, you can't point with Natal either.

 

[JPT]

Just to step away from the technical side of the motion controller systems.
What about gaming exeperince from the long game session ie 2-3+ hours? I got a PS3 and using six axis is okay, since the physical movements etc are not big compare to just using the standard controller ie for motorstorm. But I do not like the PSN bowling game and the motion controll for instance. And I keep wondering how it would be playing games the natal way, do I have to stand or when I sit do I have to have my arms stretched out to the side or in front for "hours"?
Or can our gestures be quite small and it will pick up on that? I did not see the burnout video, but I read that you had your arms in front of you to simulate holding on to a steeringwheel, sound tiring and not to comfertable to me.

Looking at the "leaked" Geometry Wars and Half Life video, I am not sure I want to play such games using a Natal system.
For WiiFiit type of games, sure, since its meant to involve you whole body, but standing around waving my arms to shoot stuff instead of just being draped over the couch and using my hands with a standard controller?

And if we make a mix of it, like for instance using Natal to navigate the Xbox blade or Sony XMB for a minority report style solution and then picking up a controller to play a game, not sure if there is any "point" to that either.

 

[LightHeaven]

Natal has always been advertised at 30 fps input.

Regards,
SB

Oh didn't know that XD

Kudo Tsunoda told me that it couldn't track finger movements reliably and pointed out that children are likely to have very small fingers which couldn't be tracked at all, so I'd say that the chances of this happening are slight.

As an aside, you can't point with Natal either.

Maybe not pointing a la wiimote, but in this regard i think something like showing you (or at least your hand) transparently on the screen, in a similar way Claire was on the screen in that milo demo, and using the rbg camera for gesture tracking could be used to simulate some sort of a touch screen, but then again, i think this would have to be calibrated...

 

[grandmaster]

Yes, moving a pointer on-screen, sure. I was thinking more of the applications in a shooting game. Of which there are many on console!

 

[gongo]

If the RE5 with Gem/DS3 showing was bad.... this news about Natal taking up one Xenon core just dropped MS MC down to last in my list. While i am not going to say i know what casuals want..after Wii's success... Natal is looking like a quick cash in fo' da_noobs...in before nextgen full MC scheme for real games. Does anyone felt MS did a cunning bait n switch with Natal in the first place? Put an impressive showing last year, get the press hyped, and they ARE BAITED, i seen many publications putting the Natal as one of 2010 big innovation to watch out for...

...Then they silently downgraded the experience? One thing is for sure, and im repeating myself, MS marketing is Ace this gen, Ace'd and 5 full stars.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

You can't call foul anything about Natal yet, as it's still in development. And there were enough doubts raised about the validity of the Milo demo that expectations should be muted until we get to see the product working or not. It's all in the software andthe final, released games!

 

[Iron Tiger]

How big a performance hit will the PS3 Gem incur? There needs to be a filtering pass to remove from the scene anything that's not the Gem. Then the Gem's X/Y coordinates have to be plotted, and its Z position extrapolated from its size. It's going to be comparitively processed based on the prior frame, to track movement, so after the first step of filtering, it doesn't seem any more processor intensive than what's being done on the Wiimote's IC.

How likely is it that Sony may run it all on the SPE and resources already in reserve? We already have RE5 being patched for support, but is it possible that every title could get patched?

 

[patsu]

My guess is, it would depend significantly on the exact usage.

My first problem with the 10-33% XCPU estimate is we don't know how it's used yet. The second is we don't know the breakdown (CPU, bandwidth, memory).

For the Gem controller, it is essentially a device with Gyro, Accelerometer and PSEye absolute position tracking (color ball, plus others ?). It sounds similar to the current SIXAXIS and Wiimote+ tracking, plus periodic or occasional absolute position pinging to adjust the local values quickly.

At the other end of the spectrum, it includes full body motion tracking which will be very demanding.

Somewhere in the middle are the speech recognition (SingStar), head tracking (GT5), sketch recognition (EyePet).

The range is really wide. The key is you don't have to track the entire body (even once) if the game only needs the wand input. There is potential for resource savings and optimization for each of these use cases.

 

[LightHeaven]

Yes, moving a pointer on-screen, sure. I was thinking more of the applications in a shooting game. Of which there are many on console!

Meh, i don't want my natal to play shooters, but it might be interesting to control an RTS or even some Naruto-esche game where we have to actually make the seals to perfom jutsus

 

[patsu]

http://kotaku.com/5444895/microsoft...al-games-not-motion-control-for-existing-ones

Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg told Kotaku at CES that we should expect more of the former, the new, built from the ground up Natal experience than traditional content repurposed a la Burnout Paradise.

Probably a good idea, to avoid getting confused with other plethora of natural interface games.

 

[corduroygt]

What MS/Sony needs is an equivalent to wii sports bundled in. However, the only big question mark is how would they compete with the cute Nintendo characters. Neither console has well known cute iconic characters like mario, zelda, yoshi, etc. Sony might have sackboy, and MS has milo, but they are not well known enough. Drakes, Master Chiefs, Marcuses don't really appeal to the same demographic that plays motion games.

 

[patsu]

They can partner with someone or start their own character. Heck, at one point, they did Teletubbies.

I think the decision is also partly related to (avoiding) competing resources for demanding HD games.

 

[AzBat]

Why have a new character when YOU are the controller? They'll just rely more on your own avatar. Just wait they'll totally ratchet up the avatar clothes, props etc. come Natal. You aint seen nothing yet.

Tommy McClain

 

[patsu]

Well, there are occasions for well known characters, and also opportunities for Miis and Xbox avatars. There is no need to limit to only one choice for everything. It depends on the game.

A lively avatar would be cool in a seamless virtual world + integrated game environment like PS Home though. Even in such environment, we have seen developers introduce their characters in the same world (like Miku Hatsune as a bot). I expect MS to simplify and push the concept deeper. Then Sony will feel the pain and follow suit. ^_^

 

[AzBat]

Well, there are occasions for well known characters, and also opportunities for Miis and Xbox avatars. There is no need to limit to only one choice for everything. It depends on the game.

Although I agree that would be ideal, I don't think Microsoft has a stable of characters for Natal's audience. So, I see them pushing avatars more than anything. Now they might push a few new characters like Milo. But if you expect them to bring out Master Chief or Banjo Kazooie as their well known characters to headline Natal, then you have more faith in them than I do. LOL

Tommy McClain

 

[patsu]

I don't know if they need to push well-known characters more than just having a game/performance where said characters appear in the same environment. As long as the avatars can't smear and interact with the characters in undesirable ways, it should be fine. It's really up to the developers. And if the dev happens to be MS first party, they should be able to make their own decisions.

If it's a WiiSports like game, then yes, it totally make sense to focus solely on avatars. But I won't preclude having a special host or boss characters. It kinda depends on what kind of game they want to do (Yes, players may be summoned as a boss, wearing boss costumes, like Demon's Souls too).

Actually, I also expect MS to introduce some form of user generated items, content, level, mini-games, activities in such an environment. Then the humiliation on Playstation Home would be almost complete ;-) -- if they can't get their act together.