New XBOX Device, bollox or what?

It's real. Only compatible with two games, but they were showing it at E3 here in LA this week.
 
Am I the only person who doesn't like these virtual reality, motion sensor controller bull shit? I like the feel of a controller. I don't want to be jumping around in my living room. I want to be sat down relaxing, whilst also gaming. Hence why i didn't buy a Wii. I also hate the sensation, where it all feels a bit floaty and just... shit. Shove your invisible controller shit up your arse MS, im keeping my controller.
 
The Milo part is not real, at least it's not as it was made out to be. It's basically as I called it to be in the E3 thread where I said that the Milo demo was a scripted fake, and also the way it seems to work with a processor and RAM in the camera box sending a skeletal model and other data back to the XB360.

Essentially we do a 3D body scan of you. We graph 48 joints in your body and then those 48 joints are tracked in real-time, at 30 frames per second. So several for your head, shoulders, elbows, hands, feet...

Say I'm tracking a wrist, which is what I do for Burnout. I can look at that on a single frame and I can see what direction, acceleration and confidence I have for that joint. Why is that interesting? Because it allows me to not only know where you are, but to know where you're going to be. This is how we do the directing and the predictive behaviour.

If you think about swinging a baseball bat, by the time you're halfway done with the swing, I know not only where you're going to end but when you're going to end. There are very precise and predictable ways so you can have that immediate payoff of my baseball bat hitting the baseball.

...

The sensor itself has a lot of magic built in. It wouldn't be interesting for us to go to our developers and say, 'Hey, you can create all these brand new, awesome experiences but you need to do a lot of processing outside of the game.'

So we have a custom chip that we put in the sensor itself. The chip we designed with Microsoft will be doing the majority of the processing for you, so as a game designer you can think about the sensor as a normal input device - something that's relatively free for you as a game designer.

Designers have 100 per cent of the resources of the console and this device is just another input device they can use. It's a fancy, cool, awesome device, but essentially you can just treat it from a free-to-platform perspective, because all of the magic - all of the processing - happens sensor-side.
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Two cameras and a custom chip. This isn't going to be cheap. Also, they admit that there will be games where the normal controller is used as well. They have to, because a lot of game types can't really be done without some buttons.

We see there being three types of game. We love the [existing] controller, it's not going anywhere and there will continue to be games that are specifically made to only work with a controller. We'll have games that are specifically designed to work only with Natal - not just arcadey games, but real, hardcore, triple-A titles.

Then you'll have some games that are essentially a hybrid - games that work both with the controller and with Natal. Why is that interesting? Think about a first-person shooter where I'm using the controller but I'm doing facial tracking by just moving around and looking round corners.

Or you could have a hardcore gamer like me playing a game with a controller, while a non-hardcore person sitting next to me enjoys the experience by playing with Natal. I could be having my Halo experience with the controller and the friend next to me, who's not a hardcore gamer, could be throwing grenades or driving the Warthog or doing any number of things with Natal.

We can track up to four players in the same way we track controllers. Each individual player will be able to choose - do I want to bind with a controller, or do I want to bind with my body, or do I want to bind with both?
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As you can tell, I'm not a fan of motion control at all, I think that it's a gimmick that can only be used in certain game types, mostly games that are specifically designed for the thing. The Burnout demo is a classic example of how stupid it is to try and play such a game with this type of technology, no wonder Sugar Ray Leonard was crashing the thing all over the show, he couldn't control the car at all, yet then said that he felt he had more control. You move your arms or whole body back and forward to accelerate or break. If you were actually trying to control a real racing game like Forza with that, you'd look like a rocking retard and it would become a farce after about 10 minutes.

As for Milo...

Project Natal, the Xbox 360's motion-sensing camera add-on, certainly has potential, but the promo video for it Microsoft showed off was purely a work of science fiction. In it, a happy family enjoys multimedia content, chats with friends, and plays complex interactive games without a controller, just using their bodies. The actual playable demos were a few generations behind that, more reminiscent of the Sony Eye Toy accessory for the PS2--the main example was a simple game where players bat a ball back at the screen by swatting at the air, with just enough lag to be annoying. We're very excited about the potential of this new motion-sensing, face-and-voice-recognizing, camera add-on, but for now the gulf between the reality and prerendered video is sizable.

A much-hyped software package that uses the Project Natal hardware, Milo was presented as a virtual onscreen boy who could recognize you and carry on an intelligent conversation. The demo video was impressive, but obviously shot in a tightly controlled environment with clearly scripted responses. Talking to several people who got a chance to try out talking to Milo in person behind closed doors, the responses were uniformly disappointed, describing the supposedly realistic Milo similar to a Tamagotchi virtual pet, with only very basic interactivity. Milo was created by Peter Molyneux, a game designer infamous for over-promising and under-delivering, with ambitious but flawed projects such as Fable and Black & White.
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The whole idea of waving my arms about when i could simply press a little button doesnt appeal to me.

Maybe i'm a lazy bastard but why would i want to select a film by waving my arms and shouting play at a screen when i could just press left or right then select on a controller?
 
The one thing they seem to have done right here is make it at least sort of work with all games because the camera unit itself is doing the processing, which unlike say PS Eye would require the software in the console itself to be altered and the game specifically changed to use it. I think that the way Natal will work in the end is that it will have a default set of actions that will map to the standard controller functions, yet a game specifically supporting it could tell the camera box that it wanted certain things, for example, no head tracking or whatever.
 
Are you going to buy one, Weastey? I love the idea of doing flying kicks and haddokens in reality. Sure, we may end up looking like Ihni binni dimi diniwiny anitaime. . .but I reckon I'd pull it off.
 
Will we see the phasing out of the conventional controller, or will more serious gamers always demand the conventional, button operated controller? I for one would be pretty pissed off being forced to use a glorified Eye toy.
 
id rarther not jump around the living room like a retard
 
Cheers for the info Weaste, I sort of like the idea but I'm not sure how practical most of it is. The penalty shoot out is cool but could you actually play the game like that? I'm not so sure...

The fighting looks the nuts though :devil:

Of course you'll always get owned coming up against a trained fighter... that Asian fella looked a bit handy :eek:
 
I think it looks fantastic, once developers get their hands on it i'd expect some revolutionary games to come out. It'll definitely kill the wii, long term, thats for sure.
 
F-Red said:
I think it looks fantastic, once developers get their hands on it i'd expect some revolutionary games to come out. It'll definitely kill the wii, long term, thats for sure.
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Yes, with pointless mini-games (sorry if you like the Wii). As I said, I'd love to see someone play a game like Forza or Gears with it. Yes, I've seen them playing Burnout, and even that is a total mindfeck. I've never played Mario Kart on the Wii with the plastic wheel, but certain racing games on the PS3 can use the sixaxis to do basically the same thing, and after ten minutes with your arms stuck out, you've really had enough and want to go back to the stick. Proper racing wheels are a different matter.
 
Yeah, also think of when you have a cold and you just wanna sit back with a game of CoD...

Its a good and revoloutionary idea, but not something I want to see replace controllers
 
Mario Kart on the wii isn't bad. A good laugh, but ultimately to do any good you need a controller.
 
WeasteDevil said:
Yes, with pointless mini-games (sorry if you like the Wii). As I said, I'd love to see someone play a game like Forza or Gears with it. Yes, I've seen them playing Burnout, and even that is a total mindfeck. I've never played Mario Kart on the Wii with the plastic wheel, but certain racing games on the PS3 can use the sixaxis to do basically the same thing, and after ten minutes with your arms stuck out, you've really had enough and want to go back to the stick. Proper racing wheels are a different matter.
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I've played hours of Mario Kart and never once had tired arms. Really makes no difference tbh, except perhaps saving your thumbs from RSI. Would be a neat idea if you could change gears/handbrake/accelerate/brake etc as in a real car.
 
RedSky At Night said:
I've played hours of Mario Kart and never once had tired arms. Really makes no difference tbh, except perhaps saving your thumbs from RSI. Would be a neat idea if you could change gears/handbrake/accelerate/brake etc as in a real car.
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The whole thing with driving a car through Natal seems more unrealistic then using the wheel/gear stick combo things you can buy.

i mean doing this through natal you'd just be pulling imaginary sticks.

It's the same with the idea of an FPS through Natal, i'd find it much more realistic to use a Time Crisis style gun then hold an imaginary one.
 
The Flying Potato said:
The whole thing with driving a car through Natal seems more unrealistic then using the wheel/gear stick combo things you can buy.

i mean doing this through natal you'd just be pulling imaginary sticks.

It's the same with the idea of an FPS through Natal, i'd find it much more realistic to use a Time Crisis style gun then hold an imaginary one.
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Could you not just use a wheel or a gun? The camera would read it all the same...
 
beardsleybob said:
What if you're crippled and they get rid of conventional pads??
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You're fecked basically.

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The Flying Potato said:
Makes the camera a bit pointless though doesnt it. pretty much would just be wireless versions of said equipment
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Nah they'd be props to make you happy, you wouldn't need to use them... just a choice for the fella that said it wouldn't feel right. Personally, I think a driving wheel, gear stick and pedals cant be beat for driving games, and I understand his point about the FPS gunplay... it wasn't you was it? couldn't be bothered to scroll up and check :D

Weaste will have the details anyhow...
 
A game like Mirrors Edge would be pretty much impossible...
 
WeasteDevil said:
How long is the average race?
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Vary from 4 minutes to 6. But you play track after track, I do 10 track tournaments of non stop racing. But when i'm playing against my work mates It tends to drag on for alot longer.

To be honest, when you start messing around with the wii you do feel like a tit. But it helps to immerse you into the game and with a bit of focus you completely forget.

I actually find it very hard to play games now without doing the actual motions... Natal will push the boundaries even further. Personally i'll buy it asap.
 
RedSky At Night said:
I've played hours of Mario Kart and never once had tired arms. Really makes no difference tbh, except perhaps saving your thumbs from RSI. Would be a neat idea if you could change gears/handbrake/accelerate/brake etc as in a real car.
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I would agree that it doesn't tire you out, however the controls are too vague and I prefer using the more traditional control method.

It works much better on excite truck and it feels quite natural after the first 5 minutes or so.
 
Some amateur, going off the patent and what was shown at E3, has had a go at visualising what the PS3 motion controllers might look like in their final design.

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He's probably not that far off IMO, though maybe the left stick will not be a nub in the middle of the d-pad, but in a similar position to how it is on the standard controller.
 
WTF? I don't like that... any good info links for that Weaste?
 
As I said, it's an amateur mock-up, but the old patent is:

Patent link

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The patent describes a one-handed controller whose absolute xyz position and rotation in space can be determined. It merges a variety of inputs to determine that information, including:

1) Ultrasound to determine absolute depth from an ultrasonic detector (i.e. the PSEye microphone array), and to determine distance between two controllers in your hands, and/or between multiple player controlers

2) An array of LEDs picked up by the PSEye camera to determine absolute X/Y position (with support from microphone array and ultrasound signals using triangulation), as well as information about the controller's location relative to your body etc.

3) Accelerometer in the controller to determine xyz and rotational inertia

The patent describes replaceable face plates, and a two controller face plate to provide 'traditional' DS controls, and also various configurations like pluggging two together.
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And what they showed at E3 this year.

 
Nice one Weaste, fig 21 tho? :lol:

Looks interesting...
 
Yeah, f21 is just a tad over the top. :lol:

If they are going to get this to work (and sell), they will have to start including it with the PS3 to become the standard controller. If that is the case, it will have to function as a DS3/SixAxis at the same time, which is why I think the final design will be along these lines, probably with smaller balls though.
 
This sort of starts to stick a spanner in the works of Natal. While Natal needs an extra custom processor to do this type of thing, Cell chews this up and spits it out, and it seems we will get a game that uses it this year with GT5.

 
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