

Johnny Lee (of wiimote hack fame) was involved in Natal - mark_h
http://procrastineering.blogspot.com/2009/06/project-natal.html

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jimbokun
Microsoft has poured lots of money into basic research R&D over the years,
which did not seem to pay off much in terms of popular products. Apple,
Nintendo, Google, etc. seemed to come out with more innovative products,
despite spending nowhere close to what Microsoft spends on R&D.

This looks like a big exception to that. Johnny Lee, as a recently minted PhD,
certainly knows the state of the art in this field, so if he says it is way
beyond what other researchers are doing I believe him.

If they can deliver the kind of sensing, voice and face recognition in the
demo, along with higher end graphics than the Wii, they should easily own the
next generation of consoles.

~~~
colinplamondon
This isn't about the next generation of consoles, this is about the next
generation of input technology.

Apple won multi-touch, so Microsoft is going to push the conversation ahead to
gesture-based ubiquitous computing devices. Once they get the cameras small
enough they can just stick these things on Accelerando-style glasses or a
wifi-enabled necklace akin to the sixth sense TED demo- that's when we have
true ubiquitous computing.

~~~
access_denied
But is "true ubiquitous computing" equal to "the next generation of input
technology"?

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SwellJoe
Holy crap. I hadn't bothered to look at the video about this project yet (I
thought only Nintendo cared about the way I want to game, since XBox and PS3
distinctly lack all the stuff that makes gaming fun for me on the Wii). But,
that is simply astonishing. I knew the Wii-mote wasn't anywhere near the peak
of technology in this direction, but this is dramatically cooler than I
expected in the next couple of years.

So, when can I buy it? I'd buy an XBox to play games that are controlled this
way.

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ZeroGravitas
Maybe I'm paranoid but isn't he basically saying that the demos don't reflect
what's possible today in a shipping device i.e. the proverbial "vapourware".

Other comments, here and elsewhere, reflect everyone loving this, yet when I
watch the demos I think a) that's not actually possible, and far more
importantly b) even if it was possible, it doesn't look like fun.

~~~
peripitea
I was watching the conference live, and I had the same reaction: "There's no
way this actually works." Then they brought out a lady who did a live demo
with it... I can't find that video right now, but it was very similar to this:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3vWzzoLHrM>

Notice how you can clearly see the on-screen body mapping to the person's
body. Between that and the fact that I doubt they would make such a big
announcement if it didn't already work fairly well, I'm now on the "this
probably works" side.

~~~
Timothee
You can find the video you're talking about here:
<http://www.youtube.com/xboxprojectnatal>

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oldgregg
This is phenomenal, but devil is in the details in terms of sensitivity. They
have to be using a really phenomenal camera and processor to get any real
level of precision.

~~~
jerf
I can't speak for the camera, but it should be remembered the XBox360 is no
slouch when it comes to processing power:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_hardware#Central_proce...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_hardware#Central_processing_unit)

"The CPU, named Xenon at Microsoft and "Waternoose" at IBM, is a custom
triple-core PowerPC-based design by IBM. The CPU emphasizes high floating
point performance through multiple FPU and SIMD vector processing units in
each core. It has a theoretical peak performance of 115.2 gigaflops and is
capable of 9.6 billion dot products per second. Each core of the CPU is
simultaneous multithreading capable and clocked at 3.2GHz. However, to reduce
CPU die size, complexity, cost, and power demands, the processor uses in-order
execution in contrast to the Intel Coppermine128-based Pentium III used in
Xbox which used more advanced out-of-order execution.... A 21.6 GB/s front
side bus, aggregated 10.8 GB/s upstream and downstream, connected Xenon with
the graphics processor/northbridge. Xenon was equipped with a 1 MB Level 2
cache on-die running at half CPU clock speed. This cache is shared amongst the
three CPU cores."

I don't think the processor will be the problem. The camera could be.

~~~
electromagnetic
Agreed, the devil in this design will be the camera. From the video it looks
like they're using two. My guess will be one high resolution to produce
reasonable pictures and live video (as they show) and a lower resolution
companion to triangulate from. I'd also guess that the companion sensor will
be placed further away from the main sensor in the final project.

Who knows, they could have a secondary sensor that you place on the side of
the TV, away from the main sensor module. Distance between sensors is usually
the key to reduce processing requirements.

It's their project vision, so who knows what they'll have to do to get the job
done.

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peregrine
Where is the second camera? To gleen 3 dimensional data from a single 2
dimensional image is hard, and requires intense algorithms. Two cameras makes
it easier but still hard.

I would love nothing more if they would publish this and or open it up to
community development.

~~~
michaelvw
3DV, the company whose 3D camera technology MS bought a few months ago, has
published some papers on their technology. I haven't read them, so I cannot
vouch for their depth (no pun intended).

<http://www.3dvsystems.com/technology/tech.html#1>

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Keyframe
gimmicky

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cellis
Holy fucking shit.

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nazgulnarsil
i'm not understanding the optimism. i'm sure natal will be another major step
forward like the wii was. what it will not be is a quantum leap. the video was
clearly ridiculous.

