Speaking of useless technology
Microsoft unveiled (or, according to some videos I saw, unleashed) the Natal Project at E3 yesterday. It’s a game system that doesn’t require controllers, because it has a camera on the tv that detects your movements, has facial recognition, etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0IqdRTDJQc
You have to see that to believe it, and whether you think that statement is a compliment or an insult depends on your predisposition towards Microsoft, I suppose. Me, it makes me want to make sure none of those actors ever work in this town again.
Here’s Microsoft Dude presenting it at E3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWnZOseA3Lw
He shows a woman interacting with the TV. The view closes up to the water, and it shows a faint reflection of her, and the water ripples as she moves her hand back and forth. What gets me most about that is the audience being aghast and delighted and bursting into applause at the technology that’s been around for umpteen years.
I wonder if it’s going to work as well as their voice recognition. The videos are old, but…I remember seeing a commercial for that years ago, it was an old actor guy whose name I forget, who had some shakey problem with his hands, presumably unable to write letters, so he was just naturally talking to his computer and the exact correct sentences were naturally flowing out. Yeah.
June 3rd, 2009 12:22
I have to admit, the demos make it LOOK really cool. But yeah, knowing it’s Microsoft, there’s no way in hell it’s going to work like that in real life.
It seems that they learned from their live demo of the voice recognition system, though. It looked like the part with the woman interacting with the boy was pre-taped. No doubt it took several (or several hundred) takes to get through it without glitches.
June 3rd, 2009 13:49
See the thing is, for me, the demos made it look so what? I will admit it’s a cool piece of technology that lets a kid hold his skateboard up and say “scan” and then it’s in the game where the avatar is riding his personal skateboard. That’s geeky cool. But 1) impossible, since he’s holding it and covering part with his hands, so something about it is not as simple as the demo suggests, 2) that’s a tiny detail in a game, 2a) does somebody actually want to play that game? 3) how wonderful that all looks when you have a football stadium for a living room like they do in the demo.
In the woman-talking-to-kid demo, at one point the virtual kid throws a pair of glasses towards the camera, and the woman reflexively grabs for them. And Microsoft Dude makes a big deal out of that, like she was so immersed in the experience that she actually grabbed for them and everyone does and it just shows how simply wonderful it is. And I’m still like, so what? At best that means viewing a flat screen and perceiving it as having depth, and reaching to catch an object in that situation doesn’t mean that you have a good game system.
June 9th, 2009 11:46
It certainly does look cool, but I’m worried about third-party developers. Even giving Microsoft the benefit of the doubt about getting the system to work as shown in the demo, there’s no telling what’s going to happen once every other developer, retard or not, tries incorporating it. At best, that functionality’s going to go unused, at worst, it’s going to be so inconsistent and misapplied that end users will be aggravated and ignore it.
I mean, there are games for the Wii where to make a character swing a sword, the player has to push a button on a motion-sensitive controller.
June 10th, 2009 14:21
“Microsoft Dude” is Peter Molyneux, the guy responsible for designing games like Black & White (where you play the part of a god), and who worked for Lionhead Studios, as well as Bullfrog Productions.
It is really, really weird to see him referred to as ‘Microsoft Dude’ when he has made a name for himself in the gaming industry. Of course, if you’re not really into games, you probably haven’t heard of him… which makes sense. It’s just weird to see.
I just don’t really think of him in the context of Microsoft at all. It’s a shame to see him in that video, honestly.
June 11th, 2009 07:52
I dunno. I’m with spinn on the ’so what’ factor. And, as a practicing introvert, I think I’d find this gaming style less immersive. Having to wave my arms around and talk out loud would just remind me that I’m not in the game, but standing in an room behaving like a crazy person to any 3rd party observer. I like losing myself in my mind, not moving and pushing little buttons.
June 11th, 2009 10:19
2nd video @ 4:51 -
(from the crowd) “Oh my god! I love y’all, yo!”
The whole thing is… interesting… to say the least. Slightly creepy, even. I’d totally love to do the demo with that kid strictly for trolling purposes, pushing every limit possible. Telling him to “FUCK OFF!” one second and the next “I love you, can I offer you a D battery?”
June 11th, 2009 11:01
Can you imagine what the NAMBLA folks would do with that system?
June 11th, 2009 19:31
It looks very impressive in video demo form, but consider that Nintendo– easily the greatest video game developers of all time, regardless of how you may feel about the last ten years or so– has had terrible difficulty getting much of anyone on board with their own industry-changing peripherals.
It’s largely been a sort of bait-and-switch; you buy a Wii because Wii Sports looks awesome, then you buy the great Nintendo games you should have been getting with the last two systems you skipped, almost not noticing how little motion control was in them.
Microsoft has made an industry out of seeing what other people do right, and then doing it on a larger and cheaper scale. If the people who gave us Mario, Zelda, Metroid, and Kirby can’t figure out this new technology, do you really think the geniuses behind Solitaire and Mindsweeper are going to figure it out for them?
June 12th, 2009 13:54
Yeah. One thing that really struck me in this demo was the racing game. Now let’s assume the demo is meant to be an accurate representation and not vaporware, right? I saw a person sitting on a couch, fists out like they’re holding a steering wheel, and briefly moved her right arm down and move an imaginary shifter.
Okay, 1) I am going to quickly tire or a game that requires me to hold my fists out in the air to control it. 2) I call shenanigans on the shifter “control”. There is no way the computer can reliably look at that motion and tell anything except “person has used shifter”, rather than “person has shifted up or down”. Which means the game isn’t very realistic, despite the fact they’re selling it on the basis of immersive realism. 3) I don’t recall seeing it, but then how do we control speed? Hold our foot out for a pedal? And how do you calibrate that without an existing object? And even if the system can determine minute amounts of difference in the angle of my foot, do I really want to hold my foot at an exact angle without support for extended periods? Or do we write the game so we assume you’re just going top speed all the time, which again goes against the whole premise.
And on 2) above, I’m not even saying “that’s impossible to do with technology”. What I’m saying is that it’s impossible to accurately predict with a person. With the quick hand motion that I saw, the only way a human is going to be able to convey “shift up” as opposed to “shift down” is if there’s a physical object there they can hit to indicate it. I don’t mean it has to be a controller, I just mean that as a visual transmission of information, I don’t think you can reliably communicate your intent under that situation. so that means, in the demo, either that hand motion is interpreted as “use shifter” (which the game always translates into “shift up”, which negates the premise), or the demo is just lying, which I’m inclined to believe because of what I said about scanning the skateboard.
And man I would love to talk to parents to see how they feel about installing that kungfu fighting game on the tv in their trailer living rooms.
June 18th, 2009 13:00
I’d be more worried about the parents who would buy this so the kid could lose weight as they would believe this contraption provided a full body workout. And then they’d bitch when their kid buys something like…Halo.
“HOW’S HALO GONNA MAKE YOU LOSE WEIGHT, JIM BOB?”
June 25th, 2009 20:39
Yeah, it’s Microsoft! What a piece of crap!! There’s no fucking way I’d want that! I don’t care how cool it might be, I’m going to keep sucking on Steve Jobs’s cock until he jizzes a big gob of his Apple goo down my throat.
If this wore an Apple label you’d all be shitting yourselves.
June 26th, 2009 04:22
Well yeah, it would mean Apple was making a commitment to becoming a gaming platform. That’s a gigantic step for them to take, and one to celebrate no matter how half-assed the idea is.
June 26th, 2009 11:48
sigh. Say something critical about Microsoft and suddenly you’re going down on Jobs. It’s like hanging out on politics forums.
If Apple did this, I’d think similar to G’Tron…except that I’d be worried their first attempt out the gate would doom any game cred they might try to create. But really I don’t think Apple would do this. You can’t argue whether their first cellphone attempt was a success; it’s because they made a good product the first time. This game thing is just “blah” wrapped in a lot of marketing effort.
June 26th, 2009 12:44
I’m sorry, I having a hard time hearing you. Oould you take that cock out of your mouth?
June 26th, 2009 13:35
A troll! Wow! It’s been a while… you just crawl out of 4chan or something, buckaroo?
June 29th, 2009 10:55
I wouldn’t mind trolls so much if they were a little more inclusive. It’s a shame to see good, smart trolls suckered in to the Microsoft/Apple dichotomy when the linux world is so richly trollworthy.