Now it’s not like me to avidly follow the happenings at E3 (The Electronic Entertainment Expo, for all you non-nerds) but I know of a few people who actually went this year, so I get a bit of feedback from it. One of the cool things that’s come out of it is this thing:
It’s called Project Natal (Ne-tah-ll, not that thing to do with babies…) and it’s probably best to think of it as Wiimote +1. It’s basically a little attachment for your Xbox 360 (and any future generations, they hasten to add) which includes a few cameras and a microphone. You’re thinking "Wow, that doesn’t sound very impressive", but wait until I tell you that you don’t have any controllers. You are the controller. Yeah, I know, Bourne Ultimatum-style awesomeness coming your way.
What it does is have a few cameras which work together to work out not only your 2D figure, but your 3D location, too. It picks up key points on your body and – much like the motion capture software they use for film-making and whatnot – you’re translated into the game world as your avatar.
Just watch that video and you’ll get a taste for what you could do with it. It’s trained to pick up individual faces and voices. It’ll sign you in when you stand in front of it and the rest of the users if they’re with you. Using voice commands you can tell it to do things rather than casually just swipe your hands through all the options. Have a go at voice recognition in Vista, and you’re not all that far off as a concept.
At the E3 demo, and what they talked about most on Newsbeat while I was revising, was the creation of Milo. Milo is really just to demonstrate what Project Natal was all about and it’s nothing short of amazing. As you can see in this video from the conference itself, it’s a fully interactive… I don’t know what to call it. Calling it a program would be demeaning. What it’s able to do is not only recognise you, your voice and your actions in 3D space, it’s also set to recognise emotions in both your face and voice. You can hold a fluent conversation with Milo and interact with him through these cameras. As you can see in that video, the woman feels the need to talk like a human being, rather than talk in a way a computer can understand. She passes him a drawing of a fish for Pete’s sake. It doesn’t get much hardcore than that, does it?
Okay, so it’s all fun embarrassing yourself by flailing around pretending to change a tire on a race car, but what can it be used for? Well, the technology – while still in a prototype stage – is being sent off to major game developers to see what they can do with it. I’m hoping for real life Dead or Alive. That’d be awesome, but what else?
Microsoft over at their official YouTube account for Natal are asking for your suggestions. My favourites out of there’s has to be the air guitar and drum set. That’s just awesome. If they did this for Hitman then, well, I’d suck at it even more than I do. I’d sneeze or something at the wrong time.
Is there any way you can completely do away with a controller, though. Okay, so this breaks down the barrier of "Oh, I don’t know how to play it" stopping people from joining in, but will your friends really want to come around and make a complete fool out of themselves by painting a picture of an elephant? Hmm. This technology is limited, yet unlimited. We’ll see.
In the mean time, why not head over to the official page at Xbox.com to find out more about it, or even just about the really epic-looking Paint Party. Microsoft sceptic or not, this is awesome, no?
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