Comments on: 'Wii hacker' part of Microsoft's Natal effort

The former Carnegie Mellon researcher, who joined Microsoft and went quiet, says he has been working on the motion-sensing project unveiled on Monday.

[Hunnter2k3]

Been following this guys stuff, he is fantastic at it.
Nintendo must be kicking their self for not hiring this guy.

[fearghail]

If its by Ina Fried, I don't read it, Microsoft fan boy/girl.

[rapier1]

So why take the time to comment?

[bbabadu]

That's funny, I always thought that Ina was a disguised Apple fan boy/girl, reporting on MS products.

[Vegaman_Dan]

@fearghail:

"If its by Ina Fried, I don't read it"

Your loss then. The reporter has a lot of interesting news to report about the happenings of Microsoft.

[kojacked]

If its by fearghail, I don't read it, totally ignorant, hateful boy/girl.

Fearghail plays the same hate games the GWB, Cheney, Osama, and the rest of the "run the world by fear and hate" do.

[miaminica]

I never thought of Ina as a MS -- oops, I mean M$ fangirl. Hell, sometimes I think she can be quite snarky when it comes to Microsoft -- damn it, I mean Microsucks.

[pjscullion]

This page is doing something that's causing my up-to-date Opera browser to crash. I tried to load this page 5 times and Opera crashed every time. And it's only THIS page. Anyhoo...

Am I the only person who doesn't want a motion-controlled video game? The point of the games I play is to relax and let my character do the work for me. Don't get me wrong, the Wii Sports games have a surprisingly efficient motion controller, but even so I've managed to learn the vital motions so that I can bowl a perfect game and get perfect scores in Target Practice for golf (the hard one...) without ever getting off the couch. I don't want to have to hold my arms at an awkward position to aim down the barrel of a digital gun. If I wanted to do so, I'd have gone to the range and shot a real gun.

The Wii seems like a novelty to me. There are only so many motions, so many games you can base around human-body movement, that the games are going to get old pretty fast. And then what? Smash Brothers, Mario, or Zelda comes out. Games that, by the grace of Dr.Robotnik, require buttons.

Its the combination of buttons and pointer functionality that is the Wii's strength.
Play Metroid, Zack and Wiki or Eleedees to see great examples.

This microsoft system is brillent, but I think they need something else to complete it.
They need a basic wireless one-handed controller to deal with charecter movement.

As it stands you could aim at the screen with, say, your figures....but how would your charecter move?

As for limited motions, that applys certainly to gesture-mapping, but not to proper wii games that replicate the angles and intensitys of motion...which approach infinity. (or, if we want to get accurate, its 2axis of analogue sensing angle which are fairly accurate + 3 axis of displacement sensativity + all the buttons/stick + the same for the nunchuck + The 1024x1024 resolution of the IR pointer....thats a LOT of data!).
Motion plus is set to improve that by suppling the missing axis. (thus making 1:1 sword fighting, and sports games possible...and there is *a lot* more possibily actions in a real players motions then with buttons)

" I don't want to have to hold my arms at an awkward position to aim down the barrel of a digital gun"

You dont have to hold your arms in any positon, just point at the screen. Everyone hypes up/down the Wiis motion sensor, but the IR is the best bit and tis missunderstood.
Its not like a shotting range when playing FPS. Its akin to a mouse or stylus in how it feels, and the movements dont have to be big at all. Its not 1:1 like duckhunt.
Its a common missunderstanding that you need to hold your arms up to use a wiimote.
As long as your not pressed right upto the screen, you can lay your hands down pretty low in your lap and its very comfortable.

Also,
ps. Thank god someone else calls him Robotnik. I hate this eggman nonsense!

pps. Opera 9.6 here, and this site works fine.

[reya276]

No the reason why your having this issue could be because of SilverSucks(Silverlight) if you have it install. Like everything else Microsucks does it tied in to their Browser and like everything else they do is tied in to Winjuk. So Start there. If this is not the case then your Winjunk is not playing nice with Opera Period.

Now if your tired of Winjunk all together use Ubuntu or OSX. UBUNTU=Free OSX=$

[Super2online]

You make a valid point, but it's flawed in one respect. You are assuming that just because the tech is available to every game, it has to use it instead of the current controller. It doesn't. It's the same mistake a lot of people are making with regards to multi-touch in Windows 7. It's there and available to use when that makes sense, and can be ignored when it's not efficient.

[Inconnux]

Yes you are one of the only people who doesn't want motion control. Lets face it the 'standard' controller for Microsoft + Sony are really only good for fighting games. For Sports games motion control is far superior. For most FPS and RTS games the mouse/keyboard is FAR superior with motion control being second (think COD: WaW on the Wii for an FPS done right).

Nice to know hes got a job.

But, with the advanceness of the Natal tech....why all the boring demos to demo it?

Why not impliment his really cool headtracking techique? That would be utterly fantastic on nearly all first person Xbox games.

[BenFlavoredCandy]

Keep up the good work, CMU alum!

[bugs77dude]

Who cares about 360 its a useless system with so many flaws.

What console in history had a 33% failure rate? M$ released the POS early knowing of its flaws as well.

Nintendo should've hired this guy imo.

[ratm247]

project natal is a giant POS, but it will be a good thing for 360, as the 360 is cheaper than the wii, and will have motion control available, and will steal a lot of wiis customers. i think sony has the best solution for serious gaming, as the responsiveness and pixel accuracy is the best of the options shown. watching M$ paint that picture with natal was painful to watch, and then sony takes the stage and shows how accurate their solution is. M$ is years behind as always.

i dream of holodecks one day too, but dont think M$ is going to bring it to you, they are followers, not creators or innovators. find one M$ product thats original.

[fauxcephus]

DOOMED TO FAIL

This is very interesting technology and kudos are deserved by all those who have been working on it.
But I see some big, pink elephants in the middle of Microsoft's living room that everyone seems to be ignoring:


- When the world is trending towards smaller, more personal technology such as cellphones and netbooks Microsoft seems to be focused on gargantuan consumers of living space such as "surface computing" and Natal ("not-at-all?"). It seems a little egotistical that they think people will sacrifice such a huge part of their homes because Microsoft products are so great.
- Did anyone else have a "WT*!" moment with the family in the video? Not really a point, just wanted to say it.
- At what point does the simulation get close enough to the real thing for the real thing to be an easier (and cheaper) option? I'm talking effort and physical activity here, and a real football is a much cheaper, healthier and more parentally attractive option than a holodeck in your living room.
- How many families have a 10'x10' open space in their living room for gaming? How many of these spaces also have a 52" HD TV in them? What percentage of families can afford this?
- How many people over the age of 12 will feel overly self-conscious when asked to crawl around on the floor, punch and kick imaginary things?
- It's all fun and games until someone breaks an arm or get lacerated on shards of a broken vase.
Then it's Lawyer Time!

[techn0gamer]

Hey, why all the MS h8red, lets consider the alternatives, who else builds and funds hospitals for cancer research/treatment and aids research/treatment, not (Cr)apple, certainly not Sony or Nintendo. At least Microsoft aren't trying to buy up the entire entertainment industry like Sony, don't believe me, who owns most music labels and movie studios now, Sony that's who, that's the only reason Blu ray and the P (iece of) S (h1t) 3 even survived. The 360 is a WAY better console than the others despite it's flaws, and it's nice to see everyone has forgotten all of those initial PS2s released in Japan which would overheat after 5 HOURS of game play, just because they had managed to fix it by the time it was released in north america, doesn't mean it didn't happen, also lots of people have a 10' x 10' living room, just ditch some of that crap you have there, like the apple mac and the PS3. Also incase you hadn't noticed, the 360 is the CHEAPEST next gen console on the market, cheaper than the Wii, Project Natal may be fairly expensive at release, but not as much as a new console. BTW half of the PS2 sales this year are people replacing their old BROKEN PS2s
you want to rag on a company because it's successful, well then why only rag on 1, because you are too stoopid to learn to use linux instead, why not rag on exxon, why not rag on ford or honda, they have had a far more detremental effect on this planet.
Grow up.
PS. don't quote me gigaflops and other cell processor BS, I know exactly what the hardware is capable of and that's why I KNOW the 360's design is better.

[BrendanK]

Actually as far as the cellphone bit goes, MS also seems to be working on a similar technology in their next mobile OS release.
As far as everything else, that's more a question of how the technology is deployed, and while MS is probably going to make a few Natal games, their mostly releasing the software developer kit and trusting that other companies will be able to make something incredible with it.
Though I'm interested in weather or not Natal capability will be added to Windows 7 or 8. Their adding multitouch capabilities, but with a little tweaking this technology will allow a lot of that capability to be mimiced using a webcam rather than a touchscreen.

[peterwhite]

If I had to guess, Microsoft will push the technology to be completely hands free.

HOWEVER, if you noticed, another article mentioned that this system is smart enough to see bits of body parts and draw in the rest for accuracy. THEREFORE, I believe they will allow 3rd party vendors to play the role of the 'bad guy' by selling add-on accessories. For example, a lightweight oversized plastic gun case with attachments for Call of Duty (possibly configurable to represent different weapons) ... the market has already seen that the public will spend significant money on plastic guitars / drums ... so why not a plastic / foam rubber golf club, tennis racket, gun, etc ...

[dudesmiles]

your video game console sucks

[Schratboy]

This is like the Matrix. Now the machines actually are the puppet masters. The dumbing-down of the world for commercial exploitation is nearly complete.