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nightsurge on 03 June 2009
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dahuman said:
nightsurge said:
dahuman said:
Stage, only to non tech savvy people would it seem that impressive, voice is done by software, any camera can scan full body, the difference is the tech in natal is high frame rate capture, not quiet as good as slow cam, but enough to capture general human movements fast enough with good precision at a higher resolution. all it is, is a pretty decent camera with a mic attached to it, rest is all software driven.

I'd like to correct this misinformed post.

Natal is not "just a decent camera and a mic."

Natal's camera does not just capture at a high rate, it has a second lens for tracking IR pulses so that it can track 3D movements and not just 2D stuff.  Also, you make it sound like the software has to be added to the 360 or something, but all the software needed for voice and interpretting the data received from camera is handled internally within Natal.  The final result is then sent to the 360 to be displayed/processed/manipulated/etc.

Any digital camera has software built in.  You seem to be thinking that electronics these days work without internal software?

you are thinking about firmwares, it collects data, it sends it to the host then the software, then the software decides what to do with that data, it's just a specialized I/O device, nothing more, nothing less. IR tracking is not new nor is it revolutionary.

Yes, firmware is software.  Firmware can control the hardware as well as decide how to handle the data.  No software is needed on the Xbox 360 to make this work.  I'm sure there will be an update obviously since this is meant to interact with the 360 dashboard and stuff like that, but if all you wanted was to play a game you wouldn't need the 360 OS software to do what Natal can do.  Also, you started replying before my edited post

EDIT:  I think I'm being a bit unclear.  Obviously you need software to be used with Natal (a game or something), I'm just saying that the actual I/O device itself can receive and interpret the data before sending it to the software which then handles the data.

I'm a programmer so I know how an input device works with software, but what I'm trying to say is that while your program interprets what the mouse "click" does, for example, it does not interpret what the "click" is.  The "click" is handled by the mouse, then the program processes where it took place and what action to do as a result of that.  The same way Natal can determine what the motion, the voice command, etc. is, and the software is merely needed to determine what to do with that data.  So I guess yes you are right in your statement that it is relient on software, I just felt you were trying to say that this device itself did nothing more than capture data, and did no processing of it's own.