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Ssliasil said:

This is how Milo/ Natal Works...

First the Camera (natal) is continually scanning the enviroment displayed to it, untill it finds a human posture it is programed to recognize.

---Now that Natal has set points of interest and trace the body in Minor Points it sends out certain waves (Sorry dont know the exact wording here) Directly at ALL points, and then returns to the camera, depending on the wave legth and time it took those waves to return to the camera's detectors, it can dictate the depth and exact distance and rotation of the object(s) in micro-seconds and with extreme accuracy, this data is also stored and saved to the camera (and/or console/device used to store memory) for facial recognition (Milo knowing peoples name for example)...

Ssliasil.

 

ok..first I have to admit I do not know how Natal really works (and MS did not tell anyone that bit so far..), but as a physicist who has worked for years with all the basic technology inside Natal I can try to explain why what you are writing is complete nonsense.

What we could agree on is that Natal basically consists of

a) a strong infrared emitting diode

b) an infrared sensitive CCD-camera (essentially a lense in front of a 400*320 CCD-chip)

c) a color-sensitive CCD-camera (again a lense in front of an RGB-CCD-device)

d) a directional-sensitive microphone of whatever build

e) a high performance processor/LSI electronics board to process all inputs

f) extremely clever software

g) there does not seem to be an ultrasound emitter being involved in Natal.

a) to d) are inexpensive of-the-shelf components, e) to f) is the very expensive stuff

So to your main points:

"First the Camera (natal) is continually scanning"

That is not possible, sorry. A CCD-chip accumulates electrons (generated by light of whatever kind) for a certain amount of time and then the chip is read out as an image into a frame buffer. In the case of Natal, it was mentioned that it is able to do that at 60Hz max. The net result of the infrared part of Natal is that it generates an infrared picture every 1/60th of a second (max) of whatever was illuminated in front of the camera.

"and trace the body in Minor Points it sends out certain waves"

No the infrared diode emits infrared light radially into space that is filled with whatever is in front of the camera (be that ontinuous light or flashes of light)

it can dictate the depth and exact distance and rotation of the object(s) in micro-seconds and with extreme accuracy,

The camera cannot do this for a simple reason. Infrared light travels at 30000000000 cm/sec. If you want information in the cm resolution range, you would have to take pictures every 1/30000000000 second, obviously this is completely impossible (and, as mentioned, Natal maxes out at 60Hz).

So how do you get spatial information? Apparently, here is where the software comes into play. All we have is picture information every 1/60th second (max), so as a rough guess (which could be totally off) the software compares several frames (or more precise, the difference between consecutive frames) to detect motion of body pieces. The software must additionally compare brightness/size differences of detected elements (a limb closer to the camera will light more ccd pixels) to extract depth information from delta frames.. but here is where my knowledge ends.

 

Sidenote: Your newspaper might have reported in the science portion that the University of Berlin has built and demoed successfully a device (essentially a cap plastered with electrodes) that works with registering brain waves to steer a human figure on screen. Works nicely, the only problem is the lag of 600-1000ms (which is an order of magnitude faster than anything built before). This would be the ultimate Natal system for the lazy, as it does not require any movement at all

 

//addendum seems I have been away too long. b) could actually be a time-of-flight camera with reasonable resolution. Commercial tof cameras are available with reasonable resolution and noise suppression, so Natal gets the depth information with a pulsed/sine-modulated ir diode and the tof-camera.