| Ajescent said: I'm gonna argue the reason why most games on Kinect seems to b e on rails so far is because they haven't perfected the art of free movement yet with it. I think it would be cool if the uses gestures to mimic Direction input, e.g push your left palm forward to go forward etc etc. |
Movements along those lines (left palm forward = walk forward) are simply proxy motions which take games back into the territory of gesture controlled input and away from the 1:1 motion control input that so many regard as being the key to full immersion input schemes.
It's a fundamental design issue for something like Kinect or the PSEye as a standalone input system.
The most realistic way of having a 1:1 movement system for a motion tracking based controller would be to have a specialized 2 way treadmill that moves in all directions, allowing the player to effectively walk or run in place naturally to move an on screen character without resorting to "if I lift my foot, that means my character starts walking until I put my foot down to make it stop" type input.
It goes without saying that a multi-directional treadmill based system would cost far more than any controller ever released just for the added realisim of being able to walk or run to control a character's moment in true 1:1.
As for Forza, it just looks like it's an optional control scheme for driving games, albeit one that appears to be less accurate and less responsive than a basic analog stick based game pad. In order for Kinect based control input to be truly competitive, the game code will likely have to bump up the steering input assist so significantly that the player would no longer be driving on his own. Bascially, it's a novelty, that allows a player to use his Kinect camera to play Forza.
The best control input for any driving game based in reality will always be a well-designed, well made steering wheel/pedal controller. And until they start making real life cars that are controlled by anything else, I don't see that ever changing.
