Microsoft discusses controller recognition and next gen technology at Comic Con.

Major Nelson took the stage today at San Diego Comic Con to moderate a panel of developers as they talked about the new features of Microsoft's upcoming console, the Xbox One.

Ken Lobb, Creative Director at Microsoft, has been trying to revive Killer Instinct for years. Rather than go into tons of detail about the game itself, Ken showed highlights from EVO, the recent fighting name tournament in Las Vegas. At EVO, Ken used Project Upload to record a match where a dev broke a fan's 100+ win streak through some of the games new combo breakers. The match highlights were used as a sort of demo of the Xbox One's new video recording feature, which automatically records and stores locally the last five minutes of every game you play. Whenever something cool happens, you simply say "Xbox record" and it saves out the last 30 seconds of gameplay for upload and sharing.

More impressively, the controllers automatically recognize who is holding the controller through the camera. When the controller is passed from player to player, the games automatically load individual controller profiles for that player. Now passing controllers around during a game won't require you to back out to the options menu and change look inversion.

Dan Greenawalt, Creative Director of Turn10, creators of Forza, talked about more of the haptic a and rumble motors in the controller. The individual rumble in the triggers are being used to provide feedback on the tire performance, so players will have even more awareness of grip and braking. While that's impressive, the video showing a Prague course in 1080p and 60fps was even more amazing.

Keeping on the theme of graphics, Josh Bridge showed off a highlight reel from the insanity that is Dead Rising 3. The sequel will offer more zombies than ever before, a larger world, and no loading times. That's the big news, but Josh also took time to highlight, via a slideshow, some of the added details, from physics driven glass shards to biologically appropriate innards when you dismember zombies with your lightsaber.

We've already covered some of the Smartglass integration in Microsoft's Ryse, but producer Justin Robey was on hand to discuss how Smartglass can display where your friends are in each of their games and can help you prep multiplayer sessions without having to load the game first. So if you're playing Ryse, you can invite a bunch of your friends to a Dead Rising match, and will be notified in Ryse when all players are ready.

Nick Burton, lead of new technology at Rare, introduced the topic of Kinect, and how the fidelity had not been "quite there" in the previous generation. It could track about 20 points on the body. The Xbox One is about 10x the resolution of the current version and can read the folds in your face and discriminate among your fingers even at 3 meters. Hand positions can now be read for better fidelity in bowling and rock climbing games. The team have even created a target shooting game that uses your hand and eye positions in place of an actual light gun.

As amazing as that is, Nick had even more surprises. He showed a Kinectic produced mask of his own face that can the be mapped to in-game models. Rather than the gamer pic versions of yourself in games like Rainbow Six, you can now import your own face geometry and even your BMI onto character models in the games. The whole game also tracks your face during gameplay and will reproduce your real life facial expressions on the in game models.

All these features are so-called system level features and will be available to any game that chooses to use them.

The first question from the crowd was, not surprisingly, about the release date. The team promised more details on that this summer.

Source: IGN

This is something I found particularly interesting.

"More impressively, the controllers automatically recognize who is holding the controller through the camera. When the controller is passed from player to player, the games automatically load individual controller profiles for that player. Now passing controllers around during a game won't require you to back out to the options menu and change look inversion."

So without touching anything but the controller -- no buttons -- the Xbox One signs the player in, loads their profile, and reconfigures the controller for them.  And it can do that for every player, whether you've logged onto the console or not (Internet required).

Impressive. Most impressive.

That is impressive but I feel some people will find a way to make that into a negative. It seems Kinect 2.0 will be leagues better than the old one.

It is impressive but I dont believe this is something new to the industry.  If i am correct PS4 does the same thing.  Also I believe PS Move did this.

Not knocking MSFT.  Afterall my fav controller seems to be getting better (XB controller), but it really isnt something new.  im more interested in the impulse triggers tbh.

It's definitely a cool feature and shows off one of the benefits of including Kinect in the box.

Yes, but the PS4 Camera isn't included in-box.  The PS4, with a PS4 Camera, will detect the controller.  It is supposed to be usable for signing on a player, though this particular feature hasn't actually been demonstrated.  However, if you and I are sitting right next to each other on a couch, and you're Player 1 and I'm Player 2.  On the PS4 -- as it stands right now with the features shown -- if you and I exchange controllers, you will be me and I will be you.  The only difference is that, if we're playing split screen, the screen would switch sides.   The PS4 as it has been demonstrated knows who the player is by the color of the light bar.  Not by who is holding it.

The Xbox One actually detects who is holding the controller.  When an Xbox One is connected to the Internet, it identifies a player, pulls down the profile, and logs that user into the console.  The controllers use IR LEDs, so no visible light and those IR LEDs are all hidden behind the same green, clear plastic in the controller.  If we're sitting on a couch and exchange controllers, and you were Player 1 and I was player 2, you'd still be Player 1 and I'd still be Player 2, but if we're split screen our side of the screen would change and the control profile and Player indicator on the controller would change.

Now, if Sony does actually feature an auto sign-in process, then they could be on par.  But again, as of right now with the features demonstrated, they're not the same.  And without the PS4 Camera, they're nothing similar.

We already knew of some of these but they will be pretty cool features.

I'm more interested in the triggers as well. I hope it isn't too different and I can't get used to it.

I really wished someone had tapped this. Would like to see it.

New Kinect 10x as powerful!  There is some super impressive tech in there.

Interesting you pointed this out because I was going to do the same thing and call this a system seller.  Fighting games are one of my favorites and different people have different controller layouts.  This really bog games down when a new person get on a joystick and he has to do all of his mappings.  If Kinect can really do this, realtime I believe MS just sold me Kinect 2.0

Edit:  Currently Sony does not do this and it did not do this with move because I have it on my PS3.  The PSeye does not know you and it does not using the camera to recognize who a player is.  So far the PS4 eye does not do this either.  Yes, the PSeye can folow the controller but it does not follow the player and since it is not in every PS4 its features are limited.