Well E3 has passed and Natal is a certainly talked about topic. It looks like a fantastic implementation that's easy to use for general purpose input. The MS trailer video is fun and reminisence of the Nintendo Wii would like to play. The E3 press conference showed us with some live action.

Wheres the problem though. It occured to me the other day that Natal might have some precision problems depending on the software needs. We saw Paint Splat and the image made. It looked pretty nifty. What I was suprised to see however was the lack of precision painting and in general precision control. I'm not saying it will have it, but the technology in design does have a draw back. Pointer precision.

(hope this image works and doesn't break the thread)

If you see it what we have here are the input translation between Natal and the Wiiremote.

Natal
As you can see the camera is at the TV and looks out towards the players. As we know the farther away from a static input the smaller the object is to the input screen. This also translate that the farther you go the more something needs to move before it's noticible. Think of a long drive. The near by trees pass at a faster rate than the trees at a much farther distance. What does this mean motion of the tracked objects are dependent on greater motion. This is great for general input. The skateboarding game for example. The motion that the paint sample showed needed clear input. This isn't a bad thing by itself. But what about presion required software. RTS for example or just general pointing like painting with a brush.

Wiiremote
Most of us should already be familiar with the Wiiremote. The Wiiremote is the input sensor. As we know by non static camera movement a little turn translate a greater degree. The LED bar is the tracked object and it stays still. This provides that the control is in the users hand. The same rule applies to distance, but there is a greater degree of control and prcesion. Though the controller design makes the skateboarding sample impossible.

What i'm seeing though is that there will be some clear distinctions in regards to presion and capabilities. I'm looking forward to seeing some more Natal software coming, but while Natal seems that it will be an easier interface for general motion it will have difficulties with precision.

The response time of a chip tracking movement is likely to be faster than the camera and processing of what it sees. That said, the Wii has never had lightening fast response time either.

That is true, but I'm more referring to precision of input not so much precision of time. The IR of the Wii and the Natal Camera are both a visual in put that relay on movement. Moving a camera(wiiremote) results in a greater axis change than moving the tracking object(natal).

So is Natal going to be able to support finite screen position or is it limited to more of a broad general input. So far the videos and samples don't show Natal being capable of that. Though I admit to preferring Natal menu navigation and I like the idea of scanning in custom textures.

I would think that it's infinite in the sense that it tracks your hand/movement in relation to what's on screen.  So if you move your hand around it will track it's location everywhere it goes.  Is that what you mean?  It will be interesting to see if it can make out a finger and let you write things and whatnot like you would with the Wiimote.

I think it's becoming increasingly clear that Natal has a very different set of strengths and weaknesses compared to the wii remote. I think game designers are going to find that good design choices for one input device is going to be pretty far from good design for the other.