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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - Project Natal drops hardware Motion detection to save costs!

NJ5 on 07 January 2010
kitler53 said:

had he said, "what the natal hardware does..." i would completely agree with you but he doesn't.  this is such a high level explanation/commericial that i don't think there is anything about that statement that clearly indicates the exact location of where any calculations are being crunched.

When a video has someone claiming that a piece of cheap hardware can evaluate "trillions of ____ 30 times per second", you can pretty much throw all the info out the window.

 



My Mario Kart Wii friend code: 2707-1866-0957

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selnor on 07 January 2010
drkohler said:
selnor said:
drkohler said:
selnor said:

.. Natal hardware itaself evalutes trillions of body configurations every frame.

No it obviously doesn't. Where did you get that idea from?

From M$ at CES less than 24 hours ago. LOL. You all should see more Natal CES stuff. LOL. At least this thread is funny. The more hate a product gets. History tells us they are usually HUGELY successful.

ok.. since you seem to be a little short of working brain cells, let's do some wag math. Suppose a "body configuration" consists of only 12 data points a processor/fpga has to find and "evaluate" and store back per frame. We need about (1 trillion) * 30fps * 12 data points * 3clock cycles (an incredibly fast fpga)= roughly 1000 trillion operation per second. That's several 1000 XBox processors running in parallel. Where do you fit that into your Xbox? (What really happened is that the developers _evaluated millions of frames_ (with possibly "trillions of body configuration") and condensed the results into an AI database. Wasn't there something said about resulting in 31 body configurations?).

 

Now did you even watch CES? Firstly the very same video goes on to say that Natal is the only product of it's type to actually realtime track the entire body. Unlike other products in the field ( clearly referring to Eyetoy ) where he says " Until now, if you wanted to measure the movements of parts of somebody's body you'd need some kind of device like a remote ( wii ) or a marker ( Eyetoy + wand ). The player doesnt need to fit their actions with the technology like before. Natal changes for the player.

Now for the BIGGEST statement in the video. EXACTLY THE SAME STATEMENT AS AT E3 09!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

50% Hardware and 50% Software. Oh sh*t the article in OP loses all credibility. It obviously hasnt lost anything since E3. So either the decision was made to lose some chip 2 or 3 years ago. Or no chips have been lost at all. Becasue it's the same as said at E3. Not 40& Hardware not 30 - 70 it's still as of Jan 06th 50-50.

Oh and Natal tracks 48 points of your body. Confirmed. Sigh.



WereKitten on 07 January 2010

^what drkohler said still stands, though: the "elaborates trillions of body configurations every frame" is clearly some sloppy PR speech. There's not remotely the power to elaborate anything trillions of time per frame in a cheap device.

The guy probably meant that their image->skeleton algorithm can potentially distinguish trillions of different poses, and does that 30 times per second.

That said I'm slightly concerned about this:
"The system locates body parts to within a 4-centimetre cube, says Kipman. That's far less precise than lab-based systems or the millimetre precision of Hollywood motion capture. But Douglas Lanman, who works on markerless 3D interaction at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and is not involved with Natal, says that this will likely be accurate enough for gamers."

...because 4cm is very rough and could give troubles if we want to, say, use a finger as a precise pointer for on-screen interaction a-la Wiimote/Sony wand.



"All you need in life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure." - Mark Twain

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NJ5 on 07 January 2010
WereKitten said:
^what drkohler said still stands, though: the "elaborates trillions of body configurations every frame" is clearly some sloppy PR speech. There's not remotely the power to elaborate anything trillions of time per frame in a cheap device.

The guy probably meant that their image->skeleton algorithm can potentially distinguish trillions of different poses, and does that 30 times per second.

That said I'm slightly concerned about this:
"The system locates body parts to within a 4-centimetre cube, says Kipman. That's far less precise than lab-based systems or the millimetre precision of Hollywood motion capture. But Douglas Lanman, who works on markerless 3D interaction at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and is not involved with Natal, says that this will likely be accurate enough for gamers."

...because 4cm is very rough and could give troubles if we want to, say, use a finger as a precise pointer for on-screen interaction a-la Wiimote/Sony wand.

I've suspected since almost the beginning that Natal wouldn't be able to do IR aiming or anything similar... that suspicion has only grown to almost a certainty.

 



My Mario Kart Wii friend code: 2707-1866-0957

selnor on 07 January 2010
NJ5 said:
WereKitten said:
^what drkohler said still stands, though: the "elaborates trillions of body configurations every frame" is clearly some sloppy PR speech. There's not remotely the power to elaborate anything trillions of time per frame in a cheap device.

The guy probably meant that their image->skeleton algorithm can potentially distinguish trillions of different poses, and does that 30 times per second.

That said I'm slightly concerned about this:
"The system locates body parts to within a 4-centimetre cube, says Kipman. That's far less precise than lab-based systems or the millimetre precision of Hollywood motion capture. But Douglas Lanman, who works on markerless 3D interaction at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and is not involved with Natal, says that this will likely be accurate enough for gamers."

...because 4cm is very rough and could give troubles if we want to, say, use a finger as a precise pointer for on-screen interaction a-la Wiimote/Sony wand.

I've suspected since almost the beginning that Natal wouldn't be able to do IR aiming or anything similar... that suspicion has only grown to almost a certainty.

 

considering the extortionate price of alot of Wii games in the UK at least. Having a small conducter type wand come with a new Command and Conquer type game would be fine for precision pointing. It could have a small marker on the end. Same with a Call of Duty game. A gun with a marker on the tip. Considering Wii Fit is £89.99 and MKWii is £60. £50 for C&C or COD would be easily payable. M$ price there games fantastic this gen.

Still my point was to show the article in OP has no credibility as of CES.



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elticker on 07 January 2010
superchunk said:
Makes sense to me.

If this to remain a 360 addon vs a nextgen controller then its costs must be as low as possible to a huge number of existing customers purchase it. With a game included, I would expect this to be $100 at a maximum. That game must also have the kind of pull that Wii Sports or Wii Fit have. This doesn't mean it needs to be a *casual* game, just have that kind of unique must have appeal to it.

However, this does mean that games like Gears2 won't be doable, assuming these latest games do push the hardware to the limits as devs have stated. Something else will have to be scaled back to allow for the cpu to do both tasks appropriately.

This will be an interesting year to see what MS and Sony finally put out in the motion sphere. E3 is going to be EXCITING!


gears 2 isn't really pushing 360 hardware as alan wake looks much better than it in texture, lighting and volumeric shadows and i think some other stuff too. gears of war resolution is shit. Halo reach looks much better than gears 2 so gears 2 didn't really push hardware it was just to brag.



 

 

JaggedSac on 07 January 2010
NJ5 said:
WereKitten said:
^what drkohler said still stands, though: the "elaborates trillions of body configurations every frame" is clearly some sloppy PR speech. There's not remotely the power to elaborate anything trillions of time per frame in a cheap device.

The guy probably meant that their image->skeleton algorithm can potentially distinguish trillions of different poses, and does that 30 times per second.

That said I'm slightly concerned about this:
"The system locates body parts to within a 4-centimetre cube, says Kipman. That's far less precise than lab-based systems or the millimetre precision of Hollywood motion capture. But Douglas Lanman, who works on markerless 3D interaction at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and is not involved with Natal, says that this will likely be accurate enough for gamers."

...because 4cm is very rough and could give troubles if we want to, say, use a finger as a precise pointer for on-screen interaction a-la Wiimote/Sony wand.

I've suspected since almost the beginning that Natal wouldn't be able to do IR aiming or anything similar... that suspicion has only grown to almost a certainty.

 

I don't think Natal can distinguish fingers anyway.  It can measure where the arm is pointing.  My question is whether it is a cube with volume of 4 cm?  Or is it a cube with 4 cm on each side?



superchunk on 07 January 2010
I elticker said:
superchunk said:
Makes sense to me.

If this to remain a 360 addon vs a nextgen controller then its costs must be as low as possible to a huge number of existing customers purchase it. With a game included, I would expect this to be $100 at a maximum. That game must also have the kind of pull that Wii Sports or Wii Fit have. This doesn't mean it needs to be a *casual* game, just have that kind of unique must have appeal to it.

However, this does mean that games like Gears2 won't be doable, assuming these latest games do push the hardware to the limits as devs have stated. Something else will have to be scaled back to allow for the cpu to do both tasks appropriately.

This will be an interesting year to see what MS and Sony finally put out in the motion sphere. E3 is going to be EXCITING!


gears 2 isn't really pushing 360 hardware as alan wake looks much better than it in texture, lighting and volumeric shadows and i think some other stuff too. gears of war resolution is shit. Halo reach looks much better than gears 2 so gears 2 didn't really push hardware it was just to brag.

I just pulled Gears2 out of thin air. However, graphics ain't everything, with 4player co-op I'm sure it was taxing the system.

Eitherway the point is the same.



Chairman-Mao on 07 January 2010

I don't know what any of this technical stuff means, but anything that drops the price of NATAL is good. I have a feeling if its anything over the price of a game ($60) it would fail.



elticker on 07 January 2010
superchunk said:
I elticker said:
superchunk said:
Makes sense to me.

If this to remain a 360 addon vs a nextgen controller then its costs must be as low as possible to a huge number of existing customers purchase it. With a game included, I would expect this to be $100 at a maximum. That game must also have the kind of pull that Wii Sports or Wii Fit have. This doesn't mean it needs to be a *casual* game, just have that kind of unique must have appeal to it.

However, this does mean that games like Gears2 won't be doable, assuming these latest games do push the hardware to the limits as devs have stated. Something else will have to be scaled back to allow for the cpu to do both tasks appropriately.

This will be an interesting year to see what MS and Sony finally put out in the motion sphere. E3 is going to be EXCITING!


gears 2 isn't really pushing 360 hardware as alan wake looks much better than it in texture, lighting and volumeric shadows and i think some other stuff too. gears of war resolution is shit. Halo reach looks much better than gears 2 so gears 2 didn't really push hardware it was just to brag.

I just pulled Gears2 out of thin air. However, graphics ain't everything, with 4player co-op I'm sure it was taxing the system.

Eitherway the point is the same.

gears had only 2 payer coop split screen. 4 player was on live.

halo reach looks better though there are rumrors of 6 player coop (4 player split screen) and it has loads of explosions all of this add HDR lighting and high res texture and better lighting etc... and that would be really taxing the system not gears 2 . gears 2 was rushed and buggy though i loved the story and multiplayer. I know graphics isn't everything since i still enjoy halo 1.