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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - Natal lag issues will hurt game development

zarx on 28 January 2010
nightsurge said:
zarx said:
the real kicker is that as Natal stands now more complex the game the more lag there will be, so most of the games are going to be simple mini-games like the ones everyone hates on the Wii. the time that it takes to process the image data and then convert the results into onscreen actions for a game is always going to be slower than button 1 pressed so execute action, no matter how good the software is. not to mention the perceived lag generated by the difference in time it takes to perform a physical action with your body like punching vs pressing a button.

But in saying that Natal does have a lot of potential to bring a lot of new ideas into gaming, but since the eyetoy/PlayStation eye the Wii and all the other motion controllers over the years haven't really changed much I doubt we will see much more for Natal no matter how much more advanced it is.

Underlined is just plain wrong.  They already said no matter what the game, it will use ~10-15% of the resources.  The software and data used from Natal will always use about that amount.  It doesn't matter if you are overlaying the skeleton with say a Gears of War character or if it is just an Avatar, the "lag" will be the same as all the processing related to Natal and it's data will always have that amount of dedicated resources to use.

Also, if it really is faster than pressing a button, then why does it have less input lag than many games using controllers?  Killzone 2 and Halo 3  both have worse input lag than Natal at this point.

I think you missed the point of what I was saying, so I will use an example. Lets say that Halo Reach without natal uses 85-100% of the CPU (for physics, AI, Decompression etc) if you use 10-15% of that processing power for natal that means that the other processing will have to be done later causing the game (or the input) to lag. And as for the other comment about the Natal lag processing the image into game readable input takes time as illustrated by it using 10-15% of the CPU, a button press wouldn't even use 0.0001% of the CPU so Natal will be slower, the reason for the controller lag in games is because of the nature of wireless the frame rate of the game because of the way the lag is measured the game waiting for the last frame to be rendered before reacting to the input, any lag Natal adds will be ontop of the existing input lag.



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Malachi on 28 January 2010
JaggedSac said:
NJ5 said:
richardhutnik said:
CommonMan said:
I don't care, I'm still buying it. I will control my dashboard like Minority Report, play some awesome RTS on a console finally, maybe they'll update the Magic: The Gathering game to work with your own cards too, so many awesome applications if only it's done right! Oh and please port Myst to the Xbox 360 for Natal, that would be amazing!

I suggest you may want to wait on it, if you are expecting RTS to suddenly show up.  I had learned my lesson with the DS.  I bought it hoping I would get Punch Out and also RTS on it, and they didn't show up.  I thought the PSP also would have mouse support, and do RTS portably also, but it didn't do that either.  One should always wait to see how things actually work, before being a lock to spend money on them.

True... plus, MS hasn't shown any pointer functionality with Natal, so RTS might not even work (at least not with pointing if that's what you guys were thinking).

 

It is easy to have a pointer with Natal.  Do you recall the link that I gave you to the TVs that have similar functionality as Natal?  The guy was typing on a virtual keyboard onscreen.  It will be quite simple to do that with Natal.  I imagine the resolution available to Natal would be at least the same or greater than what was shown there as well.

Only a pointer isn't enough though, you need the "click" part of the point and click interface for RTS. Just look at the DS, richardhutnik complain the lack of RTS on it, but I played one on it and let me tell you that without that second part of the interface the experience is an extremely frustating one. So much so that I hope the next DS upgrade or DS2 add a button on the stylus connected by wifi or wheteever to the console with a wacth batteries for power. Maybe they can find a way to implement it, the interface is much more versatile then a touch screen afterall but ill wait to see it before announcing victory.



Persons without argument hide behind their opinion

Lord Flashheart on 28 January 2010

Maybe you can point and say click.
it does have voice recognition.



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JaggedSac on 28 January 2010
Malachi said:
JaggedSac said:
NJ5 said:
richardhutnik said:
CommonMan said:
I don't care, I'm still buying it. I will control my dashboard like Minority Report, play some awesome RTS on a console finally, maybe they'll update the Magic: The Gathering game to work with your own cards too, so many awesome applications if only it's done right! Oh and please port Myst to the Xbox 360 for Natal, that would be amazing!

I suggest you may want to wait on it, if you are expecting RTS to suddenly show up.  I had learned my lesson with the DS.  I bought it hoping I would get Punch Out and also RTS on it, and they didn't show up.  I thought the PSP also would have mouse support, and do RTS portably also, but it didn't do that either.  One should always wait to see how things actually work, before being a lock to spend money on them.

True... plus, MS hasn't shown any pointer functionality with Natal, so RTS might not even work (at least not with pointing if that's what you guys were thinking).

 

It is easy to have a pointer with Natal.  Do you recall the link that I gave you to the TVs that have similar functionality as Natal?  The guy was typing on a virtual keyboard onscreen.  It will be quite simple to do that with Natal.  I imagine the resolution available to Natal would be at least the same or greater than what was shown there as well.

Only a pointer isn't enough though, you need the "click" part of the point and click interface for RTS. Just look at the DS, richardhutnik complain the lack of RTS on it, but I played one on it and let me tell you that without that second part of the interface the experience is an extremely frustating one. So much so that I hope the next DS upgrade or DS2 add a button on the stylus connected by wifi or wheteever to the console with a wacth batteries for power. Maybe they can find a way to implement it, the interface is much more versatile then a touch screen afterall but ill wait to see it before announcing victory.

Click is easy.  The depth of your hand determines that.  Move your hand forward for click.  You could even have two kinds of clicks, forward and backward.  Both hands could be used as well.  Multi touch map control.



Lord Flashheart on 28 January 2010

Or you could wink
It does have facial recognition



Official member of the Xbox 360 Squad