If there was something that kept our heart from leaping duringMicrosoft’s admittedly impressive (lifestyle video aside) onstageunveiling of Project Natal, it was our last experience with acamera-enabled Microsoft game, the limp You’re In The Movies.
We mention our fears during our chat with Microsoft’s Don Mattrick,and he promises that the system isn’t too good to be true beforeliterally pulling us into a nearby meeting room to take part in a fewgames of Project Natal’s Ricochet prototype with the project’s creative director, Kudo Tsunoda.
Onwalking into the room, it’s immediately obvious that the system picksup Tsunoda’s body movements accurately with its stock but evenlighting. And, challenged by Mattrick, Tsunoda dims the lights to thelevel of a dark but not pitch-black room, and returns to playing Ricochet with no drop in precision.
A topic only touched upon during Microsoft’s press briefing, Tsunodaexplains that this was possible due to the way in which Project Natalanalyses your body to create your “skeleton” which it can thenaccurately follow, even if your arm or leg moves out of the camera’sview. The software can predict the placement of the limb based on thepositioning of the rest of the skeleton.
Of course, the proof is in the playing, and it isn’t until we stepinto the camera’s view that it starts to make sense. On beginning, thesystem takes 2-3 seconds to read your body shape, and we see our avatarreadjusting its height, since we’re several inches shorter thanTsunoda. And then, as much as this might sound like hyperbole, everysingle movement, however small, Natal picks up, from a scratch of thenose to a small hop forward or backwards.
Ricochet itself, a simple 3D physics-enabled block-breaking game that reminds of the Dreamcast’s Cosmic Smash,is an effective demonstration of some of Project Natal’s capabilities.That said, our initial difficulties betray the separation that stillremains between player and game. It’s hard to sense where the ballwould exist in the real world, making it a challenge to reach out intoreal space in order to hit a virtual one. Moreover, once we manage toget it bouncing around, our reactions tend to lag a split second afterthe ball’s out of our reach.
So, while we have no qualms in stating that Project Natal readsmovement supremely accurately, the issue of navigating a 3D space on a2D screen remains an issue. Accordingly, Ricochet the game is much more about trying to deal with keeping a vast quantity of balls in play via quick, expansive movements.
With Ricochet currently a tech demo, it would ultimately be foolishto assume that Project Natal’s future will entirely consist of similarmini-game experiences – that would surely squander the breadth of theprecision the system offers. But if Ricochet proves anything, it’s the bottom line: is Natal is for real? The answer to that is, definitively, yes.作者: 金碧辉煌 时间: 2009-6-5 18:33