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On Wednesday, as the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) at Las Vegas was about to start, there was a Microsoft keynote which included the date for Project Natal’s launch: Holiday season 2010. As the first obvious contender to the successful Nintendo Wii controllers, and bearing impressive technology, one can’t help but wonder if it is all we can expect.
Earlier today, Microsoft released a related video to users of their XBLA service. This will give you a good idea of what Project Natal is all about:
Very impressive technology. It certainly brings consumer visual recognition to a whole new level. But is it really the ultimate interface? We know that having something else track our movements, and doing so without any wearable devices, has been at the top of our expectations for the future. Lately, we see it in movies all the time, from the computer user interfaces in Minority Report, to the robot controls in the recent Avatar (see my review on Avatar). Let’s take this last one as an example.
Robot Interface in Avatar
In this scene, the Colonel points at Jake’s legs, and the rig he is wearing inside the robot makes it point as well. At the same time, the robot’s left hand rests on the hip, as he probably is doing inside the machine. If he were to start dancing, the robot would dance as well, even in a clunky way. Impressive right? Later in the movie, these robots appear holding guns, and their pilots hold their hands as if they were holding one themselves. The gun is obviously missing. The not so obvious thing missing is feedback.
Remember Newton’s third law of motion? Every action has a reaction. You lift a gun, you feel its weight on your hands. When I put my grip on the handle, the fingers fit right because I feel the integrity of it pushing back. I can use my left hand to grab the barrel without looking, because I feel it coming in. For the sake of discussion, lets say that in this case the rig provides this feedback by transferring an appropriate force to the driver’s hands. What happens when there are no rigs attached, such as in the case of Project Natal?
Lets stick to the gun example. One solution would be to have a mock gun device to provide the feedback, and tell the console when the player is squeezing the trigger. But that defeats the purpose of having no devices attached. The second one is through improved resolution. What if we could not only predict where your limbs are moving, but also every other finger in your hand? Then you move a finger in front of the screen, squeeze the trigger in the game. It would be the ultimate make believe experience.
Whoever plays, or remembers playing make believes, should know its limitations. Great, I have a gun in my hands, and I’m shooting bad guys. There’s a box in front that can serve as a cover, so I duck behind it. Let’s climb the box! Oh, that’s not so fun as I pretend climbing movements, but end at the same level. There’s no box there to provide the feedback, and adding boxes on my leaving room doesn’t sound like a solution.
And then, there’s the big problem. Let’s pretend that once I’m past that box, I’ll run for cover on the next one. So we pretend we are running, but we must stay in front of the TV to see where we are running. Somehow we start missing the feedback from the moving ground and the sensation of moving forward. And many games, old and new, require a lot of walking. No wonder, the early demos are driving cars or waiting for balls to come at you.
Why does it work for the Wii? Well, for starters, they have a controller that provides feedback. You are actually holding something. For resolution, you have buttons, since moving the controller doesn’t have a clue what you’re doing with your fingers. And for walking and running, they kept the D-pad, and even a thumb-stick on the Nunchuk controller. Finally, Wii controllers are for hands, which most people are able to move freely to either direction. Not the same case with your legs. When it comes to the moment when you need to kick that monster on the jaw, or want to do that back flip, you may want to just push a button and let the console do it for you. There’s some magic on doing stuff you are not physically capable!
In conclusion, it seems we will still have devices on us, even after Project Natal comes out, with the exception of a bunch of games that don’t go under these constraints. Which is not that bad, as new constraints have the tendency to make us think in unexpected ways and spur innovation. Moreover, with a year left before its launch, we may expect some good launch titles, probably one from Lionhead Studios, which are the makers of the Fable games and have been involved with some of the current demos for Project Natal. Despite the limitations as an interface, I will anxiously wait to put my hands on one!
