E3: Hawk: Natal "not accurate enough"
He tried. Prefers plastic skateboard.
Tony Hawk doesn't think too much of the new Xbox 360 motion-sensing camera and will happily stick to his plastic skateboard thank you very much.
"We actually tried to get [Tony Hawk: Ride] running with a camera, but it wasn't accurate enough," Hawk told MTV Multiplayer. "Plus you can't really do ollies, grabs and flips when you're just standing on nothing."
Hawk's board peripheral has in-built accelerometers as well as sensors that judge hand and foot movement off of the deck. Players aren't required to match moves exactly, but tricks like manuals (wheelies) and 180 spins can be fully recreated in living rooms.
The Xbox 360 motion-sensing camera was unveiled during Microsoft's E3 conference and demonstrated by overseer-with-the-glasses Kudo Tsunoda. But our friend Peter Molyneux from Lionhead stole the show unveiling Milo & Kate, his top secret camera-game that has unnervingly impressive interaction with a little boy using the new Project Natal Xbox 360 tech.
Head over to our playtest impressions of Project Natal and the Xbox 360 motion-sensing camera to find out more.
That's not out until next year, whereas Tony Hawk: Ride with peripheral will be out this autumn. We've written our feet-on impressions of Ride, too, because we're work-obsessed.
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Comments (61) Latest comment 3 years ago
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Well bless my cotton socks, who would have thought it.
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Nice ad hominem, well done.
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Well bless my cotton socks, who would have thought it."
Some would call that lying...
For the record, I don't.
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Or, what Dizzy said.
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He has a point with it not being accurate enough, its suited for particular games though.
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Also:
"Plus you can't really do ollies, grabs and flips when you're just standing on nothing."
So why don't you just stand on a skateboard when using Natal then? It'd be even cheaper than buying a motion sensing pseudoskateboard.
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Why would he care about what controls will be used in the game that wears his name, other than the quality of those controls?!
If the camera was tested and approved, the game would be cheaper (smaller cost, better profit margin) and arguably be able to reach a larger audience due to the lower cost. Unless he owns the plant that makes the plastic things, he would probably earn more when the camera would be used (assuming that some kind of variable compensation is included in the endorsement contract).
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wrong. the camera would probably not be sold by ubisoft, so there'd be no win in there for ubi. but with a plastic peripheral that costs next to nothing to manufacture and that they can sell on for at least 20-30 quid, their profit margin increases quite drastically
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...and suddenly the xbots form a motion control defense force. Lol! What a great E3 this has been.
Of course, 'cause the only thing xbots ever really wanted to do for all those years, was to be able to play LAIR by flapping their arms.
And Lol of course.
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No he doesn't, all he knows is 'a camera' isn't accurate enough, according to the people making the plastic skateboard game who tested it.
It might be accurate enough. We, and Tony Hawk don't know either way, yet. It seems to me that you could potentially make a far better skateboard game with full-body mo-cap, than you could with a stand-on plastic tilt sensor.
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"So why don't you just stand on a skateboard when using Natal then?"
Really? I can think of one answer to that question. Clue: it involves not owning a skateboard.
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As far as I'm aware, the plastic things don't really contribute much to the profitability of the peripheral games and are generally manufactured as cheaply as possible to keep the profit margin within an acceptable range. Which is also the reason why the 'genre' plays host to so many expansions that basically recycle the game with some cheap new content but without the need for a new peripheral.
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I can think of another: Things with wheels that you can stand on generally don't work that well within the living room.
"It seems to me that you could potentially make a far better skateboard game with full-body mo-cap, than you could with a stand-on plastic tilt sensor."
True, but Natan isn't full body mo-cap: it analyses an image rather than track objects through a 3D space.
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You don't own Tony Hawks magic peripheral either, so that's obviously not the problem. And a normal skateboard (or even just the board part, sans wheels) would be cheaper than the Tonyboard.
I can think of another: Things with wheels that you can stand on generally don't work that well within the living room.
Hey, I just had this amazing revelation. Turns out you can just take the wheels off, because there's no actual rolling involved when playing this game.
Christ.
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Not that I care, the Tony Hawk's games went all craptacular post-Underground and I stopped buying them years ago. I can't see that this new game will reverse the declining trend myself, I suspect the inclusion of the skateboard peripheral is designed to make people think the game will be more fun and better than it actually is as well as to attract the kind of people who bought Guitar Heroes and Wii Fit, etc. We'll see... I'm not holding my breath though...
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have some laughs.
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Yeah, that would really go down well with the non-skateboarding public... And for some reason I expect such a set-up to result in quite some broken fingers...
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You missed the full-body mo-cap demo then? And Ellie's report on it?
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It can track objects through 3D space. Check out the zcam demos.
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No. There's a reason full body mo-cap uses multiple camera's, tracking the little dots from all angles. Natan only has a single camera and can't cope for example with body parts or objects that are obscured by other body parts/objects.
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So instead of having a peripheral dedicated to the game in question, people should go out and buy a real skateboard AND THEN take the wheels off with a spanner?
Of course, how silly of us to think that would be a ridiculous thing to suggest to the average punter. I guess the only question remaining is are they going to put these awesome suggestions on the back of the box or in the paper manual?
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You jump, it jumps. you spin 360, the man on the screen 360s, you jump and flick your foot as you would IRL and the man on screen does a kickflip.
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Well, MS themselves put him on stage and right after that they show a a better (in their opinion off course) control method for motion. i didn't think the board was that hot to begin with but after seeing that natal boy "riding" a skateboard it didn't make sense at all. But seeing as this forum is full of fanboys i will probably get flamed for even insinuating anything here (not directed at you Les, just in general). I just think it was kinda pointless to have a heap of gadget motion stuff in the beginning and then upstage them by showing something that will make them useless in the future.
Oh, and I still don't like waggle, with or without a stick.
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Is has 2 different types of cameras.. but yeah.. ofc it can't track stuff behind you. Then again.. software can make assumptions about what you are doing behind your back, just like a human brain
Anyway.... it is indeed not a classic motion tracker.... it basically builds a 3D map of everything it "sees" and then releases powerful algorithms on it to try to make sense of it all. BTW the devices has a build in chip to do that (probably a DSP)
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Actually a number of cinematic motion capture and motion control systems use only a single camera these days. I was quite surprised, actually, but that's what they featured on the making of programme for the new Red Dwarf stuff on Dave.
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No. The second camera only captures infrared information for mapping depth.
I don't think we'll be seeing Stereopsis in consoles for some time, since it's a bit too computationally intensive to do in real time and do anything practical with the data.
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I couldn't even buy wii fit (to get fit) because I was worried I would break the board you have to stand on.
This camera thingy seems much better for the morbidly obese.
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Not Natal. And that's the important bit.
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LOL.
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He cried when he saw the concept video of the skating game.
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Reporters who played on the modified Burnout Paradise demo say that other than steering, the forward body movement detection (for simulating hitting a pedal) was a bit hit and miss. (Kotaku).
As it could be seen by the demonstration in which the XBL avatar was supposed to mimick the speaker, actual mapping of all of the body is difficult to achieve with precision in full 3D. You all saw the laggy, twisted result.
The "Minority Report" control scheme probably could be done with any currently available cam (either the Eye or the X360 cam).
Come to think of that, I think SCE should update the XMB to accept input from the Eye. Can't believe those engineers who were playing with dildos didn't think of that.
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What, you make money from the Hawk board too!?
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Yeah, but that's cinema. With a static camera angle one camera mo-cap can lead to acceptable results (for a lower budget show). It's much cheaper than using multiple cameras of course. You don't get all the data and therefore not all the flexibility that 'proper' mo-cap would give you.
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i also dont get why people are so excited... i really dont see the difference between waggling in front of a camera or waggling with a wiimote... one is hilarious, inaccurate and for kids and the other is incredible and grown up and the future... hmmmm
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Most people are no doubt excited, but don't really buy the "revolutionary" thing.
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I know, I was only joking; trying to do a little parody on the IMHO crazy accusations of poor old Tony Hawk... Hence the "