MS: Natal will work with "all ethnicities"
Tech demos can be "temperamental".
Microsoft has responded to rather eyebrow-raising claims that Project Natal has problems tracking the movement of black skin, stating that the technology will "obviously work with people of all shapes and ethnicities at launch".
"Last week at E3, we gave a taste of what to anticipate when Project Natal launches. As we mentioned to everyone who had the chance to play, we were working with tech demos and, as we all know, these can be temperamental," Microsoft told Eurogamer.
"The goal of Project Natal is to break down the barriers for everyone to play, and it will obviously work with people of all shapes and ethnicities at launch."
The company pointed us towards a YouTube video of Sugar Ray Leonard - the retired African-American boxer - playing with Project Natal at E3 last week, and experiencing evidently no problems.
African-American videogames journalist N'Gai Croal was reported to have had problems steering Burnout Paradise using Project Natal during a demonstration at E3. Early reaction on NeoGAF claimed that the melanin in black skin interferes with near-infrared spectroscopy, which Project Natal apparently uses.
You may also like...
-
Why Devs Owe You Nothing
-
Face-Off: The Darkness 2
-
Digital Foundry: PS3 Skyrim Lag Fixed?
-
App of the Day: Sir Benfro's Brilliant Balloon
-
Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Vita Review
-
Sony admits "dropping the ball" with Demon's Souls
-
CD Projekt: Witcher 2 intro cinematic "the most expensive asset we ever created"
-
Skyrim patch 1.4 performance tip: make a new manual save
-
Grand Slam Tennis 2 Review
-
Who Killed Rare?
-
One Piece: Unlimited Cruise SP Review
-
Gotham City Impostors Review
-
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Review
-
Valve admits hackers accessed Steam transaction log
-
Mass Effect 3 FemShep trailer debuts
-
Epic's Sweeney on graphics tech: "the limit really is in sight"
-
The Darkness 2 Review
-
Double Fine Adventure passes Day of the Tentacle budget
-
Next Xbox has tablet-like touch-screen controller - rumour
-
Sony: The Last Guardian is making "slow progress"
-
App of the Day: Superman
-
Skyrim patch 1.4 now live for Xbox 360
-
Blizzard legally opposes Valve's Dota trademark application
-
EA announces starry Syndicate voice cast
-
David Braben discusses consumer Raspberry Pi release









Comments (80) Latest comment 2 years ago
Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Near-infrared spectroscopy
What that has to do with Natal I really don't know.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
You mean the same guy that screamed 'racism' about RE5 before he even played the game?
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Oh dear, that guy who cried wolf about Resident Evil 5... what a plonker.
I can imagine the thought process now... 'Hmmm, this control system is a bit flakey and not really responding to my commands that well - it must be racist'
Or, its just a naff control system prototype that you don't know how to use?
Comment below viewing threshold Show
It's the most important gaming website.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Seriously though it was I doubt this will be true, and M$ would never release a product if these problems existed as it would be rightly be corperate suicide.
On a side not, can you code up a post moderator script that auto ignores anyone who includes the words "first" in the first post would save me a click. Perhaps said script could also sign up said users email address to a load of spam as well just for good measure.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
The hell!?!
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
NeoGAF brought this to our attention so we credited it. It's a great source. They're not our claims, but we thought they were better checked out than regurgitated, which is what we did.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Gaming website?
More like retard full gaming forum...
If gaf was so important then Killzone 2 would have sold 20 million,but reality is a "bit" different...lol
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Wha?
Comment below viewing threshold Show
"African-American videogames journalist N'Gai Croal"
You mean the same guy that screamed 'racism' about RE5 before he even played the game?
Is he the one ot blame for the god-awful late addition of SHeva to Resi 5?
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Is that them admitting that right now Natal is racist? lol
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
lol
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Stated that the amount of light reflected from caucasian and negroid skin was very similar and that the nipples of a caucasian appeared pale while those of a Negro appeared very dark. Concluded that the melanin pigment in negroid nipples was so abundant and near to the surface that it absorbed infrared.
Mods: I can edit this post if you think the terms in it are too politically incorrect.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Probably. Come to think of it, she was the reason why I couldn't be bothered to finish the end battle. I guess I have him to thank for that.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
That was clearly a joke.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
"You mean the same guy that screamed 'racism' about RE5 before he even played the game? "
What in the name of Worzel Gummidge has THAT got to do with anything? Are you suggesting he pretended to have problems steering the demo?
Comment below viewing threshold Show
I think that research seems to have been carried out by a closet homosexual. He seems to go on about nipples an awful lot, while only glossing over the fact that the light levels reflected were similar.
In truth me and my friends have long noticed that the playstation eye and the microsoft cameras have great difficulty tracking black people. Unless you have stupid light levels and a pale background behind you, the cameras go ape shit and misread a lot of the motions.
I can fully believe that Natal will have issues in this case. It's going to be down to microsoft to put a high enough resolution camera into Natal, to allow it to pick up black and Indian skin tones correctly.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
SEE WHAT YOU'VE DONE EG!
We are the mockery of the internets ;_;
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Black folks may need white living rooms?
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Obesity doesn't care for skin colour. These 'types' of people are being ignored, I say.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
GAF's intensive research can help you out there!
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Yea we found that the eyetoy games played fine if we stood in front of the pale wall of my living room. In that case it didn't matter if you were black or white. When we moved in front of the dark brown sofa though. It only picked up the white players movements accurately and seemed to loose some of the black players arm motions.
The camares are just not good in low light and so a dark room with dark skinned players equals a camera that thinks no-one is there!
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Oh good, for a moment there I though MS would be launching a racist product.
COME ON!!! Have you got NOTHING BETTER to be reporting on?! Would MS be REALLY that stupid?!!!!
Comment below viewing threshold Show
It's (I think) a time-of-flight infrared camera though, so it'll work based on reflectd IR light rather than passive light reflection. That paper suggested IR reflection differences are negligable across skin tones, and only of slight interest if areas with large melanin content are being used to track body movements, which they're not. "Natal crap at tracking black people's nipples shock" isn't that good a headline though.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
It isn't an infrared camara otherwise it wouldn't be able to do face recognition. I haven't had a chance to play around with one yet (My boss claims we are getting a few of them in for dev work) but, from what the poor guy assigned to it is telling me. It is a standard camera and a couple of other sensors for distance. An infrared camera wouldn't recognise anything and would bethrown out by the lights in a room. It would be competely blinded by a halogen bulb for instance!
Comment below viewing threshold Show
The real next gen!
Comment below viewing threshold Show
ROFL. NeoGAF is the home of zillions of emo whining teen animated gif posting "gamers". Nothing important about it.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
How about just a regular -and- an infrared camera? And a simple infrared filter in front of the lens would take care of all the other lights in the room. Your remote control works in a normal room too, right?
Comment below viewing threshold Show
It might also be worth mentioning that Burnout is pants when played with a steering wheel - it's designed for players who can flip to full-lock steering immediately, so if playing it on a real wheel is bad, imagine how bad it must be to play it on an imaginary wheel that samples at half the framerate of the game!
Whether you're got black skin or not, that's going to screw up anyone's sense of control over a car!
Comment below viewing threshold Show
"The depth sensor consists of an infrared projector combined with a monochrome CMOS sensor, and allows the Project Natal sensor to see in 3D under any ambient light conditions. The active depth-sensing range of the depth sensor is adjustable, with the Project Natal software capable of automatically calibrating the sensor based on the gameplay and environment conditions, such as the presence of couches."
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Muslim women who wear the full face burka would presumably need to wear it for communicating with virtual men as much as they do when mixing in the real world.
As Natal presumably needs more than eye contact to work I would like to take this opportunity to accuse Microsoft of Islamophobia.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
http://ne ws.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,10000...
Comment below viewing threshold Show
New EG story at 5.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Oh no!
Metadata racialistz!
Comment below viewing threshold Show
but what about a one armed Japanese hermaphrodite with a limp
Bet they'll need a patch for that...er....him...er...her
Comment below viewing threshold Show
"Natal crap at tracking black people's nipples shock" isn't that good a headline though.
Are you kidding me? That's an awesome headline! It hints at so many possibilities for "mature" content on Natal.
@patch
(excuse the racist term which I in no way endorse) "negro"
Racist? Surely it's no more racist than black, white, Caucasian or Asian? You do know it's just the Spanish for "black", right?
Oh well, I suppose with a little effort you can take offence at anything.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
"Oh well, I suppose with a little effort you can take offence at anything."
I take offense at the way you spell offense.
I guess you were right ;D
Comment below viewing threshold Show
That's probably the stupidest thing I've seen on the internet to date.
Seriously . . . /facepalm
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Shows they never really gave a crap in the first place and this is no different!
Comment below viewing threshold Show
@sneetch
"Oh well, I suppose with a little effort you can take offence at anything."
I take offense at the way you spell offense.
I guess you were right ;D
I apologise if my spelling has caused offence to you, I certainly never intended any offence.
My company insists on using US English in our docs and I no longer know which I'm using anymore.
Wait, I think offence is the UK and Irish English spelling. Now I'm really confused. To the dictionary-mobile!
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
not that im trying to say tat it is racist just if you have a darker back (wall colour) it was harder for the cam to recognise the contrast! i simple white sheet was an easy solution.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
I remember the first Xbox controller (the Duke) specifically designed for Americans and westerners with sausage fingers and needing a complete re design (S-Type) for the Asian market who typically have smaller hands.
Shows they never really gave a crap in the first place and this is no different!
I appreciate that you think that everything MS does is wrong and indeed evil but that's a bit of a logic failure on your part there isn't it?
I would say the fact that MS actually changed their controller for the Asian market shows they gave more of a damn than Nintendo or Sony who created controllers specifically designed for the Asian market with their smaller hands and never produced one better suited to the larger handed western market. My mate Diarm, for example, hates every console controller except the chunky old Xbox one as he thinks they're too damn small and awkward.
The biggest pity was that they stopped making the old chunky ones going for the same one-size-fits-fuck-all philosophy that Nintendo and Sony share.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
You beat me to it
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Quickly followed by...
"Usually it's C rather than S. We do the same, and I'm always correcting people's spelling of license (American) to licence (UK)."
/raises eyebrows
/checks Oxford English Dictionary
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
I incorrectly corrected your proper UK english spelling, and gave a US spelling as the incorrect correct alternative.
The irony is that I've been spelling license (licence) wrong all this time too and I blame it all on doing a techy job for an american company years ago.
The rot has obviously set in deep and started to corrupt other words. I'm going to have to amputate...... MY HEAD
/thunk
Thetr, thsta bettwe. Noq whete arw my resdong glassrd.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Nor did he ever actually call resi 5 racist iirc, he just pointed out that whoever had made the trailer was unaware of the fact that it could have been construed as racist due to every black man in it being evil (As opposed to the black zombies, zombies are obviously a bad thing.) I may be recalling it incorrectly, but I'm pretty damn sure that he made some comments which were then taken out of context, about a trailer put together predominantly by people with little/no cultural experience of black/white racism and which was itself using lots of out of context shots to generate excitement.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
"I appreciate that you think that everything MS does is wrong and indeed evil but that's a bit of a logic failure on your part there isn't it?" NO!
When the Xbox first came out I worked as an Xbox sales rep to make a little cash and at the sales briefing in Reading we were all instructed to not mention to prospective customers that the system was made by Microsoft as it contains negative connotations in the minds of the public! - I almost pissed myself. But then again they gave me an xbox bag, key ring, sweets, and a copy of new title that was even out yet, so fuck it I accepted Satans cock and I would tell people it was made by Nike if they wanted.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Hey!
Black people kick ARSE at video games!
/regrets replying to him...
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Does it work on Arabs? It might detect traces of C4 in my skin.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
IMHO he should be happy - the black 360 is "Elite".
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
I'd ignore OED if I were you, Collins is closer to what is taught as "proper English" in schools (or at least in whichever few remaining schools actually do teach proper English). I don't have access to either OED or Collins at the moment but you may find that Collins disagrees with OED - I know it does in some ways, e.g. over (IIRC) -ise/-yse vs. -ize/-yze. Offence and Licence are correct in either case, but I suspect License may also be OK.
@Sycopat
"Nor did he ever actually call resi 5 racist iirc, he just pointed out that whoever had made the trailer was unaware of the fact that it could have been construed as racist due to every black man in it being evil (As opposed to the black zombies, zombies are obviously a bad thing.) I may be recalling it incorrectly, but I'm pretty damn sure that he made some comments which were then taken out of context, about a trailer put together predominantly by people with little/no cultural experience of black/white racism and which was itself using lots of out of context shots to generate excitement."
In practical terms, what is the difference between "That's racist!" and "Some people might say that's racist!"? Whether or not he is/was using an academically-fabricated proxy, he was still making accusations, and not in the appropriate context. My experience of his work, which admittedly is far from vast, suggests to me he's primarily a critic/academic and his journalistic credentials and skills leave much to be desired. If he's going to write a serious academic treatise on unconscious racism in Japanese-made games, this is reasonable, but as a journalist it seems somewhat outside his remit, not to mention the fact that the media will inevitably jump on any such claim, as I am sure he is very much aware. As such, I am much more minded to say that he was having trouble with Natal because he's significantly better at analysing games than he is at playing them, rather than any technical problem, race related or otherwise.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
I know it hurts but try and get over it eh? It's much easier that way.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
N'Gai Croal's problem with Natal has nothing to do with his skin colour (as proven by the many black celebrities who tried out Natal at E3), hence that report was just internet mischief, where people put 2 and 2 together to make 5.
Hence Croal's problem was certainly due to something else, for example, some people had problems steering because they crossed their arms over when driving, and at that time, the Natal prototype got confused whenever people did that. The same with feet, hence the Avatar problem during the conference..."You ever wonder what the bottom of an avatar's shoe looks like? Well BAM! There it is"