CES: Natal runs at 30 frames per second


Recommended Posts

natal1.jpg

Amid all the release dates and sales numbers at Microsoft's CES keynote last night, the company dropped some tech info on Natal: apparently, the motion-sensing system runs at 30 frames per second.

Andrew Fitzgibbon, Principal Researcher for Microsoft Research, told the crowd: "What Natal does, is it evaluates effectively trillions of body configurations every frame. We've made it do that 30 times a second."

This, according to IGN, is done through a combination of software and a camera that tracks the body's motion in three dimensions.

As IGN notes, though Natal will evaluate the room you're playing in 30 times a second, this doesn't necessarily mean games will also run at that rate. That will be the effective number of times the game can receive new input from the user, however.

Microsoft confirmed a 2010 release date for Natal in Vegas last night.

Source: http://www.vg247.com/2010/01/07/ces-natal-...mes-per-second/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Honestly, could have made one single thread out of these 2

Not really different information about Natal.

News sites report it as separate pieces I have no problem doing so on the board either, spurs more conversation and activity, so unless it's against rules it's largely the way I do things around here.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So natal capturing your movements at 30fps is good news I guess? I'm so confused.

The only thing that's really going to matter at the end of the day is input lag, something MS are going to have a tougher time dealing with than Sony/Nintendo.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Microsoft: Natal consumes 15 per cent of Xbox CPU power

Lead developer spills the beans

By Adam Hartley

Following the announcements at CES this week that Microsoft's motion-sending Project Natal will be on sale later in 2010, Natal's lead developer, Alex Kipman has been spilling a few more beans on how the tech works.

Kipmanhas been giving demos of Natal to visiting games and tech media at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, telling New Scientist how the tech is a result of Microsoft having gone out and collected "terabytes" of data of people in typical gaming poses.

15 per cent of Xbox CPU power

"Natal has to work on the existing hardware without taking too much hardware processing away from the games developers," Kipman noted, adding that Natal consumes between 10 to 15 per cent of the Xbox's computing power.

"When we train this 'brain' we are telling it: this is the head, this is the shoulder. And we're doing that over millions of frames," adds Kipman. "When it sees a new image it can tell you the probability it's seeing a certain body part based on that historical information."

This is how the a 50MB Natal software can recognise up to 31 different parts of the body in any video frame, running up to 30 frames per second (the hardware, that is, not the game you are playing).

Natal's software also "correctly positions your hand even if it's held behind your back… It knows the hand can only be in one place," a particularly important feature for when you are playing with other people.

Gesture-based iPhone gaming

Finally, the New Scientist notes that a group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are working on a project called BiDi (for "bidirectional"), which may well allow gesture-based gaming on an iPhone or similar mobile touch-screen device at some point in the future.

You can see a video demo of that tech over at the New Scientist's website.

Source: Techradar UK

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The only thing that's really going to matter at the end of the day is input lag, something MS are going to have a tougher time dealing with than Sony/Nintendo.

I still don't know if 30fps is a good thing or bad thing LOL

and honestly, input lag doesn't matter. Grandparents and little kids don't care about input lag. Look how popular wii sports is

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Source: Techradar UK

Your Futurama sig is so true... It does make me say it in his voice.

But anyway, I'm looking forward to Natal.. So what if it takes some processing power :p The power isn't coming from the sky!

30 fps i guess is pretty smooth for full body recognition. Not that we have anything to compare too..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Your Futurama sig is so true... It does make me say it in his voice.

But anyway, I'm looking forward to Natal.. So what if it takes some processing power :p The power isn't coming from the sky!

30 fps i guess is pretty smooth for full body recognition. Not that we have anything to compare too..

Also, remember that a game can be running over 30fps but the body recognition is running at 30fps.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This will not limit the games themselves to just 30 fps... we could easily see 60 fps games running natal.

30 captures of the body per second should be plenty to achieve great results.

Edit: just as Ironman273 said :p

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Also, remember that a game can be running over 30fps but the body recognition is running at 30fps.

Aye' sorry, understood that but didn't convey it well. 30 fps for the body recognition seems good. What the game does is anyone's business!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The bit about using up to 15% of the 360's CPU is interesting, but for this type of motion capture and so on, that's actually not that much when you think about it. In the end games will have to be made to use this specifically, of if normal games decide to use a mix of controler + natal (some form of finger/hand movements or voice for commands etc, then they'll be taking the overhead into account from the get go. No worries, I just hope game devs can take advantage of the tech itself. It's time for them to come up with some new ideas.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.