The biggest news that came out of E3 was probably Project Natal from Microsoft. It will be able to provide full-body motion control without a controller of any kind. Project Natal is a bar that sits by your TV, much like the Wii’s sensor bar. Instead of sensing controllers however, the bar has a camera, sensors, and a mic that keeps track of you and your environment. I personally think this is really cool. Not only would you be able to play games with it. The camera allows for facial and voice recognition, you could have videoconferences in your living room, etc. It has already been shown to two game developers, Epic Games and Bungie Studios.
Of course since I am a Sony fan, I have to talk a bit about its own motion-sensing system. It is based on the PlayStation Eye, light-emitting diodes, and wireless controllers with buttons. Even though it doesn’t sound as high-tech, it is already in developers’ hands, meaning that Sony is already past the research phase. While I think Natal has a lot of potential and the number of applications could be endless, it is still a big jump in terms of motion sensing. I may be biased, but I think at this point Sony’s system is a bit more solid and proven.
It is kind of interesting that we partly based our final project on motion sensing. We saw the head tracking video on YouTube a couple of weeks ago and decided to work it in with the shutter glasses. Just when we were about to present, we heard about all these E3 motion sensing projects. It’s almost like we predicted the future…
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