Teh Future of gaming

[Shapeless]

I don't know how to make the video appear directly in the page.
but this is kinda scary.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oACt9R9z37U

[printz]

I don't see what's bad with it. Having to move a bit ain't bad. Sure, I wouldn't want to thump the house, or talk loudly, but doing some sports is never bad.

But it would be worth it if it has interesting stuff like Doom. Doom 3, maybe? :D

[AndrewB]

I don't believe that camera-based image-interpretation controls will be successful. There are too many programmatic challenges to overcome, and essentially every individual game would have at find a way to deal with them. What you would end up with is a few games that implement camera-based controls, almost all of which in a buggy and flaky manner, with a couple of games that do a halfway decent job while making extreme gameplay compromises to allow it to work. There are thousands of different ways that a game with camera controls can fail, and maybe a handful of ways that it can work.

Controller-based motion controls are a much better idea. The gamer still has buttons to press, which is crucial for games that require discrete, unambiguous controller signals. This allows the hardware to figure out exactly what is going on with the controls, and it allows the programmers to code against a clearly defined set of parameters and variables.

Camera-based controls will be the next Power Glove.

[DuckReconMajor]

Shapeless said:

I don't know how to make the video appear directly in the page.

[yt]oACt9R9z37U[/yt]

Anyway, ever since playing Totem Ball with the camera, I have little faith in camera-based controls. If you watch the demonstrations from E3 you can see that how awkward it still is. I know it's still in development, but I haven't seen many promises like this that were carried out very far past being featured in a few gimmicky titles.

In other words: too good to be true imo

[printz]

I really hope they don't blow it.

[TheeXile]

Looks like Microsoft is putting a few of their proprietary tricks into this one, so it's likely to be different this time around from early attempts such as EyeToy and whatnot.



Also: http://www.faro.com/content.aspx?ct=di&content=pro

[Texas Libra]

Until a real-life holodeck is invented, I'll have to pass on this.

[Torn]

O_O

[Maes]

Is it only me who thinks that a fighter game where the input is limited by your own bodily reflexes and inertia is a stupid idea? Unless you want to limit the gameplay to "realistic" levels and spawn long series of Judo and Karate games with Olympic games rules and the such...so no 50-punch&kick super combos there.

Imagine some fat otaku nerd type trying to play something as "flashy" as Melty Blood...how would tripping on your own feet and falling on your big fat butt be interpreted by the game? :D

Not to mention that most average games would be sweating like animals after just 3 minutes. Anyone having played the "Hokuto no Ken: Punch Mania" arcade knows what I'm talking about.

Or a driving game where you have to keep your hands raised and your elbows bent for maybe half an hour straight? No thanks.

[TheeXile]

That's why it's being marketed towards casual gamers. :P

[Maes]

DuckReconMajor said:

In other words: too good to be true imo

More like too impractical to be useful, at least if you try applying it verbatim to videogames as we know them. Nintendo had experimented with such stuff long ago (Powerglove, various awkward accessories for the NES (including "virtual" controllers, gyroscopic skateboards, and similar shit that mostly didn't work).

Even if they do work....it would be like comparing a Doom mouse +keyboard speedrun to someone trying to play Doom with a joystick. An ATARI 26000 Joystick. With one button. Or a powerglove ;-)

[TheDigitalNomad]

Casual games, and these "physical" games will have their place in the future I'm sure. This is just the first step towards having a holodeck.

However, at the same time, the point of games has always been to stimulate the mind, not the body. If you want to play tennis, go play tennis. I guarantee you'll have more fun playing it for real than in one of these gimicky games that rarely recognizes your movements correctly.

Also I think I am going to like the PS3 motion sensing controller over Natal anyway.

Maes said:

Or a driving game where you have to keep your hands raised and your elbows bent for maybe half an hour straight? No thanks.

I was thinking the same thing. that would get quite uncomfortable after a while.

[Creaphis]

Maes said:

Or a driving game where you have to keep your hands raised and your elbows bent for maybe half an hour straight? No thanks.

TheeXile said:

That's why it's being marketed towards casual gamers. :P

A friend of mine has been arguing that casual gamers, as opposed to experienced gamers, haven't learned their own physical limits when it comes to gaming, and are therefore much more likely to get a repetitive motion injury - especially when it's the casual games (ie. Wii Sports) that force you to move in repetitive, stressful ways. There are already a lot of casual gamers getting tennis elbow. If any product using this new technology is actually good enough to attract part of the casual gaming market, it won't do anybody's health any favours. Expect many more injuries to result.

TheDigitalNomad said:

If you want to play tennis, go play tennis. I guarantee you'll have more fun playing it for real than in one of these gimicky games that rarely recognizes your movements correctly.

Agreed. Even though I suck at tennis I enjoy actually playing it more than I would any simulation.

Unless I'm playing Anna Kournikova on the holodeck and the clothes module has malfunctioned.

[Mattfrie1]

I personally think its a phase that the video game developers are going through now. With the Wii's interactive controller, Microsoft is trying to one-up them in the whole interactive feel. First off, how is it going to capture EVERY single body movement perfectly. If something gets in the way, you're screwed. And if the machine dies, you got a big box taking up space on top of your television. Would provide some comical moments when you are pissed though, anyone want to flip off that boss you can't beat?

Voice recognition? Done to a point with Hey You Pikachu! ten years ago, so that's nothing new in my book. The only thing that looks cool about it is the ability to talk to friends in video form, but then that's already done to a point with webcams on the internet.

It will either do great commercially or enter the video game hall of shame with the likes of the Virtual Boy and FMV games.

[TheDigitalNomad]

Hey now, not all FMV games were crap. I still love the Tex Murphy games. :P

[Mattfrie1]

TheDigitalNomad said:

Hey now, not all FMV games were crap. I still love the Tex Murphy games. :P

True, there are some good FMV games, but there were so many crappy ones that it took the whole genre down the toliet.

[David_Dweedle]

I assume this is about Motion controlls?

I reckon Motion controlls would be awesome but NOT the way Wii does it.. all the Wii offers is sitting down on the couch wiggling your arms about.. they need to make motion controlls where you need to strap both your arms and legs into a machine.. that would be fun :) but I cant see it happening in the near future.

[caco_killer]

David_Dweedle said:

I assume this is about Motion controlls?

I reckon Motion controlls would be awesome but NOT the way Wii does it.. all the Wii offers is sitting down on the couch wiggling your arms about.. they need to make motion controlls where you need to strap both your arms and legs into a machine.. that would be fun :) but I cant see it happening in the near future.

The shitty, shovelware Wii games make you wiggle your arms about. It's other games such as Mario Galaxy, No More Heroes, Okami, and RE4 that make good use of it.

[40oz]

caco_killer said:

The shitty, shovelware Wii games make you wiggle your arms about. It's other games such as Mario Galaxy, No More Heroes, Okami, and RE4 that make good use of it.

Beaing able to play House of The Dead 2 and 3 at home was a real blast too.

[David_Dweedle]

caco_killer said:

The shitty, shovelware Wii games make you wiggle your arms about. It's other games such as Mario Galaxy, No More Heroes, Okami, and RE4 that make good use of it.

If they made some more good titles i'd consider the system but if they make wii music 2 like ive heard then im sstayin away from it lol

[AndrewB]

Mario Galaxy, Okami, and RE4 are terrible examples. Mario Galaxy uses next to nothing in terms of motion controls, and Okami and RE4 are ports that again use basically nothing. They're all legendary games in their own right, but what you said makes no sense.

Here is an excellent example of proper motion control:

Also, don't try to tell me that this can't be useful in more mature games.

[DuckReconMajor]

AndrewB said:

Mario Galaxy, Okami, and RE4 are terrible examples. Mario Galaxy uses next to nothing in terms of motion controls, and Okami and RE4 are ports that again use basically nothing. They're all legendary games in their own right, but what you said makes no sense.

Also, don't try to tell me that this can't be useful in more mature games.

Motion controls don't have to be center-stage to be used effectively.

[AndrewB]

DuckReconMajor said:

Motion controls don't have to be center-stage to be used effectively.

But in a discussion about motion controls, it makes more sense to talk about games that actually use them in some important way. The games you mentioned are basically irrelevant to this topic. In SMG, for example, all motion controls could be eliminated and it still be almost every bit as good a game as it was. It was acclaimed because of its game content, not because of its controller scheme.

[geekmarine]

I dunno, I personally thought that RE4 benefited greatly from the addition of Wii controls, and felt that the Wii port was the strongest of the versions. Sure, it wasn't originally designed for the Wii, but I'd much rather play the Wii version than either the Gamecube or PS2 versions.

[AndrewB]

RE4 benefited from the pointer, but if you're going to call that "motion control" then you might as well call a computer mouse "motion control." I don't think the implementation of motion in RE4 is anywhere near relevant to the main discussion in this thread.

[printz]

Maes said:

Imagine some fat otaku nerd type trying to play something as "flashy" as Melty Blood...how would tripping on your own feet and falling on your big fat butt be interpreted by the game? :D

Not to mention that most average games would be sweating like animals after just 3 minutes. Anyone having played the "Hokuto no Ken: Punch Mania" arcade knows what I'm talking about.

Or a driving game where you have to keep your hands raised and your elbows bent for maybe half an hour straight? No thanks.

I think that's the idea, even if it looks goofy, the fat otaku would trip and trip until he got the moves right. If you can actually go out and play real sports with real people, then so be it, but if you can try it at home sometimes, why not?

But I do think such games as driving or pulling the object make you look just like a mime.

[Maes]

TheDigitalNomad said:

Hey now, not all FMV games were crap. I still love the Tex Murphy games. :P

Wash your mouth with soap, Under a Killing Moon and the Pandora Directive had a true 3D engine gameplay intermixed with the FMV scenes, nothing to do with the likes of many other video-only games.

TheDigitalNomad said:

Casual games, and these "physical" games will have their place in the future I'm sure. This is just the first step towards having a holodeck.

To be fair, a well-made motion capture system could be used as a mainstream & mass-producible substitute for expensive specialized controllers for things such as e.g. fishing games, boxing targets, DDR dancing mats, whack-a-mole hammers or even the more classical lightgun games (which were somewhat killed off by the phasing out of CRT displays). Then again, these games are indeed directed towards casual games, they are not the kind of game you could sit down and burnout for 6 hours straight.

[Zaldron]

AndrewB said:

Controller-based motion controls are a much better idea.

This is incredibly naive.

What you people must understand is that relying on binary input or at best, linearly mapped input is a constraint we can do well without.

The possibilities offered by the endless combinatory pairs offered by "dimensions" such as joint bending, muscular torsion and orientation in space allow for a magnitude of control over a game never experimented with before.

What you are all very wrongly assuming is that motion capture can only be used in the context of 1:1 subject:avatar expression, when in fact, you must see the motion of limbs, head and all subtle nuances involved as the evolution of former controller archetypes such as keyboards (combinable binary input), mice (free form 2D + combinable binary input) and joysticks (model dependent).

While in some games punching the air does make sense as the activator of "guy punches forward" or swinging maps to "swing sword", think of this as getting us much more closer to the fast, intuitive GUIs of science fiction such as Minority Report.

[TheDigitalNomad]

This is why Sony's demonstration of using both motion capture and a controller is a much better idea. It detects the subtleties of body movement, but also allows the user to give more solid commands that are less open to AI interpretation. Plus, the controllers do give the user something more substantial to wrap their minds around; for example, it is a lot easier to connect spatially to swinging a sword in game when you are holding something that you can physically manipulate.

While I'm sure with Natal you could use any old object to simulate swinging a sword, but how, for example, could you simulate a combination flintlock/rapier (a "gunblade" if you will) without a button to press?

A rather specific example, but it counts.

[Zaldron]

Ah, but Natal is not incapable of being supplemented by a "controller" or "accessory" of any kind.

In the end, though, a sufficient technological level will ultimately discard any discrete "abstract" controller and we will only rely on the shape, weight and actual mechanisms (like a gun's trigger) of objects for spatial awareness. It may come to be we don't need these things any more to express our intentions. I don't know what mind-controlled interface advancements we will have achieved by then.

EDIT: it is exactly the very subject->avatar applications that are prone to auxiliary accessories. For everything that is heavily mouse dependent, like large parts of an OS, graphic design, file manipulation, strategy games and the like, everything could be easily and phenomenally controlled through body movement.