By Tim Stevens
posted Jan 8th 2010 10:39AM
We now know that Natal is going to make it out before the end of the year
(if all goes well), but the company is still keeping a lot of secrets
about the technology and being rather stingy with hands-on time. Natal
lead developer Alex Kipman is spilling a few notable beans, however,
indicating that the team has gathered terabytes of photos and video of
people playing games, amassing a library of data that the system uses
to anticipate where you might move next. Because of this the system can
predict your hand position, even if it's obscured, based on the
location of other parts of your body. He also indicated that the
software required for all this will only take up about 50MB on your
Xbox's (probably near-full) storage device, and that the algorithms it
uses will suck down about 10 to 15 percent of the 360's overall
processing power. That's certainly a substantial hit, but this is the
price you pay for getting to kick virtual balls with physical feet.
TechRadar
NewScientist