Project Natal: Hands Free Gaming

Last week’s E3 Gaming conference had loads of highlights. Not the least talked about was Microsoft unveiling of Project Natal. Natal is Microsoft’s answer to the Nintendo Wii. A hands-free, full body motion capture and voice recognition system.

Project Natal seems almost certainly to be the culmination of several years of work by an Israeli start-up called 3DV Systems, which Microsoft recently acquired and has the gaming community full of speculation and anticipation. Johnny Chung, the internet’s favorite wii-mote hacker confirmed that he was part of the Natal development team as well.

Aside solving the problem of having enough controllers for all your friends to play, the scanner also make customization of your characters hyper-realistic. In the proof-of-concept below, scanning in of object (really?!) and facial recognition plays a part in how players can customize their gaming experience. The community and real-time multiplayer aspects of the systm are also pretty mind blowing.

Questions about accuracy, affordability, and feasibility still abound. But it’s clear that Microsoft is attempting to take gigantic step forward in gaming technology and re-establish itself as the must have console.