Apparently Lionhead's Natal project was faked

[hanselthecaretaker]

So I believe that a certain level of camera-based interaction with Microsoft's Natal generally works, as the press/users have confirmed at E3, but that Molyneux demo appears to have been too good, kinda like the infamous Killzone 2 trailer at E3 '05.

Lionhead's Project Natal Video... Fakery? - News (Xbox 360)

Some things that stood out to me:

First off, something the article doesn't mention is how the video on the game screen jumps at 2:18 (look at the position of the fish) right before the girl's image appears in the water, strongly suggesting the footage that followed was prerecorded and acted out by the girl for the show. The next major point was what the article itself stated, of how the ripple at 2:37 was created from her left hand before she even made the gesture! And the picture of the orange fish could've also easily been scripted and preprogrammed.

Here's a hi def. version for extra clarity-
Project Natal: Milo Stage Demo, Virtual Human - GameSpot E3 2009 Live Demo

So, it's like the camera function works, as well as basic interactions, but this Milo project appears to have gotten ahead of itself. I mean if supercomputers don't even have the type of processing power to seamlessly integrate a virtual world and virtual humans with the real one and vice versa, particularly on an emotional level, it's bit of a stretch to think a 4 year old gaming console can.

I wouldn't have had a problem at all with this video or even it being scripted and "fake" if it weren't for Molyneux's pompous comments on how "This is true technology that science fiction has not even written about... and this works... today... now".
He's like the king of overhyping things (both Fable games), and this reaches a whole new level.

Cnet is also skeptical-
E3 2009: No shortage of hardware hype | Crave - CNET

But then again maybe this project will eventually live up to what the video showed. On the Xbox 1080 or something.

 

[redsamurai]

I was wondering myself about how you can put that much extra load on the CPU. I figured that the hardware that comes with Natal would pretty much be it's own standalone console almost. It would be sweet if they made this for roughly $150 and it basically acted as an upgrade along with the added motion capturing features.


It it all really was just a bunch of horseshit, microsoft should eat a ton of shit for this.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

All these companies are the same. One feels threatened, so they make an exaggerated claim that will be almost impossible to live up to and watch everyone drool over it and spend more money. Then if they can't deliver a few years later they hope people have forgotten about it enough and that the "next big thing" will get 'em. A viscious cycle. Put money before all else and watch shit fall apart lol.

 

[redsamurai]

this is why I'm so apathetic about video games anymore, it ain't what it used to be.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

this is why I'm so apathetic about video games anymore, it ain't what it used to be.

I think it's always been the same, the thing is though there's a lot more out there now and it gets increasingly tougher to be original. If you do some searching you can find diamonds in the rough. I'm trying out Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl and it's pretty tight.