Project Natal

Well, everyone is excited and I am not surprised – project Natal looks very, VERY interesting :)

For those of you that have no clue what we are talking about, check below video:

As you hopefully noticed, I try to blog here about technologies or tips and tricks that are not very famous or I try to post new information.

Project Natal is no difference for me :) So for those of you that are looking forward to any news, here are my wild guesses :)

1.) notice that project Natal is using RGB camera. Doesn’t that ring a bell? Simply have a look at older Microsoft project called Touchless (demo included). Using RGB differentiation between players (even if they swap places) could be easily done

2.) when you want to monitor what Microsoft plans, it’s important to check companies that are acquired. 3DV (Israel) company was sold to Microsoft recently. And if you have a look at below video, maybe you can notice some similarities with project Natal :)

 

Anyway, important information is that Microsoft hired technology, however not people from 3DV company. Therefore this will be (probably) only subset of Natal – bad news is that it means that technology is interesting, however not ready for release yet :( If you would ask me, I would expect it to be released before Christmas 2010, but it’s really just a wild guess.

Martin