Natal Hampered By Lag Issues?

21 Dec 2009 at 11:35:04 by Andy Alderson

A British game developer has suggested Microsoft’s new motion-sensing controller technology may suffer from lag issues.

Traveller’s Tales’ Jon Burton told Develop that he has doubts about Project Natal and believes input lag may prevent it from widespread use in games.

“I was actually more impressed with Sony’s motion capture solution than Microsoft’s Natal,” he told Develop.

“[Natal is] exceedingly clever, but the lag on the input and lack of physical buttons is really going to restrict the kind of games that can be done with it,” he said.

“Sony’s solution will be cheap, accurate and will put buttons at your fingertips, meaning everything from action adventures to FPSes can be handled with the same input.”

However, Burton wasn’t completely unimpressed with Natal and is a fan of the device’s software.

“The software behind Natal stunned me,” he added.

“To be able to take effectively a bump-map of a person and turn that into a fully articulated and rigged polygonal skeleton is an incredible feat. We run a mo-cap studio and to get anything resembling mo-cap, live in real-time, from effectively a single camera is nothing short of amazing.”

What are your predictions for the motion-controller wars? Let us know in the comments section below.

Comment