Life Burner

Bring on the future of Gaming, Home Media and computing, and welcome Project Natal, announced at E3 by Microsoft, as a competitor for the Wii, although with a couple of massive upgrades.

Instead of sensing controllers, it uses two camera’s and sits underneath your TV, just like the WII sensor bar, But without controllers, and adding camera’s, 3D Motion Detection Voice recognition and face recognition! project natal is on a completely new level.

Read on for some videos of project natal in action.

The thing that really grabs me, is that its not just focusing on games, Microsoft bringing this into the media center for the Xbox 360, so you can control your media without a remote, say like minority report.

So theoretically, not long after its release, this could be used with pre-exiting computer systems as well, to control the interface, who knows, maybe there’s some hidden features embedded in windows 7 already!

Live Demo

Project Natal, Hands on at E3 2009

Microsoft explains how it works:

Compatible with any Xbox 360 system, the “Project Natal” sensor is the world’s first to combine an RGB camera, depth sensor, multi-array microphone and custom processor running proprietary software all in one device. Unlike 2-D cameras and controllers, “Project Natal” tracks your full body movement in 3-D, while responding to commands, directions and even a shift of emotion in your voice.

In addition, unlike other devices, the “Project Natal” sensor is not light-dependent. It can recognize you just by looking at your face, and it doesn’t just react to key words but understands what you’re saying. Call a play in a football game, and players will actually respond.

External related links:

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/projectnatal/

http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/03/project-natal-video-hands-on-impressions-and-further-details/

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/06/01/project-natal-video-features-smack-talking-scruffy-teenagers/