Patrick Jarrett

Milo and Natal from E3

If we decided what had won E3 for the most press and buzz, undoubtedly it is Xbox 360’s Natal (nah-tall). This project is bringing the next level of interaction and immersion in games. The ability for us to move past the Wii’s active level using a controller into an active gaming experience on our own.

Now the first thing is to share that a bit of this technology is bought or licensed by Microsoft, it isn’t their own. Johnny Lee, who is best known for the hack he did with the Wii, where he modified a pair of glasses to interact with the Wii and create an impressive experience where the screen reflected his location and orientation, allowing him to literally look behind objects and such. Also I saw a demo for some of the function where a person can control systems without any controller, such as we saw the flicking through movies etc.

Of the demos though, Natal’s Milo is the most amazing, stunning and unbelievable. The functionality shown in this demo is so smooth and realistic I find it very hard to believe.

Further, I realized halfway through the video that Milo had not fallen into the Uncanny Valley for me. Obviously he’s still clearly animated and not going for the 100% realistic look, instead going with a more artistic nearly anime art style while still staying somewhat close to realistic.

But considering even the animation as ho-hum, consider the AI we’re shown. The ability for the system to process natural language, detect inflections, and the creation of realistic audio. Just wow. This could be truly epic and if the game / system continues to develop in this way, I will definitely be acquiring an Xbox 360 for it.