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Headtracking using project Nathal

Zetsumei

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Nov 22, 2005
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http://kotaku.com/5378490/epic-unreal-the-unofficial-engine-of-project-natal

If the unreal engine will get natal implementations, and as microsoft says that natal will be usable for the x360 and the pc. Then there are some benefits of it that could be used in the sphere of ro.

- Headtracking, the guesstimated prices of the nathal camera are cheaper than trackir.
-Together with that some other interesting features could be thought up like jimmy lee's 3d view (youtube it).
-Voice detection if working well could allow you possibly to do some nifty things as well in the world of bots.
Or spotting enemies/calling arty.
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So if nathal support will be embedded in the UE3 engine, what kinds of things do you think that say Heroes of Stalingrad could benefit from using headtracking.
 
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Although it makes things easier twi already showed interest in supporting headtracking through trackir, natal just could offer it as well for a cheaper consumer price.

In arma2 that supports headtracking i dont feel that i as person without a trackir am at a disadvantage. Its a nice complementary feature taking some controls away from the keyboard and mouse onto your body, it might be easier to grasp and nifty to use.

But a proficient keyboard user should be just as good.
 
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When i tried the Arma2 demo i definitely thought it was cool to hit the alt key and being able to look around. It would be cool to use some kind of tracking but then i thought i could save 200 bucks and just hit alt when i needed to. The cost would have to be under 50 for me to think about it. Besides we all need to start saving up for AMD's ATI Eyefinity!

[url]http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/09/28/amds_ati_eyefinity_technology_review/[/URL]
 
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There's Track IR for PC's.

Again, would be nice to have, but would take a lot of work to implement. Especially since I don't think we have that true 1st person (seeing your own body when looking down, etc). Arma and Arma 2 implement use of Track IR, and it's definitely a good feature to have, but I think we should save that kind of thing for the hardcore sims.

I'm satisfied with weapons interacting with walls and objects in first person. That was pretty awesome in its own right.
 
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There's Track IR for PC's.

Again, would be nice to have, but would take a lot of work to implement. Especially since I don't think we have that true 1st person (seeing your own body when looking down, etc). Arma and Arma 2 implement use of Track IR, and it's definitely a good feature to have, but I think we should save that kind of thing for the hardcore sims.

I'm satisfied with weapons interacting with walls and objects in first person. That was pretty awesome in its own right.
TrackIR needs competition, for that relatively low-resolution CMOS camera and that processor it's way too expensive.
Also, it's a passive system which requires the use of LEDs. An active IR system would be been much better.

Natal is a stereo 3D full-spectrum (not IR) camera and I believe it has stereo microphones aswell.
On top of that it has it's own dedicated processor like the TrackIR.

Red Orchestra could definately use TrackIR support and hopefully Natal support aswell. Either way, both would be better. I'll keep my TrackIR for my race sims, flight sims and ArmA 2 though.
 
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There's Track IR for PC's.

Again, would be nice to have, but would take a lot of work to implement. Especially since I don't think we have that true 1st person (seeing your own body when looking down, etc). Arma and Arma 2 implement use of Track IR, and it's definitely a good feature to have, but I think we should save that kind of thing for the hardcore sims.

I'm satisfied with weapons interacting with walls and objects in first person. That was pretty awesome in its own right.

Although it will probably still be a lot of work, project natal will be natively supported by Unreal Engine 3 (hopefully for free). Unlike track IR which afaik doesnt have any native UE3 implementation (but will probably be implemented atleast after ramm showed interest on their forum).

The main thing for me with something like natal would be ability to bind voice commands ingame to saying something in reallife. (like shouting grenade and it will do the voicecommand for it ingame). Or imagine voice to text if that works, so you dont need to type things anymore :p.

Even if there is no full budy the easy of looking around you could remain, not to talk about johnny lee's 3d.


YouTube - Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the WiiRemote


Track IR is kind of a niche (although it probably works better), but the project natal camera will probably end up cheaper and more commonly used, while being able to do comparable stuff and some more.
 
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Track IR is kind of a niche (although it probably works better), but the project natal camera will probably end up cheaper and more commonly used, while being able to do comparable stuff and some more.
I don't know. Using fixed lightsources makes tracking very accurate. But if Natal is an active system (projecting some kind of light to improve accuracy) instead of a passive system (using ambient light) it could even be more accurate.
Especially considering the fact that it is stereo 3D.

Even though TrackIR is a niche, it is already "widely" adopted in the hardcore simming scene.
Think of IL2, MS FS, rFactor, LFS, ArmA 2, etc.
 
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Quite some games use TrackIr and from what it seems with Ramms post on their forum RO:Hos will probably use it as well.

But the market ending up with natal will probably end up bigger as trackir is primarily used in more sim like games, where natal will probably reach more mainstream games. Thats why it would be nice to support both, especially since engine implementation will be done by epic. And natal can do some other nifty things as well.

Its not about dumping TrackIr its about using natal if feasible, as quite some nifty things can be done with it.
 
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