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As part of my recent redig into kinect, just stumbled on this today. A leaked 2010 doc on the Kinect 2 / Xbox 720. The most intriguing suggestion, beyond the logical step of stereo detectors, and the possible use of glasses as part of hands-free gaming, is this...
'Augmented Reality Shades'
I can't quite fathom what they mean - but I guess it could be something like
Altho how that works for more than one person I'm not sure. I doubt they mean genuine projection from the stereo peripherals. More likely it's a supplementary image that exists only in each player's glasses - tailored via their head position etc, but appearing to be a shared 3D object to them, and in conjunction. Could be cool.
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On a side note thought these brief comments by a Wreckateer creative were interesting. The game did have very responsive controls (it just happens not to be my cup of tea)
This dev article also comes to similar-ish conclusions, and adds the pithy addendum...
I notice that PowerUp Heroes actually did quite well with the 'postures' & fixed gestures idea, mixed with more spontaneous kicking & punching, so there's still room for that 'prototype' style of input. Where it fell down was in only providing a slim set of core outcomes. The palette for gameplay exploration was pretty limited, but at least their was a satisfying crispness to the responses.
To have a feeling of autonomy within the game you definitely do want that swift response to your inputs - that feeling of being in control. Only after that is a spread of complex interactions desirable to make a 'hardcore' and full on great game. Kinect struggles with these things on two fronts - it's been slow to deliver on deft controls, and it has a built in expectation that you can interact with it using all the nuance and exuberance of real life.
I'm kinda glad they're getting closer to deft interactions, but it is a slight shame that they look likely to fixate on reducing a wide spread of gestures down to a simple set of outputs. Should be good news for platformy games in the interim, but I'm definitely still waiting for it to spread its wings a bit further. Seems a good bet that this gen is unlikely to make the hardcore leap.
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/essay
Altho here's the wii hack imbedded, as a colourful postscript. (Any text I put after a vid seems to flow off the bottom of the post these days, so I've just stuck it down here)
&start=150
'Augmented Reality Shades'
I can't quite fathom what they mean - but I guess it could be something like
Altho how that works for more than one person I'm not sure. I doubt they mean genuine projection from the stereo peripherals. More likely it's a supplementary image that exists only in each player's glasses - tailored via their head position etc, but appearing to be a shared 3D object to them, and in conjunction. Could be cool.
---
On a side note thought these brief comments by a Wreckateer creative were interesting. The game did have very responsive controls (it just happens not to be my cup of tea)
Most of the time when you're developing a game there are other points of reference to go look at. For example, if the aiming doesn't feel right in an FPS, a good designer can go play any of the hundreds of FPS's out there, deconstruct them, and figure out what they did.... This is what makes it challenging, but also exciting -- it's not every day you get to figure things out from scratch
...The only 'trick' we'd offer to other devs is... rely less on 'gestures,' as it's hard to teach the player the 'right way' to do any given movement... The most important thing is getting a steady stream of people who have never played the game before to try it out. It's amazing how many different ways simple commands like 'reach out and slap the shot to move it mid-air' can be interpreted. If your game is good, you will account for as many of those interpretations as possible, as opposed to trying to make the player do movements a certain way that might be unnatural to them."
...The only 'trick' we'd offer to other devs is... rely less on 'gestures,' as it's hard to teach the player the 'right way' to do any given movement... The most important thing is getting a steady stream of people who have never played the game before to try it out. It's amazing how many different ways simple commands like 'reach out and slap the shot to move it mid-air' can be interpreted. If your game is good, you will account for as many of those interpretations as possible, as opposed to trying to make the player do movements a certain way that might be unnatural to them."
Games demand player autonomy to be games. This is what fuels Ebert's 'Games can't be art' argument. You can handcraft the most exquisitely designed level of all time and a player can still stand in the corner for two hours and pretend to have sexual intercourse with a potted plant. You can try to minimize "wrong" ways of playing your game but eventually, you will have no control of the player's individual experience.
When a controller is involved, all of the player's choices have to be funneled into the game through the tiny plastic device in their hands. There is only one way to press X. However, there are about a million ways to throw a punch. In a motion controlled game, players can do ANYTHING. Trust me, I've seen it all in playtesting sessions. Including the player that punched in reverse, yanking his fist backwards every time. I still don't get that one.
When a controller is involved, all of the player's choices have to be funneled into the game through the tiny plastic device in their hands. There is only one way to press X. However, there are about a million ways to throw a punch. In a motion controlled game, players can do ANYTHING. Trust me, I've seen it all in playtesting sessions. Including the player that punched in reverse, yanking his fist backwards every time. I still don't get that one.
I notice that PowerUp Heroes actually did quite well with the 'postures' & fixed gestures idea, mixed with more spontaneous kicking & punching, so there's still room for that 'prototype' style of input. Where it fell down was in only providing a slim set of core outcomes. The palette for gameplay exploration was pretty limited, but at least their was a satisfying crispness to the responses.
To have a feeling of autonomy within the game you definitely do want that swift response to your inputs - that feeling of being in control. Only after that is a spread of complex interactions desirable to make a 'hardcore' and full on great game. Kinect struggles with these things on two fronts - it's been slow to deliver on deft controls, and it has a built in expectation that you can interact with it using all the nuance and exuberance of real life.
I'm kinda glad they're getting closer to deft interactions, but it is a slight shame that they look likely to fixate on reducing a wide spread of gestures down to a simple set of outputs. Should be good news for platformy games in the interim, but I'm definitely still waiting for it to spread its wings a bit further. Seems a good bet that this gen is unlikely to make the hardcore leap.
---
/essay
Altho here's the wii hack imbedded, as a colourful postscript. (Any text I put after a vid seems to flow off the bottom of the post these days, so I've just stuck it down here)
&start=150
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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here
Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here
Last edited by Golgot; 08-13-12 at 09:39 PM.
) and auto swapping for keyboard/mouse and controllers which should be great for the driving sections. The benchmark mode is also pretty handy and I don't know why more of the graphically intensive games don't include them. 
