Microsoft shows how Natal recognizes players, gender

I remember one time working the register at a bookstore I worked at long ago, when I was ringing a customer up and I misjudged her gender. To be fair, when you're really busting out a lot of sales and trying to get people through the line as fast as possible, you don't pay as much attention to what they look like, but rather more a peripheral sense of shape, sound and color they give off. I finished her purchase, handed her stuff over and said, "Here you go sir, thanks for shopping with us," or some similarly banal pleasantry. She got this really hurt look on her face and said, "You think I'm a man?" I was completely embarrassed and apologized profusely, but come on, she looked, dressed and sounded male to my inattentive eyes.

My point is yeah, this is probably going to make a lot of people sad.

Does it recognise transexuals? Or people who prefer to bat for the other team but haven't gotten around to it yet?

Oh, and will it recognise race, religeon and political values? Now that would be original :)

I kind of figured that it would be able to tell it's my girlfriend because she'd be the one yelling at me to "turn the stupid XBox off." I guess I was waaaaayyyy off.

I don't know if I like it being able to recognise me. That means that its constantly eyeballing everything, or if you want to say this, it's LOOKING for you.
I'll enter a room and it will say 'Hello, Alex. Do you want to play?' in that cute-but-sinister Portal Turret voice.
'There you are! ^_^'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKVuPUY9D-A

cool stuff

This is the racist laptop (Camera) for people that don't know:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4DT3tQqgRM

Basically it only works for white people moving where they move, it wont track anyone whose darker.

As for this video, anyone put off by how little those two moved? I mean... maybe they fit into the white people cant jump stereotype but jeez, she takes on step in each direction? Is Natal really that stingy with where you need to be located for its tracking? I guess you wont have to move around all that much for games, but I feel like this might be one of its limits, that it needs a very good eye on you to get all the data it needs (correctly). With the move, all it needs to find is a colored ball, so it may be able to work well in a greater variety of conditions?

This is pretty impressive

Is it just me or do i only here "durka durka druka durka avatar durka durka" in the beginning?

Not sure if the demo was on older hardware, but that lag bothers me to all hell.

Having the on screen avatar lower his/her arms 1/2 second after the user actually does it...that's a no-no.

Peter Molyneux did say that most demos were still using the tech that was months old....I'm sceptical.

Not projector lag, it wouldn't be *that* noticeable.

I'm sorry y'all but that's pretty bad-ass.

Do NOT click on the NextGen News video link, I tried to go there and was shown scareware (fake antivirus pop-up).

Well, this whole showcase of what Natal can do is nice and all, but the only thing that really matters is what the bottom of an Avatar's shoe looks like.

I want to see how games play darn it!

Well duh... thanks, But they were barely moving, like I said she only took one step in any direction. What if I wanna play from my couch 10+ feet away, or want to stand up and be just a few feet away from the camera? Can I do both?

it scans for boobs and your penis.

If Natal shows me as a girl, does that make me gender confused?

Hmm, interesting.

But what about babies? Can it tell gender through diapers?

Absolutely brilliant it detects a persons gender, very impressive it can clearly detect male and female as demonstrated in that demo, massive props for them working out how to do that.

Now please watch this:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/10/video-sonys-vision-library-for-playstation-eye-recognizes-face/

"It's called the Vision Library and, once a face has been analyzed, the machine can tell it apart from others, determine orientation, identify gender, tell what expression that face is... expressing, and then superimpose some big-eyed anime head right on top of it real-time"

In 2009 Sony already demonstrated the technology by analysing a persons face.. It may not do full body tracking but it certainly can detect your gender :) Low and behold it can track more than 1 person at a time and can correctly identify a man and woman on screen at the same time.

Chris. D is right, Sony has already demonstrated this technology using the playstation eye.

Do you see any depth from that video ? What does depth have to do with determining a persons gender ? That video appears to be an overlay of the camera output in this case it has to be the IR Camera within natal hence why the heat trail

Others above claim this is all Microsoft tech. Microsoft bought 3DV Systems and have licensed technology from Prime Sense..

Watch this :

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/11/primesense-talks-full-body-motion-control-at-gdc-the-possibilit/ -- Does that not look remarkably similar to the Natal product demo ? I am not sure how 3DV fits into all of this but 3DV also had a 3D camera system and had built its own processor and did all of the skeletal modeling directly on the camera..

http://www.vccafe.com/2009/06/23/3dv-systems-and-primesense-are-the-israeli-firms-behind-microsofts-project-natal/

Will Natal recognize your gender if you're the elephant boy?

tits

That video didn't explain how it can tell the difference. Is it scanning my junk or what?

So will men with moobs be recognized as women?

Bones, people. The same way someone can look at a skeleton and tell if it's from a male or female, Natal can tell by comparing the ratio of lengths of bones. It knows where the joints are that connect the bones, so it knows the lengths of the bones.