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True 1:1 motion control gaming(?)
lowlylowlycook
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So obviously motion control was a big theme from E3 this year. In particular Sony and MS were showing off systems that aim to copy exactly the user's movements and they made a pretty big deal about this. Meanwhile Nintendo's motion+ device moves the Wiimote in that direction as well.
So here is my question: What good is 1:1 motion control for us gamers?
Almost every time one of these things is demoed, you see someone controlling a sword and practically the first thing that comes to my mind is using a lightsaber. That would work great, right up to the first time an enemy parries your weapon and the fact that the holodeck hasn't been invented yet means your arms keep moving while the on-screen representation stops.
Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that 1:1 control will only work when the player's avatar has complete freedom of motion for almost all of the game. To my mind, if a shooting game had an enemy knock the pistol out of the player's hand the momentary lack of 1:1 control would not break immersion necessarily, but the constant lack of feedback from melee combat would rule that out.
But rather than take my question in the negative sense, I think it would be interesting to think about what kind of games would be most enhanced by this kind of technology. Or people can argue that my skepticism is unfounded. Whichever.
To start this off: I think an Indiana Jones game could work pretty well. The lack of feedback from the whip would be less noticable since it isn't a rigid body. If it did get tangled up, I think that the game could transition to some non 1:1 mechanics without it being too jarring. As I mentioned above, shooting Nazi's with your pistol should also work pretty well. Natal in particular could have a mini-game where you try to replace some artifact with a bag of sand that might be neat.
Secondly: Non-contact sports are an obvious choice. Baseball in particular doesn't involve constant movement so large parts of the game should translate very naturally. Still, I'm guessing that a true 1:1 baseball game would be hard, the developers would need to make the game less than 100% realistic.
So here is my question: What good is 1:1 motion control for us gamers?
Almost every time one of these things is demoed, you see someone controlling a sword and practically the first thing that comes to my mind is using a lightsaber. That would work great, right up to the first time an enemy parries your weapon and the fact that the holodeck hasn't been invented yet means your arms keep moving while the on-screen representation stops.
Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that 1:1 control will only work when the player's avatar has complete freedom of motion for almost all of the game. To my mind, if a shooting game had an enemy knock the pistol out of the player's hand the momentary lack of 1:1 control would not break immersion necessarily, but the constant lack of feedback from melee combat would rule that out.
But rather than take my question in the negative sense, I think it would be interesting to think about what kind of games would be most enhanced by this kind of technology. Or people can argue that my skepticism is unfounded. Whichever.
To start this off: I think an Indiana Jones game could work pretty well. The lack of feedback from the whip would be less noticable since it isn't a rigid body. If it did get tangled up, I think that the game could transition to some non 1:1 mechanics without it being too jarring. As I mentioned above, shooting Nazi's with your pistol should also work pretty well. Natal in particular could have a mini-game where you try to replace some artifact with a bag of sand that might be neat.
Secondly: Non-contact sports are an obvious choice. Baseball in particular doesn't involve constant movement so large parts of the game should translate very naturally. Still, I'm guessing that a true 1:1 baseball game would be hard, the developers would need to make the game less than 100% realistic.
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lowlylowlycook on
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Do I prefer Mario Kart with the controller simply because the motion control isn't particularly accurate? Maybe. I do think a 1:1 control method would work really well for an imaginary Rock Band set up, for example. But it pales in comparison to actually having something to bash. The most feedback a game can give you if you have freedom of movement is a slight vibration, and that's nowhere near as satisfying as touching something real. It's actually a barrier to immersion rather than anything else.
What I will find very interesting is when this technology merges with the haptic control that you can see in visualisation labs. You have a pen hooked up to an arm, that has complete freedom of movement. The arm, however, can tense and release, and lock up or give varying degrees of movement. This, when combined with a virtual surface, is incredibly tactile - you can press a real pen against a virtual piece of elastic, and it will twang and bounce exactly as you'd expect. You can then change the material to wood, and you can feel the ridges on its surface, or make makrs on it with the pen's point.
Imagine this technology implemented in a pair of gloves. The most reliable of the 1:1 motion tracking devices seems to be Sony's, so let's say that these gloves are tracked via photosensitive orbs on the gloves. They're also attached to a gantry that can vary the tension that you feel, but their default position is one of free movement.
Now, you can grip an imaginary gun, but the gloves can make you feel like you're holding that gun. If you're tied up, you can't move your hands. And so forth. That, ignoring the impracticality of having a giant mechanical setup in your room, seems much more immersive to me.
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Another possible solution to this problem would be to use a button on the controller to enter the 1:1 fighting stance. So, the player pushes button -> enters fighting stance -> attacks -> gets parried -> the player has to push the button again before the 1:1 controls take effect again.
Even though I'm sure most people have seen it, the first part of the Sony Wand Toy presentation demonstrates how difficult 1:1 sport games would be. Just watch the fellow try to hit the bouncing ball with various objects digitally placed in his hands. It's clear that a 1:1 sports game would be much harder than the real thing.
To get a sense how close something can seem get to your face using 3d tech, hold up your finger upright in front of your face while focusing on your screen. You'll see that even when it's touching your nose the two ghost images of your finger fall well within where a 3d screen would need them to display. Only when you move your finger to the side one of the ghost images will fall outside your screen.
Most sports games can be adapted to use a fixed viewpoint so the object of interest will approach you from the center of the screen. A problem is that to have the space to move around the motion controller you have to be farther away from the screen. I think we can expect a market for really big and really wide 3d projectors to make this possible for the next console generation.
Wouldn't something like a interactive StarWars movie be fun even if it wouldn't revolutionize gaming as such?
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Or used along with the controller in something like Rockband, where the on stage actors will actually mimic your movements.
Imagine using it in Halo 3's level editor to rotate objects while still controlling their placement with the analogue stick.
If it's facial recognition technology is as good as it says, it could possibly be used to allow people to make their own cinematic in customizable games. Act out the motions, provide the voices, and provide the facial action.
It could be used in any game with a customizable character to get an instant copy of yourself in game (well, probably not dead on accurate, but good enough where you don't have to fiddle around with sliders for 30 minutes). In something like Skate have it start the game with you doing some voice work as far as what you sound like if you crashed. Then the game uses that as your character's voice.
Play Parappa the Rapper without any button presses.
That would be boring as hell.
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Depends on if you're boring as hell.
I know I am. They'd just be sitting down lazily pressing buttons.
I was thinking about something similar to this. Basically, upon meeting resistance, your model would stop responding effectively in 1:1 way and sort of slowly stagger back to 1:1. The way you would keep this from being crippling would be to make it so that if you pantomime back into the stance your model is in (being staggered/deflected), you could get back into 1:1 that much faster. You could just react to a parry or whatever and act again almost immediately unless you completely fail to respond to the feedback and follow through anyway.
I'd probably limit this from forcing you to mimic knockdowns, etc. Maybe force the player to crouch to get back up faster?
You basically just force people to react to imaginary stimulus in the same way we pretty much all did when we were kids, you just firm up the rule set.
I do have a friend who can play TTFaF while walking around the house, though. But the camera wouldn't pick him up, then.
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Now this I like.
As for the discussion about handling 1:1 in melee combat. The problem with all of that is parrying is going to be constant. You will spend more time getting back to 1:1 then you will in 1:1. That might work but it won't really be a 1:1 game. So the 1:1 might add the ability to do neat idle animations but not so much to the combat.
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1:1 means that the character on screen copies exactly what you're doing, not that you don't use a controller. It's still perfectly possible to use a controller and have the camera pick up every movement you make accurately.
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Maybe I'm dumb but I don't see how the 1:1 controls would add anything to those scenarios as controls. Most clearly you wouldn't be be playing Rockband with the 1:1 it would just be changing the graphics in an eye-toyish fashion. Might be cool, but it isn't exactly what I'm talking about.
By all means, share ideas for casual games too! I don't think 1:1 is any more obvious in it's uses in that case either. Maybe Natal can yell at me to keep my back straight while I do my pushups.
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This huge push for 1:1 leaves me feeling left out. I can't be the only one who doesn't give a shit about it? I mean, is everyone dreaming of lightsaber duelling or some bullshit because that would be terrible.
Even stuff like painting or the accurate pointer control that Sony showed while technically incredibly good, there's just no game there. Natal too, I don't care about any of it other than waving my hand to navigate the menu.
Maybe.
I'll still have the 360 controller there for whatever game I'm about to play. It's not a case of sloth, but why wave my hand when flicking the analog is probably superior in every regard?
I have yet to see the compelling reason for 1:1 controls. None of the Wii sports resort nonsense has sold me on it's need, nor have the offerings from the competition.
Waggle is fine. What's wrong with waggle? It's more fun.
I'd rather see more time put into developing motion controls that are enjoyable rather than accurate. Is there some reason that 1:1 is inherently better that I am missing? I cant help but feel that putting in 1:1 controls will be an excuse for lazy design and loose controls in the future. I'm already seeing in my head some shitty Ubisoft trash that gives you totally accurate 3d sword simulation but is fun for maybe 30 seconds.
If the player pays attention and pulls away from a blocked strike, he could avoid the frames that leaves him unable to attack.
Think of it like a mouse cursor on your screen, you can try to push the cursor off your screen, but it simply won't work. Never felt jarring to me.
I honestly don't think it would be terribly difficult to get the hang of. It's a pretty straight forward extension of the types of things we all do as kids. The only guys staggering around the whole time would be people who commit to everything or just don't pay any attention at all.
Same goes for games. The visual and auditory feedback you get from the game can give you almost a physical sense of what's going on in it. Every time I hear a crit land in TF2, it's almost like I can feel it landing. If the game displays loads of motion, I sometimes start to feel a little dizzy. Heck, even though I can stare at a solid white computer screen without a problem, if you get a screenshot with way too much bloom going on, you tend to squint reflexively.
I honestly think it could work fairly well.
Mind you, I have no problem with the motion controls in Mario Kart.
Say you cross swords with an opponent and want to overpower them with your strength. How would that work?
Like I said before. Play-acting in a movie might be fun but I don't know how compelling of a game it would be.
Well, technically, MK uses gravity to get something like 1:1 controls even without Motion+ but it's a pretty limited case.
I guess the true advantage of Natal is that it would even work in orbit.
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Then you get a button mashing thing or a gesture to make to break it. Unless we have a system of hydraulics and joints or super-advanced forcefields actual strength is gonna be worth jackall in e-[strike]dongwaving[/strike]swordfighting.
Eh, I can't really think of why you would want to do something like that. I mean, it looks cool to see that happen in a cinematic sword fight sometimes, but that kind of thing isn't common in a fight. If you actually do end up in a blade on blade block somehow, wouldn't it just be easier to knee them in the junk?
I guess you could make it work if it was something important to the type of game. Let's say that your model continuously tries to sync up with your body. You would just put your "sword" where you'd like your model's sword to go. It would do the pushing itself. It could do strength checks or whatever if the game had stats, maybe even use the physics engine to determine leverage.
Move your sword slightly past where it's been blocked. Your character's strength compared to your opponent's would determine how far you could move it without stumbling in some manner. Undershooting this limit would obviously result in less of a push, or the push going the other way.
A direct result of this is that holding your sword steady will always result in a steady-state unless if you overshoot: if you aren't pushing hard enough, your opponent will push towards you his force matches you (as your controller just moved further forward relative to the conflict, as the conflict moved closer towards you). So, you can always find the right spot by holding near where you think is good and waiting. Theoretically, if you relied on this you'd disengage before overpowering your opponent (because swing-hold-wait-push-win would be too easy) but it'd give you an idea of where to push to next time.
Don't bother implementing it? Pretty simple solution.
Next on the list: What happens if your opponent disarms you, but the controller is still in your hand!? Immersion ruined!
The first two minutes is what I feel about motion control gaming. Just replace "Power Glove" with "Motion sensing controllers"
When I want to relax with a game, I want to be on the couch playing the game, not hunched over like I'm hunchback of notre dame.
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If you're going for a route where pushing the sword beyond where it collides with something causes a fumble, you could do the same for the maximum speed of the sword, forcing the player to move larger swords slower.
Ever.
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Perhaps it's a pipe dream. Maybe next generation Nintendo could come up with something resembling this a few generations from now. Maybe one of the other companies, but it's Nintendo that's had at least one new controller feature every console generation since the NES.
However, I don't think true 1:1 will ever happen. Not because it's impossible, but because
1) True 1:1 isn't always the best thing. As pointed out before, EA doesn't use all of Motionplus sensitivity because it would be too accurate, and bad tennis players would be bad virtual tennis players.
2) Developer effort. You can bet that developers are just going to basically have gestures for most of their NATAL and Sonywand games. Not because they're porting from Wii, but because they're just going to go with what is easy to test and how much effort it requires.
They are all different venues to the same goal.
Now, it'd be fairly easy to make a heavy sword work in a game. You'd simple lag the sword behind the input, the character on screen would just be following through with your motions. Also, people will naturally stop moving the controller once it hits something.
You could also just use an OoT type system where the swords make a 'CLANG' noise and sparks fly, but they continue to pass through each other.
Have a read through the last part of my first post in the thread. This is my problem with it too.
@gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
The problem from their point of view is that the longer this generation goes on the longer Nintendo is basically guaranteed to dominate. It would take a very special game to jump start their motion controller to any importance.
Even the Balance Board, which has a world wide install base about the same as the PS3 or 360 themselves doesn't have a huge list of games that require it.
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