Natal report: “You’ll want to clear” 4 metres of space from the screen

Epic, epic lol.

Unless I re-arange the entire living room, that’s me out then.

Well, already to get your full body in the picture you’re going to need a decent amount of space between you and the camera. I’d assume the ‘one size fits all’ distance is 4 meters, unless you’re a giant.

Good grief, that’s rather a lot of space. Which I’m guessing most people won’t have.

A tenner says that’s “The edge of sensing”.

Remember, you can’t operate a Wii from closer than like 90cm or something.

I seriously see this as a FAIL attempt with motion controls. I mean seriously. More i listen to Natal stuff… More i’m not so excited for it.

@Gekidami – does have a point
Unless its a really wide angle lens, getting an entire body (say >6ft) in the picture with room for arms above head possibly, would suyrely need such a distance from the camera.

Time to get the sledgehammer out and make me some space.

ehhrr, what?
/returns to bulding a natal room.

Ok, hands up who sits more than 4m from their TV? And who sits 1m from it?

Recommended viewing distances:

* 26 Inch – 3.2 feet to 8 feet
* 30 Inch – 3.8 feet to 10 feet
* 32 Inch – 4.2 feet to 11 feet
* 34 Inch – 4.4 feet to 12 feet
* 40 Inch – 5 feet to 14 feet
* 42 Inch – 5.5 feet to 15 feet
* 46 Inch – 6 feet to 16.5 feet
* 50 Inch – 6.5 feet to 17.5 feet
* 55 Inch – 7 feet to 19 feet
* 60 Inch – 7.5 feet to 21 feet
* 63 Inch – 8 feet to 22 feet
* 65 Inch – 8.5 feet to 23 feet

Oh dear.

As others have said, I really hope that’s the capacity and not the recommended range. There’s no way I could have anything approaching that much room unless I took the console & TV into the kitchen and put it at one end.

@5
Yep. The news is rather ambiguous and clumsy. Not the reporting the actual snippet.

It reminds me of the john smiths advert with Peter Kay. The one where he kicks his mum out to put a snooker table in the front room. Only this time, it would be a virtual snooker table in 4m of space.

Come on now mum, you gotta go.

Oh dear.

Well lets look at it this way: 4 meters is apparently the edge of sensing, at 4 meters you’ve got a height of 2.7 meters (according to TechFlash).
Now, going off whats been shown (that break out game) Natal needs to see you from top to bottom. 2.7 meters is more then enought space for that, but not alot of people have 4 meters to spare so it’ll depend on how much distance they can free up. I’ve got about 2 meters (maybe abit more) from the TV till i’m forced to push myself up against a display cabinet/sit on the couch (depends on the room but i’ve got about 2 meters in both without rearranging them).

If 4 meters distance is about 2.7 meters high then does that mean 2 meters distance is 1.3 meters high? I’m not that short i’m afraid.

This is something I’d totally failed to consider. I think I’ve got about 3m tops, and that’s going wall to wall, and I’m about 6ft, so I would literally have to move furniture out of the way for this to work. Let alone the poor folks in Japan who traditionally have extremely limited space to operate in.

This could certainly be a significant strike against Natal, and something E3 will totally fail to demonstrate, as they’ve got bags of space to play around with there.

Geki: no its actualy more than 1.3.
for the example imagine natal sitting right in the middle of the 2.7m, which is 1.35 so the spreading is in both direction with will end up beeing only a quarter less in half the distance. Wich will end up in 2.025m height.
If i think correctly.
Anyonye second that?

Unless the final Natal hardware is going to be very different, haven’t we already seen people playing less than a metre away from it?

First, an epic announcement, out of nowhere. Then, with this epic fail announcement, the balance is restored.
According to that, I couldn’t use Natal, even if I wanted to, lolz!

Wow. What the hell is going on lately? Increasingly poor Natal news, Move demoing well, Ninty ahead of the tech curve. F-ing twilight zone, man.

Looks like MS is buying me a new apartment with four metres of space for Natal.

Some of you folks are getting carried away.

It takes a fair amount of room to play a Wii as well. And I suspect to use Move too. This isn’t a sit down sesion of gaming we are talking about. You don’t think your going to sit down on your butt, glued to the couch and play Move do you?

I mean, maybe you could. You can with Wii, sometimes. Might even be able to with Natal, so long as the right part of you is in motion(hand holding a tennis racket etc), maybe. But these things are all ALL all motion controls.

You play by setting your body in motion. Of course it is going to take space.

I live in my own house, not an apt in my moms basement or garage I have 4plus meters, or whatever the foot lengthed equvilent is.

Seems to me that a lot of people just want to love Move and hate Natal. Neither one is out yet. I said it once, I will say it again. Stay the course. And wait and see what happens. They might both be crap.

But both will take lots of space to use.

{edit} for every player with Move(in mp games), your going to need to add extra space for them to use the wands. Four player tennis matches on Wii require lots of space, unless you want to get hit in the back of the head.

21 – that sums it up pretty well

Online gaming, man. This isn’t the Wii, both 360 and PS3 have competent online systems. And bravo at the parents house dig. You older gamers know exactly how to bring back the classics… in style. ^.^b

Online gaming might make a small impact. But really, I am not so sure.

I own a Wii, and while I game on the xb360 and the PS3 more, I do enjoy Wii. But I think that is because I am in a crowded room at a party playing. It just really isn’t the same alone. And I think that say bowling against people over the net is going to feel hollow. Maybe not, time will tell.

I just always thought of these things as social gaming. I think it will be like playing monopoly alone if your lacking friends/family in the room with you.

It stands to reason that Natal will require the player to move around more, and need more space than either Move or Wii, simply because you are the controller and will have to physically act out every action you want to initiate.

I often play the Wii with my arms resting on my lap, and I doubt Move will be much different. It all depends on the sort of games you buy I suppose, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that Natal will require more free space to operate than either Move or Wii.

I don’t make a habit out of pigeon-holing the Wii (I have the utmost respect for Nintendo, as a whole), but what else is there really? If you aren’t playing MC heavy games with your friends/family, who are you playing with? Alone, mostly. With Move, you (could) get that family/friends, MC heavy gaming you have on Wii, without the limitations of the Wii. Thats its appeal.

You being older, I’m surprised. We’ve both seen how camera-based MC works, these stories should come as no shock.

What did I tell everyone when that first reveal video of Natal was shown with the family at E3. I said it looks ok but all you people weren’t seeing the full picture….the living space that they were playing Natal in.

and who came to M$ defense as usual…..yep you know who. So I hope he is reading this and feeling stupid as he should.

Well, the question is, do you want to use optical motion capture or not? Because if it’s going to work, then you’re always going to need space.

I reckon this will come down to the same thing it always does – Who gets the better games. If Natal doesn’t get properly applied, it will fail, if Move doesn’t get properly applied, it will fail.

For what it’s worth, I give Microsoft credit for being bold and betting on new technology, instead of just cloning the competition. Even if cloning might end up paying off.

Pretty funny stuff are some of the comments being made on the net about this.

4 meters of space? WTF.. i dont even hafe 2 meters of room in my gaming room.. FAIL!