Project NATAL : Redefining the gaming experience with Xbox 360!

Microsoft brings to light the much rumoured hands-free and motion-sensing gaming and entertainment. This is a project (code-named Natal) that is still within Microsoft laboratory walls and has a long way to go to come to market.  This small black device, an add on to the Xbox 360 gives a full on real life gaming experience of what is happening in the screen without any controllers and wires attached.  It has the capability of playing with multiple users during a single session.

It has a surprisingly sensitive video camera which can capture and track where your body is and what you are doing. It automatically recognizes if you are a man or a woman. It has a monochrome camera (works with infrared) that reads the depth in our movements like how far away our body is. It also exhibits a super sensitive and multi-array microphone that can not only pick up voice commands but also tells when you are talking, when your friends are talking and when somebody in the game is talking. It is powered with a software that tells Xbox how to find our body’s various joints.(It tracks 48 of them). Isn’t it ultimate?

The project is headed by Don Mattrick, the head of Microsoft’s interactive and entertainment division and the former head of Electronics Art. Any guesses on why is the project named Natal?? Lets see.. This is because Microsoft tends to name its internal projects after cities; Natal is a city in Brazil, where Alex Kipman, one of the key engineers on project Natal comes from.

The other players in market in this field are Nintendo Wii, Sony EyeToy but they come with some kind of swing and swivel device and with not so good movement capture and are in no way close to Project Natal.

However, some say it would be weird to dodge a ball when you actually don’t hold it and it is not meant for hardcore gamers and games like star wars etc.         

Microsoft has denied disclosing the date when Project Natal is going to take its first independent step outside the laboratory. People are eagerly waiting for the day when they can actually see this in market and have the ultimate fun.

Let’s wait and watch how it turns out!! 

Rich web experience

Rich-Internet application (RIA) techniques such as AJAX, Adobe Flash and Flex have significantly improved user experience for browser-based web applications. Flash/Flex allows a part of the content of a web page to be altered without refreshing the whole page at the same time.

RIAs typically transfer the processing necessary for the user interface to the web client but keep the bulk of the data (i.e. maintaining the state of the program, the data etc) back on the application server.

RIAs typically:

• run in a web browser
• does not require software installation

Benefits of RIA

Because RIAs employ a client engine to interact with the user, they are:

• Richer.
• More responsive.
• Client/Server balance.
• Asynchronous communication.
• Network efficiency.

These benefits can be explained in detail:

Richer

They can offer user-interface behaviors not obtainable using only the HTML widgets available to standard browser-based Web applications. This richer functionality may include anything that can be implemented in the technology being used on the client side, including drag and drop, using a slider to change data, calculations performed only by the client and which do not need to be sent back to the server (e.g. an insurance rate calculator), etc.

More responsive

The interface behaviors are typically much more responsive than those of a standard Web browser that must always interact with the server.

Client/Server balance

The demand for client and server computing resources is better balanced, so that the Web server need not be the workhorse that it is with a traditional Web application. This frees server resources, allowing the same server hardware to handle more client sessions concurrently.

Asynchronous communication

The client engine can interact with the server asynchronously — that is, without waiting for the user to perform an interface action like clicking on a button or link. This option allows RIA designers to move data between the client and the server without making the user wait. Perhaps the most common application of this is pre-fetching, in which an application anticipates a future need for certain data, and downloads it to the client before the user requests it, thereby speeding up a subsequent response. Google Maps uses this technique to move adjacent map segments to the client before the user scrolls their view.

Network efficiency

The network traffic may also be significantly reduced because an application-specific client engine can be more intelligent than a standard Web browser when deciding what data needs to be exchanged with servers. This can speed up individual requests or responses because less data is being transferred for each interaction, and overall network load is reduced. However, use of asynchronous pre-fetching techniques can neutralize or even reverse this potential benefit. Because the code cannot anticipate exactly what every user will do next, it is common for such techniques to download extra data, not all of which is actually needed, to many or all clients.

There are thousands of companies in the RIA domain providing excellent innovative solutions to clients. Out of them, worth mentioning one company as it stands apart with its solutions, check out these @ Webspiders.com , a RIA based company.