E3 09: A Visit With Milo
I had many golden moments at E3, but none so golden as running in to Peter Molyneux in the Valve meeting room. He enthusiastically greeted me by name and invited me to come up and check out Milo, Lionhead's application developed for Microsoft's Project Natal controller. As you doubtless know by now, Project Natal is Microsoft's entry into the motion controller scene. The catch being that there actually is no physical controller and through the use of cameras, the player himself/herself becomes the controller.
Milo is an ingenious use of Project Natal, utilizing the voice and face recognition features of the device as well as the motion control. Upon entering the room, Molyneux talked a little bit about the project and then allowed me to give it a try. I stood in front of the screen and saw a serene Fable like environment with a young boy (Milo) swinging on a swing. As I moved towards the screen, the scene in turn moved closer. As I backed up, the scene moved further away leaning forward and to the side, I was able to look at the peripheral views of the scene. Kneeling down afforded me a look up in to the tree. Pretty impressive so far.
The next thing I knew, Milo realized I was there and hopped off his swing to come and greet me. He recognized that I was wearing black and nodded with empathy when I described how my day was. I could see the word recognition coming in to play: when I said the words good or happy, Milo would smile and nod. Eventually he tossed me a pair of goggles which I "put on." This basically consisted of me circling my eyes with my fingers to simulate goggles. Once they were on, I was able to jump in the nearby water and do a little splashing around. The water was very responsive to my movements and was definitely an amazing display.
At this point, another journalist insisted that he get an on camera interview with Peter, thus ending my time with Milo. However, I left with the feeling that I had just witnessed something miraculous. I am well aware that there were some "tricks" and scripted moments employed in the demo I saw, but for software this early on in the process it's understandable. It did give me an idea what the years ahead will hold for video games and I will admit that it was in turns fascinating and just a little creepy, If Molyneux and Microsoft can pull this off, we will all be looking at the future of gaming. A future where we will no longer be tethered to a controller and our in game companions will be as real as our family and friends.
You can check out a video of the Milo demo video from the MS press conference after the jump.
Fruit Brute
Posted to E3, Hot Stuff, Video Games on 12 June 2009
· Comments (8)
Other stuff like this: e3, e3 09, lionhead, microsoft, milo, peter molyneux, project natal
Holy crap! That's really cool! Scary/exciting to thing what games might be like in 10, 20, or 30 years time.
I just peed a little... i don't know if i should be delighted or scared...
Natal is very very impressive. Too bad it will take a couple of years before it will happen. Only thing that concerns me is the lack of feedback, and trigger movements for FPS compared to what the Wii and PS3 are offering. However, for fitness routines and character interaction, this will be perfect (no more obvious dialog trees?). I wonder how they will cope with multiple langauges?
Aww, I think it's cool that he remembered you!
I think Natal will be awesome, but I'm still gonna be using a controller ti the day I die..Plus I'm a bit weary as well thinking...if malio is just the beginning..and in the near future if players and make malio or whoever they can create into their own personal interactive gaming assistant...imagine the designs players can create..They can make their own version of a Sport Illustrated super model as their avatar or a chip's dales model...
you know I'm not the only one thinking like this.
Natal still looks pretty cool, the voice activation part I could really get use to..plus I'm such a Tech whore..I'm probibly gonna buy this the momment it has a relase date.
The boy who does his voice work will be so rich. Haha... or very tired, after scripting every possible word combination.
Unless your able to "teach" milo words... in which case A.I. would have to be... Its too hard to think about >
But anyway, it does look cool. But i'm guessing there will be a lot of speed bumps that may stunt the success of this very advanced tech. I see it failing somewhat, but I don't want it to.
This is really cool for sure, but its a little creepy for me, because I'm reading Fahrenheit 451 and it kinda reminds me of the parlor, with the actors and characters being considered "family" and all that.
But that's still very different, this is actually much more nuanced and relaxed and natural looking. Looks promising so long as Milo doesn't go all HAL9000 or GladOS on us.
I don't know; I don't even like talking to the automated voice recognition customer service when I call the telephone company. Of course, this will be more sophisticated, but I'd still prefer not to talk to my console.