Microsoft's controller-free add-on Project Natal may be perfect for virtual painting and hyperactive ball-swatting, but is it responsive enough for something more intense? What does MTV's stopwatch tell us?
The MTV Multiplayer folks performed a little stopwatch-based survey of Project Natal's real-life movement to on-screen movement interpretation capabilities, deeming that the average lag time was about one-tenth of a second.
As MTV's Russ Frushtick points out, that not-so-scientific survey is not out of line with expectations set by the Wii's pre-MotionPlus remote and even high end motion capture cameras. Still, that lag would make Project Natal certainly less useful in twitch-based games (like first-person shooters or fighting games), the kind of genre I'm hoping Natal developers will avoid anyway.
Still, that's one more concern for the pile about motion control's so-called "kinetic dissonance."
Project Natal: Timing The Delay [MTV Multiplayer]