New Kinect Preview videos at EA & IGN

[OnlookerDelay]

There's now a "Producer Video" about the Kinect up on the XBox Live Game Video Marketplace, featuring Mike DeVault. It's pretty much of a drive-by effort and quite frankly, tells me less about the Kinect functionality than the IGN Kinect version preview (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fJlr5JU01g) that was also published earlier this morning. I hope this isn't the only video we're scheduled to get today... this doesn't answer very many of our questions.

[EDIT]: The XBox Live Marketplace video is the same as the one which is now posted on the EA Sports official Tiger Woods 13 website. http://www.ea.com/tiger-woods/videos...producer-video

The two things that really struck me so far:

1.) There's a considerable amount of lag between the gamer's Kinect swing and the golfer's animation swing.

2.) I guess we're looking at follow cam, but I like the way it came up out of the waist high (which I'm guessing is default as always) view Mike was using, and allowed you to view the putt from a perspective that still had the golfer in view, but showed the roll up to the hole much better.

I'm a bit curious as to why they didn't seize this opportunity to show off the new camera angles that will make the Kinect experience more first-person!? I mean it's the same old,blase waist-high follow cam for full shots... the Kinect needs a more sexy delivery than that!

[stiffarmleft]

Re: New Kinect Preview videos at EA & IGN

Looks good, I'll use my chicken stick as a club, I just hope that on the highest difficulty I can mi**** balls like I do on Tiger Woods 11 on the wii with workability maxed out.

[lnin0]

Re: New Kinect Preview videos at EA & IGN

Giant Bomb has a 25 minute look at the Kinect stuff with Brent Nielsen from EA stopping by.

http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-...ur-13/17-5513/

Near the end Brent sets the difficulty up to tournament and shows how many more points they are calculating your swing from. Looks very cool.

[OnlookerDelay]

Re: New Kinect Preview videos at EA & IGN

During a load screen in the Giant Bomb video that Inin0 linked, one of the Tips screens said the following:

"To manage your team or create a Custom Club Live Tournament, visit the EA Sports Country Club website."

So as I'd suspected, we are going to get to have custom live tournaments using the Online Country Club feature... really cool. What I wasn't expecting was what the second part of that tip said - "visit the EA Sports Country Club website". It sounds like we're going to get to manage and monitor our console tournaments via a website that we'll access with our computers

[huntt26]

Re: New Kinect Preview videos at EA & IGN

Giant Bomb has a 25 minute look at the Kinect stuff with Brent Nielsen from EA stopping by.

http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-...ur-13/17-5513/

Near the end Brent sets the difficulty up to tournament and shows how many more points they are calculating your swing from. Looks very cool.

Thank you for sharing. It looks like after you are on the course, the Kinect works pretty well. The menus seem very wonky though. I'll be using a controller for the menu items then when I'm on the course it will be Kinect time.

I like that if you ever get in a "sticky" situation with menus or club selection, you just swipe your left hand or stand in your golf stance and you're good to go. Consider it an easy cancel button, that was a good idea.

I'm surprised that they are this close to release and he said they don't know what they'll do for you to control spin on Kinect. Unless I heard it wrong. I thought I heard in another video that you would lean to spin the ball.

Overall, I'm pretty impressed and it has a lot of potential. Just some kinks to work out

[lnin0]

Re: New Kinect Preview videos at EA & IGN

I was hoping someone would pause the menu parts and see if there was anything interesting. Online club tournaments with web tracking would be fantastic.

Not overly concerned about lag since it doesn't sound like you have to sync your motion with anything onscreen. The game just captures you motion and translates your swing into the physics equation. If you are playing with the Kinect, the on screen golfer doesn't serve a critical purpose if that is how I understand it.

I know the spin issue was something they were talking about on the EA forums as well. It seems like that you will be able to apply spin to your ball after the fact in the lower difficulties but not the higher. A little concerned that the dev said it was still undecided in that preview because it really needs to be out at the higher difficulties.

Public tournaments will be locked to specific difficulties and whatever comes with them so I hope on tournament level you can't add spin after the shot. Also was hoping you would not be able to zoom in and aim on tournament difficulty but the dev was clearly doing that.

Hopefully the private tournaments will let you configure all the settings to your liking. Customrization similar to Forza would be nice.

[huntt26]

Re: New Kinect Preview videos at EA & IGN

I agree, input lag will not be an issue in this particular game, because it's not timing based (like hitting a baseball for example), it's just going to copy the input that you just did.

[OnlookerDelay]

Re: New Kinect Preview videos at EA & IGN

In the most recent video posted at the official webpage, Tiger Woods is testing the Kinect in Tiburon's studios. Producer Brent Nielsen says to Tiger that there's a delay in the on screen animation, but they're working to tune that down to something closer to a 1:1 relationship. I doubt they'll be able to get there, given we're talking about a USB pipeline that's transmitting the data, but it will probably be better than what we saw in the demo video.

I'm with you guys, even the lag that's there now wouldn't be a game killer for me if I'm playing with a club in my hands. I'm going to be looking down at where the ball would be until looking up during the follow through... by then I should at least see my animated golfer making contact.

[OnlookerDelay]

Re: New Kinect Preview videos at EA & IGN

Check this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmLGD...layer_embedded) out of Tiger testing the Kinect interface at Tiburon. Pay particular attention to Tiger's expression early in the video as he's realizing he's going to have to face the screen and swing 90 degrees out of phase. Does it look to you like he's buying into it? You can hear the producer explaining to him why it has to be this way, but I still get the impression that Tiger would prefer to be addressing the shot as if it's going where his virtual representation is aiming on screen.

I then read a comment at Pastapadre where the reader had been in attendance at 2012 Otronicon Video Game and Simulation Conference, and he saw EA Sports capturing the "side-on" swings of a number of conferees, using some newly released Kinect technology that might be better suited for the task. I wonder if they were doing this in response to Tiger's tepid response to what he was experiencing in that video?

[JimmyPelican]

Re: New Kinect Preview videos at EA & IGN

Just a thought. The way I would play it, I would move the kinect controller to the right side of my tv so I can face the tv like I was playing in real life. I would think this work

[huntt26]

Re: New Kinect Preview videos at EA & IGN

Check this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmLGD...layer_embedded) out of Tiger testing the Kinect interface at Tiburon. Pay particular attention to Tiger's expression early in the video as he's realizing he's going to have to face the screen and swing 90 degrees out of phase. Does it look to you like he's buying into it? You can hear the producer explaining to him why it has to be this way, but I still get the impression that Tiger would prefer to be addressing the shot as if it's going where his virtual representation is aiming on screen.

I then read a comment at Pastapadre where the reader had been in attendance at 2012 Otronicon Video Game and Simulation Conference, and he saw EA Sports capturing the "side-on" swings of a number of conferees, using some newly released Kinect technology that might be better suited for the task. I wonder if they were doing this in response to Tiger's tepid response to what he was experiencing in that video?

haha wow, yeah, Tiger looks annoyed. And the devs were very defensive in their responses too. Wish we could watch the uncut version.

Something nice about Madden and Tiger is they REALLY want EA to do the game right, or not do it at all. I respect that.

[OnlookerDelay]

Re: New Kinect Preview videos at EA & IGN

Just a thought. The way I would play it, I would move the kinect controller to the right side of my tv so I can face the tv like I was playing in real life. I would think this work

Someone suggested that at the official TW forum and I agree... it should work. Of course the hitch there is that you'd have to face the camera to the side to "gesture" to the TV to at least aim your shot and direct your voice commands towards, while looking over your left shoulder to get feedback.

I'm not sure how long it would take to adjust to this? Who knows, it could become second nature after a while. It's one of those things I won't know until I try. Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't a "side-on" option either at launch or later with a patch.

[OnlookerDelay]

Re: New Kinect Preview videos at EA & IGN

haha wow, yeah, Tiger looks annoyed. And the devs were very defensive in their responses too. Wish we could watch the uncut version.

You know in a way it was reassuring to see this. At least it shows that Tiger is really giving them honest feedback, and has his own goals for the game. Up until seeing that, I thought it was mostly just a token visit or two at Tiburon, for a photo op and mo-cap session, and then adios until next year. What I would really like to know is whether the reported "side-on" Kinect capture sessions at Otronicon Conference two weeks ago came about as a result of Tiger's reaction to the "face-on" setup