Here's a little tidbit of news that may give the doubtful more faith in how well Microsoft's Project Natal will work once out from the conference and into the living room; Johnny Chung Lee, the man famous for creating his own headtracking device for the Wii, among other modifications to make better use of the system's sensors, has revealed that he is part of the Project Natal team. Here are a few words from the man himself on what he thinks of the project:

Speaking as someone who has been working in interface and sensing technology for nearly 10 years, this is an astonishing combination of hardware and software. The few times I’ve been able to show researchers the underlying components, their jaws drop with amazement... and with good reason.

The 3D sensor itself is a pretty incredible piece of equipment providing detailed 3D information about the environment similar to very expensive laser range finding systems but at a tiny fraction of the cost. Depth cameras provide you with a point cloud of the surface of objects that is fairly insensitive to various lighting conditions allowing you to do things that are simply impossible with a normal camera.

According to his personal blog, he wishes to express that he is but a small part of a very talented team of individuals, but just knowing that he is there makes me feel a little better about Natal. It still seems pretty far-fetched that the system is expected to work as well as shown at Microsoft's conference yesterday, but Johnny Lee's smaller pet projects have blown our minds plenty of times before.

[via cnet]