With the announcement of Microsoft's Project Natal yesterday at E3, Steve Tilly of the London Free Press got a sneak peek and calls it holodeck beta.

Project Natal isn't the first attempt at making a video game accessory that allows players to control the action on the screen with physical movements, but it's a quantum leap ahead of anything that's come before, accurately tracking a player's entire body in 3-D space, with face and voice recognition features to boot. It's the Star Trek holodeck in beta.

A big red orb is hovering in the air at eye level in front of me, so I instinctively wind up and whack it with my fist, like a volleyball player serving a blistering ace.

It rebounds off a brick wall and heads back towards me, and I leap up and headbutt it. Again it ricochets back, this time low and off to the side, so I kick my leg out like Chris Osgood making a corner save, snagging a piece of the ball before it sails by.

Except the ball isn't really there. Neither is the wall. They're just images on a flatscreen TV in front of me, which is connected to an Xbox 360 game console and a mind-blowing new device that could very well change video games as we know them. (source London Free Press)

Read the full article here.