Just stumbled upon a good representation of the current opinion on Neural Nets for games. The comment is by Alex Champandard of AiGamedev.com whom I rate highly for his oppinion. The quote’s the answer to a student researcher asking about NN+GA approaches to gameAI:

“I don’t think you’ll get very far with this approach. There’s been little or no innovation in this area since the 90s almost, due to the approach.

There aren’t any particular game engines that focus on NN+GA (because they have few benefits in practice when combined”

from http://forums.aigamedev.com/showthread.php?t=2698&highlight=student

This combines from another recent comment in the forum regarding the use of procedurally generated animation (like Natural Motion) versus Motion Capture, again by Alex:

“I’d argue that a realistic AND flexible animation solution would be based more on mo-cap than simulation. You just can’t get the subtle nuances in motion otherwise.”

from http://forums.aigamedev.com/showthread.php?t=359&highlight=student

I am particularly interested in this opinion as it directly contradicts my approach 🙂