The XBOX Kinect, Thank god it isn't NATAL anymore Options

[Mr. Mage]

So I've been pretty interested in the xbox kinect and have been following the news of it for quite some time. Controllerless gaming? Just give us a 3d display and we'll have AR in no time!

There are a couple problems I have noted with it though.
1) It doesn't register individual finger movements. As far as I can tell from reviews/articles, the Kinect is not very good at handling individual fingers. Which is interesting considering that the game "Kinectimals" seems to be based off of that. I could be wrong however, and merely gotten this information from a bad article. In the very least, I imagine you will have to stand within a few feet of the camera for it to register your fingers anyhow.

2) No good games. Okay, has anyone seen the launch titles they have for this game? Kinectimals, where you are petting a tiger cub. Some sort of racing game. A Wii SPorts wannabe. WTF?
Now obviously, these are only launch titles so it can be expected that a lot of them suck, but I was honestly hoping for something more suited to the "core" gamers, for lack of a better phrase. Imagine playing a FPS game and instead of using the controller joysticks you actually pantomime holding a shotgun, and you actually have to pump it. That would be awesome.

I'll probably wait until games like that actually arrive before getting the kinect. No use getting a peripheral I won't use.

So how about some feedback? What do you want to see on the Kinect, or don't want to see? Do you even plan on getting one? etc.

[Yerameyahu]

Gamepad for me, kthx. Wii sux, camera versions are even worse. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Mr. Mage]

Gamepad for me, kthx. Wii sux, camera versions are even worse. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Well I guess that answers my "what don't you want to see" question. The answer being "everything" (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

[Yerameyahu]

That's just me though. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Anyone who likes it, more power to them.

[da Loof]

It's an interesting concept, but only if you can get it to wok. Voice activated controls only work in silence, and motion activation only works without peripheral motion. It seems to me that that you'd need to be playing in a jail cell to get it right. Just hope the inmates are fans of Kinectimals.

[Wandering One]

"#13845, why are you not participating in your daily jerks! This is double plus ungood! Let's go!"

There's a level of invasion, and the fact that this thing can log me in automatically via facial recognition is highly... disturbing. Yeaaaahhh... tinfoil hat wearing paranoia or not, that thing's not getting hooked up while I'm internet capable.

[Mr. Mage]

"#13845, why are you not participating in your daily jerks! This is double plus ungood! Let's go!"

There's a level of invasion, and the fact that this thing can log me in automatically via facial recognition is highly... disturbing. Yeaaaahhh... tinfoil hat wearing paranoia or not, that thing's not getting hooked up while I'm internet capable.

Oh...jeez...that is a good point....now the machines will be able to tell us apart...Skynet assassinations are just around the corner...

[Backgammon]

I would seriously have considered starting a company just to make porn games with this thing - think of the potential! Except I'm positive Microsoft would never allow porn games on the console. Oh well.

[Belvidere]

I would seriously have considered starting a company just to make porn games with this thing - think of the potential! Except I'm positive Microsoft would never allow porn games on the console. Oh well.

Just start up a shadowsite the codes and makes ROMs for 360 then can easily be burned onto disks and teach people how to mod their boxes to play cracked and burned games. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)
Charge $30-60$ a game and hell even relay it into some commands for a powered fleshlight or dildo for some of the pricier games. IMO you'd make millions of very illegal dollars.

[Belvidere]

And now back on the thread original train of thought.

1)There aren't too many games I can actually see myself wanting for this, save maybe a realistic and responsive boxing/fighting game.

2)I would love for them to start working on projects for holographic displays. We most definitely have the technology, the trick is just making it cheap enough for mass production.

3)I do find it incredibly creepy that it has facial recognition software and even emotional recognition based on facial patterns. Very cool but still creepy.

Those are my thoughts and I probably have others on the subject, but I've got books to read and games to play. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

[Karoline]

I think VG Cats sums it up fairly well in the last panel.

[Belvidere]

I think VG Cats sums it up fairly well in the last panel.

I almost died laughing at the second frame with the bottle. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

[Xahn Borealis]

I'd like to see it used on the dashboard, the thought of actually interacting with an interface strikes me as pretty cool. It also strikes me as TWENTY YEARS OLD.

[hobgoblin]

heh, sony already tried that on PS2, and have now moved on to a system closer to wii.

[Adarael]

I think one of my absolute favorite things about the reviews of Kinect to date are the comments on forums - notably Kotaku - saying, "Kinect is just a glorified webcam! This is the Sony EyeToy!"

It shouldn't boggle me when geeks post comments illuminating how little they know about the technology they're commenting on, but it does. And it makes me cry, deep down inside.

And yeah, Mr. Mage. Lack of finger tracking makes me cry, but sadly, them's the breaks.

[Kanada Ten]

I'm just not seeing the point. Dancing games, boxing games, drumming games? Pantomiming a shotgun? Maybe some kind of acting game, where it judges your facial expressions or something? Meh.

[Adarael]

Well, like the Wii, it is definitely not for everyone. I actually had a long sit-down-and-think about games that could be made for it, and I think the most promising would be slower-paced adventure games ala Heavy Rain or something, where you would use a mixture of Kinect and controller - just not at the same time.

Personally, I have no desire to game using it, except in limited circumstances. But I'm not everyone.

[tete]

I think one of my absolute favorite things about the reviews of Kinect to date are the comments on forums - notably Kotaku - saying, "Kinect is just a glorified webcam! This is the Sony EyeToy!"

Actually it is just a glorified webcam... Its built on the camera Surfaces uses and has been in development for over 11 years at Microsoft. This is just one use and evolution of the camera and software. The big improvement over the Surfaces project is the software which can now handle skeletal forms as opposed to just when something breaks the light surface. So in english they have eliminated the need for an IR or LED light source perpendicular to the camera to act as a surface. Which is pretty cool. My understanding is it works similar to the camera technology that drives cars, where it can spot moving objects and then avoid them.

[Karoline]

My understanding is it works similar to the camera technology that drives cars, where it can spot moving objects and then avoid them.

My understanding of the camera technology that drives cars is that it is actually radar (or sonar or something similar). It might use cameras as well, but I'd imagine that the data received by sonar/radar would be infinitely easier to work with than the info you get from a camera.

[tete]

There are a couple cars that just use cameras and essentially their own form of facial recognition software only they modified it to drive the car around objects, id have to watch the documentary again to know which ones. IIRC the winners of the great race used radar combined with cameras though.

[hobgoblin]

Well, like the Wii, it is definitely not for everyone.

bad comparison, given that the wiimote can double as a normal controller by holding it a different way (on top of the wii having ports compatible with gamecube, and a snes style classic controller). The main issue with the wii is that the gaming world have been using graphics quality as the "mega-pixels/hertz benchmark" for so long now, that the wii gets a instant dismissal by going for non-HD.

[Kaladhan]

As an Xbox 360 owner, I'm curious as to how the Kinect will play. I'm very sceptic that I'll enjoy the final product, but I'm hoping there's at least a few non casual game on launch day.

How cool would it be to have a shadowrun VR style game where you surf the matrix and combat ices through combat?

[Xahn Borealis]

How cool would it be to have a shadowrun VR style game where you surf the matrix and combat ices through combat?

Don't. Everytime you remind me the Matrix isn't around yet, a little part of me dies.

[Dumori]

I really do't see apoint for it. For me the only thing id use it for would be a sword combat based game. That lack of a phisicay balde component would still fuck over my ability to use it. To be fair untill we get feedback clothing any idea like this is flawed in my eyes.

[Adarael]

Actually it is just a glorified webcam... Its built on the camera Surfaces uses and has been in development for over 11 years at Microsoft. This is just one use and evolution of the camera and software. The big improvement over the Surfaces project is the software which can now handle skeletal forms as opposed to just when something breaks the light surface. So in english they have eliminated the need for an IR or LED light source perpendicular to the camera to act as a surface. Which is pretty cool. My understanding is it works similar to the camera technology that drives cars, where it can spot moving objects and then avoid them.

Given that it's built primarily to do skeletal tracking and not to transmit images or video of a given quality over the internet, no, it isn't a webcam. It can double as a webcam, but that isn't the primary focus of the hardware, any more than the primary focus of a forklift is to do drag racing. It has a related but decidedly different job. Additionally, to say that the Surface and Kinect devices are built on the same technology is very disengenuous - while the Surface sensing technology uses LEDs beneath the screen, and 5 cameras, Kinect uses one IR camera, one IR laser shot through a diffuser for depth mapping purposes, and one CMOS camera to do the job. And, as far as I'm aware, the development was not connected. Parallel, perhaps, but not evolutionary. I.E. Kinect did not come from Surface, but both were developed by MS Research. The software for Surface was developed by LiveLabs, whereas Kinect's software was developed by PrimeSense and Xbox.

Seriously, the thing is not a webcam. It's a skeletal-tracking system *with* a built-in webcam. It's about as similar to the Sony EyeToy as the 3ds is to 3d IMAX movies - totally different technologies that seem similar on the surface.