iFixit Tears Down Microsoft's Kinect For Xbox 360 280
alphadogg writes "Microsoft's new hands-free Kinect game controller is packed with four microphones, two autofocus cameras and a motion detector chip that together make for one heck of a complex toy, according to iFixit's initial teardown of the device. 'We haven't been this excited to get our hands on new hardware since the iPad,' says Kyle Wiens, CEO of the company. 'The way that we interact with computers is (finally) evolving, and Kinect is unlike any hardware we've ever taken apart. In fact, the only thing we've ever taken apart that has anywhere close to this many sensors is Pleo, the dinosaur robot.' iFixit describes Kinect as 'a horizontal bar of sensors connected to a small, motorized pivoting base.' The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of millions of dollars of research into can be purchased separately from the Xbox 360 or as part of a bundle. A Prime Sense PS1080-A2 is at the heart of Kinect's motion detection capabilities, as it connects to all of Kinect's sensors and processes images of your game room's color and scope before shooting them over to the Xbox. iFixit couldn't immediately identify all of the chips within the box, so plans to update its teardown."
cost cutting (Score:3, Insightful)
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really?
Microsoft can sell these at a loss and make it back with game sales.
kinect version 2 will likely include MORE sensors what with M$ buying Canesta http://canesta.com/ [canesta.com]
who build time-of-flight optical depth sensors...
anyone have specs on microsoft's IR CMOS sensor in this thing?
TFA lists X853750001 / VCA379C7130
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not if adafruit has their way, Lots of these will end up in robots and such. even better if i can get a few below cost. Microsoft has already said that they are "against anyone tampering with their products" Ohh well I sure hope they know better than to sell at a loss...
http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/11/04/the-open-kinect-project-the-ok-prize-get-1000-bounty-for-kinect-for-xbox-360-open-source-drivers/ [adafruit.com]
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The processing of data from Kinect apparently happens on the X360 - I'm not sure how it would give anything better than 1-3 (depending on how much of the functionality you want to recreate in your own software) inexpensive webcams. Unless one cares about looks or quite limited range of tilt...
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Tampering? LOL. I bought it, I own it, it is a physical product. For all I care they deserve a middle finger for even suggesting that what I do with their kinect box would be tampering.
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You seem to be confused. Sony is the mfr. that removes features to lower costs. MS removes your ability to access software-driven features like multiplayer, Facebook, and Netflix unless you pay for a subscription. True, this is a bit like arguing over who's the fattest kid at fat camp, but there it is.
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Both newegg.com and amazon.com are currently sold out. I'd say that's pretty damn good.
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There was a genuine production problem for the wii; whereas Microsoft has kinect supply chain figured out. Still, ubisoft is predicting shortages this season - http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=118957&page=1
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Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter (Score:5, Insightful)
This is no different in principal than the PS3 motion controls. They're both trying to capitalize on the light-gun/motion controller market since that is extinct since the CRT/owned by the Wii.
I am by no means a fanboy of any console, but Microsoft is at least trying to do something much cooler than the 6-axis. I for one would love to see a modern console with proper motion controls (sorry Wii, but you're essentially a Gamecube with a reworked power-glove. Control is great, but CPU/Video performance-wise it isn't even comparable)
Both consoles lack compelling titles since they are expensive add-ons that people won't necessarily buy. It's like the Sega 32x all over again. Addons create console fragmentation and developers won't cater to it since they won't be guaranteed sufficient customers to make a profit.
Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter (Score:5, Insightful)
I also wonder if they've even thought about the logistics. In all the adverts people are using it in massive open plan living spaces, that's just not a realistic representation of most people's homes (especially in countries where housing prices are high and living space has to be maximised, the UK, Japan, other parts of Europe, I can't speak for typical US homes as I only see fictional representations of them on TV and they're all either huge empty white spaces or cluttered messes). Personally the only way I could make this work is to throw away my coffee table - the Wii balance board just about works because the sensor can look over the table at the control and doesn't need to know what I'm doing with my legs, but the Kinect seems to need a massive open space just to get a decent field of view. I think people are going to either be put off by that (if they bother to think about it) or else they'll buy this, realise it's not practical and leave it in the box after the novelty wears off.
Beyond simple games for kids and stuff like video chat, I can't see a practical use for this, and if that's all you're using it for MS could have done it with a £15 webcam instead of a £150 sensor array. That doesn't mean it won't sell by the bucket-load, of course - I couldn't and still can't see a real use for the balance board but it didn't stop it selling millions and me spending the best part of a month hunting one down for my girlfriend the year after it was released.
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Just as an observation, in the live demos they were doing in the Macy's windows in NYC a week or two ago there was only about 3-4 feet of width and roughly 6-7 feet of open space in front of the Kinect. I would say the demoer was roughly about 5' away, and had just enough room to swing her arms. That's a much better representation of a living room than most stage demos, and the Kinect was still picking up all her movements just fine.
Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm one of those that wouldn't mind moving my coffee table to play. After all, I've spent thousands over the years keeping my gaming rig up to date, what is moving some furniture.
The big problems I see is input lag and the processing being done on the Xbox. That leaves less processing for the actual game itself, and the lag issue probably won't get much better until Microsoft releases new specs for the Xbox to handle the kinect.
My other curiosity is can I still play certain titles while sitting on a chair?
I will eventually get a unit. Hopefully a revision or two down the line. Microsoft aminosity aside, this is one of those big leap concepts that even if the initial device doesn't do what it should, it can still revolutionize a stagnant part of the industry. The mouse and keyboard/gamepad hasn't really changed much in years. This could change all that. Even the Wii motion technology is a bit primetive compared to something like this. It's fine for what it does, but doesn't cross over to computing very well. This does. Microsoft smartly put R&D money into this, because now they probably have a ton of patents on the next generation of periphreal.
Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter (Score:5, Interesting)
The camera's aside, the concept/innovation isn't the hardware, but how it recognises a person as an individual. My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I did read a few articles on Project Natal/Kinect, and the major hurdle wasn't the 3D camera, the voice recognition, etc. It was putting it all together to recognise not only movement, but who a person is by many distinct factors, and following that person throughout the experience.
That to me is major innovation alone. I remember the EyeToy, and used one. This is not that. Maybe the EyeToy is a subset of this, as is a bunch of technology. The innovation of the Kinect is putting all this technology together in one package and getting it to work as a unified device.
I'm not totally sold this will be a great device for the Xbox, but this is the first thing I've seen in a long time that has really made me see a real shift in the way we interact with computers. The Wimote and the Sony move systems are really still tying people to a controller. In other words, this is the first device I've seen that really reaches out to the user, not the other way around. Even the EyeToy didn't do that.
I don't mean to sound like a Microsoft shrill in anyway. If Sony did this, or Apple, I would be just as curious, and hopeful. I just think the way they tied the technology together, and the way in which they plan to use it and have it interact is way too cool to dismiss as just another gimmick.
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the Wii balance board just about works because the sensor can look over the table at the control and doesn't need to know what I'm doing with my legs
Umm, what sensor can look over what? The Wii balance board is a 3-component force plate sensor (Fz, Mx, My). As long as you have enough room to stand on it without touching anything else, you're golden. It could be used in a port-a-potty if you didn't mind the smell.
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I am sorry, but it's people like you who totally miss the point of Kinect. You probably bitched about Macs when they first came out because using a mouse would never be as fast as your DOS typing speed.
It is a control-less controller. You don't have to hold any wands, press any buttons or do anything like that. They have finally made it possible. V1 probably isn't perfect, as these things never are. However give it a couple of years, the price/size will get smaller and eventually they will start buildi
Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter (Score:4, Insightful)
I just don't see it living up to that promise. I watch my kids play wii - at first, they were jumping all over the place. Now they lay on the sofa, and "play tennis" by simply waving the controller a few inches.
Until the kinect is smart enough to figure out that *this* finger flick means hit the ball, and *this* finger flick means "shoo fly" and *this* motion means change the menu and *this* motion means I'm reaching for the chips, all while laying on the sofa and moving about 12" at most, it ain't gonna work.
My kids use games to kick back and do nothing; they don't use them as some sort of false athleticism. All the kinect hoo rah has been about how you will jump around your living room; at least in my house when we want to do something we go out and do it. When we want to lay on the sofa and veg, that's what we do. Where does the kinect fit in?
I think this will find uses MS never expected if it stays on the market long enough; pet monitors, some researcher will start using this to measure erosion in a channel, or something - but as a game controller I see a minimal market.
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but how do I trigger things, if I want to? (Score:2, Interesting)
"Not having to press" something is nice, but what if I actually want to fire an action by hardly noticeable movement of the finger? I guess I can't do it with Kinect as it's too subtle a movement to reliably detect.
Why is lack of buttons considered to be a step forward?
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It was never designed for playing "COD Black OPs" was it? Most iPhone games wouldn't work with a joypad either. They will just find some other way of doing things. The trouble with the XBOX fraternity is its so hung up on shooters, in a way the WIii crowd wasn't.
Open source driver news.. (Score:4, Informative)
I can't believe the summary didn't mention the $2000 bounty reward for making an open source driver.
http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/11/04/the-open-kinect-project-the-ok-prize-get-1000-bounty-for-kinect-for-xbox-360-open-source-drivers/ [adafruit.com]
Re:Open source driver news.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Will be rather hard, considering the processing happens on the CPU of X360, apparently. It might be still good (and easy enough), for the price(?), as a "head" for some small robot with stereoscopic cameras and IR illumination, for dark areas, I guess...
Ask iFixit anything (Score:5, Informative)
I started iFixit, and I wrote today's teardown. I'm also a long-time /. member.
I totally dig the anti-Microsoft sentiment. But just like with the iPad, we've got real innovation here that came out of a closed environment. Microsoft's got hundreds of millions of dollars invested in visual motion recognition and speech recognition technology. The best reaction all of us in the open source community can have is to use this innovation as a call to action, and as building a block to write open tools. Adafruit's contest is a fantastic start, and I'll be supporting that any way I can.
Got any questions about the hardware that I didn't address in the teardown? Fire away.
Kyle Wiens
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I don't see any innovation here. Kinect and iPad are both just evolutionary steps. None of the concepts of these devices are in any form new. To have companies with infinite resources make products out of ideas and concepts that have been researched and prototyped for decades by public institutions as well as the private sector is not innovation.
A ourney of a Thousand Miles... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see any innovation here. Kinect and iPad are both just evolutionary steps. None of the concepts of these devices are in any form new. To have companies with infinite resources make products out of ideas and concepts that have been researched and prototyped for decades by public institutions as well as the private sector is not innovation.
String enough evolutions together and you get a revolution. Like the Wiimote, which put Bluetooth-enabled accelerometers and infrared cameras into a small handheld device at a price that anyone can afford, this Kinect camera device has the potential to seriously change how the do-it-yourself community interacts with their computers. Think of all the new applications the open source community came up with for the Wiimote, many of which were featured here on /.; now imagine what they'll be able to come up with for this device.
I can't wait to see what comes around when someone builds usable open drivers for this baby. I don't own a 360, but the prospect of plugging this into my computer or HTPC and getting voice controls, facial recognition, and arbitrary movement recognition for use as input are giving me chills. I mean, just look at what you get for $150 [ifixit.net]: two cameras, an IR projector, four microphones, all mounted on a motorized base with hardware/software that can generate a 3D image in approximately realtime. I can't wait to be able to sign my name in midair to use as my password.
"Computer, open Firefox; website: slashdot.org."
Re:A ourney of a Thousand Miles... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Actually, there are a couple of PhD theses that went into this PrimeSense stuff. They were done in around 2003 to 2007 I think. One of the last Kinect stories featured here on /. was a look back at the product development and it listed the names of some people hinted at their academic works. The people got subsequently hired to work on this stuff. Looking that up will give you a start in researching the science/tech background. The basis is hard science and it has been published. It works not because it do
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I agree with you that plain image processing is bloody hard to get working reliably. Making it work in uncontrolled conditions is additional orders of magnitude harder.
As far as I understand it - not having looked into it too closely - the image data is mostly interpreted based on expected human poses extrapolated from previous frames using a 3D skeleton. That is, it's not just image recognition. There's a (statistical?) model of human movement in there as well and as far as I understand it, the image data
execution is important (Score:2, Interesting)
Linus Torvalds places value in a well executed implementation. Isn't there value in producing a very well implemented product?
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What a bizarre attitude. Who is sitting around with the fantastic ideas waiting for the right time to walk into a market and screw the actual innovators? Who could actually do that without worrying they were going to have their lunch cut by the actual innovators walking into that market a few minutes earlier with perhaps some new innovations you never even heard of what with being a total parasite and all? Seriously you believe that is whats happening?
Or are the vast resources of those you implicitly der
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It's not TOF (for a long it seemed like it might be, but it isn't; emitted IR is there for illumination)
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I was a bit burned by this too; cheap TOF would be great for so many things (robotics for example) - but it isn't. There is no particularly special hardware to be found in the Kinect, it does its stuff by software running on X360 CPU (maybe some software is why ZCam were bought, or maybe to...eliminate competitor? MS wasn't ever above such tricks)
And how would you recognize TIF camera on a teardown anyway? (nvm how it would have 2 of them for some reason, curiously arranged in a classic stereoscopic way)
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Any idea what Microsoft's parts/manufacturing costs would be for the kinect?
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Ow man... you should go to Reddit instead.
It is really boring to see how in slashdot the only comments and snarky questions you will see will be to criticize the technology.
Re:Ask iFixit anything (Score:5, Informative)
the difference between a tear down and a review is a tear down normally involves getting out tools and dissembling the product while a review is just talking about the product.
MS Had To Cap Pre-Orders Due To Demand (Score:2, Interesting)
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Not a single mention of the number of pre-orders, so it's a worthless piece of information ("Both units pre-ordered" becomes "ALL OUR PREORDERS SOLD OUT AND STILL PEOPLE ASK FOR MORE!").
Also, there hasn't been a product in the video games industry in the last 20 years that didn't "sell out" at launch. It's completely arbitrary. It all depends on how many you produce and/or how many you decide to "let" people pre-order, nothing else. They estimate they'll sell 3 million - is that good or bad? I have no i
Poor engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd hate to have been an engineer working on this thing. Putting all your heart and soul into the R&D trying to make something novel, interesting and cutting-edge, and all you get in response is hate.
Not that I'm defending the product or Microsoft. Theory is nice but if the physical product sucks then it sucks, but it's kinda obvious why companies are afraid to try something different.
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You don't have to defend or defame the product until you have tried it.
I'm waiting for a billion reviews to see if it's something worth acquiring. My main problem with the kinect is the use videos are all microsoft released and they have a lousy track record for being honest about their products. Point in case was the virtual friend for xbox 360/kinect demo. Completely scripted and a total wash, but it was later defended as a "what if" video and not a technology demo.
While they never solicited public feedba
Re:Poor engineers (Score:4, Insightful)
They can continuously improve the firmware to make it quite a usable product. This stuff takes many iterations, and the more units out there, the more feedback you get.
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I'd hate to have been an engineer working on this thing. Putting all your heart and soul into the R&D trying to make something novel, interesting and cutting-edge, and all you get in response is hate.
I know what you mean -- senior management makes me miserable too.
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Uhm, no. The Kinect has a 3D depth camera built-in, while the EyeToy is only using a 2D image with background elimination. That's a huge difference.
3d webcam (Score:3, Insightful)
If Microsoft whips out the ability to use this as a 3D webcam with my PC, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. Screw the 360, I want this for my computer.
It may suck as a game controller, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
...this is actually opening up some interesting potential. This thing is a tool to recognize and track persons and their movements in a room, no more and no less. Have some of such things in your home, one in each room, connected to a small server. Improve the voice recognition and speech synthesis, add some software and you've got something very close to a home that is watching you, your family and your guests, knows where you are, what you're doing, what you're saying and can speak to you. Give the software access to all your personal communication and data (email, phone, voicebox, scheduling, ...) and your house starts to become aware of you and your life. Could be very interesting (and also very spooky).
Open Source drivers for these things would open up a world of interesting things to do with it, no doubt.
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Disconnected from the power it becomes a very useless eavesdropping device.
Apart from mobile phones though I would thing any webcam would be better. Many households already have them (pretty much all lalptops/netbooks/notebooks/ipads) and provided you have access to the system you can record any and all conversation and video and have it delivered to a web location of your choosing.
The Kinect lags to much (Score:3, Interesting)
Tried one yesterday and i was very disappointed. My Eye-Toy, the Sony product Microsoft copied and extended is eight years old and still more responsive. The lag was very annoying and made games like boxing unbearable since you punch and your boxer punches long after on the screen.
Since i have used Eye-Toy extensively i was expecting that the Kinect would be much better but it was actually worse in some respects. The tech behind kinect/Eye-Toy has been used extensively in arcades etc so its actually pretty surprising Microsoft couldnt get it right. Perhaps they had to work themselves around some patents of variants that actually work and in the process ended up with an inferior product.
CMOS and 3d (Score:2)
I have a very basic understanding of how the system works. IR beam gets sent out and the CMOS sensor picks up the pattern and interprets the z axis information.
I would imagine that there are inherent problems with this. If the pattern is too spaced out then resolution suffers. If the pattern is too close together then there are many errors. The processing must be complicated. I bet even the type of clothing you're wearing has an effect on it.
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There's lots of articles that talk about it in detail.
The resolution of the grid is a key factor in how positionally accurate the 3-D skeletal model ends up being -- which is why it can't see what your fingers are doing, but can position you pretty accurately.
The same technique in two years when processing power is 4x will allow the hardware to be revved with even more resolution.
You need to keep in mind this is a device sold for a profit at $150 retail that has a webcam, a depth camera, a matrix microphone
I played with Kinect at Teched last month (Score:2)
It's helluva fun when you get the hang of it!
So what about PC? (Score:2)
What about Microsoft's PC gaming revival initiative? Is it dead already?
It would be actually quite interesting to see Kinect used with PC. Could result in many cool projects outside gaming.
Only to be used indoors (Score:2)
Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it does "something" reliably (which might well beat a more ambitious but failed attempt). But compare Dance Dance Revolution style games on the two; with Kinect, you dance and it watches you dance and scores you; on the wii, you just tilt your hand in time with the music. Big difference.
Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of (Score:4, Funny)
Wait, you're on /. and you think dancing is different from tilting your hand in time with the music?
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Well, it does "something" reliably (which might well beat a more ambitious but failed attempt). But compare Dance Dance Revolution style games on the two; with Kinect, you dance and it watches you dance and scores you; on the wii, you just tilt your hand in time with the music. Big difference.
The amazing thing is that Just Dance on the Wii was a suprise 3rd party succes selling 2 million worldwide (http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/108/1081134p1.html) despite low reviewscores. So even with the low tech measuring tilt scoring mechanism they managed to make a good selling profitable game.
Now we can make a Kinect Dance Dance Revolution game for X-Box that has more accurate scoring but wil it realy matter. Its a game not a dance tutoring game. The main object of the game is to make you do stupid moves
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If you say "as sucky as a Wii" you're already putting yourself into a category of people whose opinions do not reflect any sort of consensus.
I guarantee the criticism won't go away until you stop randomly bringing up international politics in random discussions, making irrelevant comparisons, calling clear and verifiable statements of fact "a lie", and tossing around opinions you know are widely disagreed with (that the Wii sucks) as if they proved your point. I'm sure you're better at my language than I a
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What?
Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of (Score:4, Funny)
What?
Homosaywhat?
What. You happy now?
Shame I'm not using my Mac.
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I don't mean to make fun of you for speaking a foreign language, but this wasn't just some grammar error. It's hard to tell whether you just didn't understand the comment about hundreds of millions of dollars or are just retarded.
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Your original post makes no sense at all, bro. I can barely discern the meaning of 90% of it.
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New Grammar Nazi features please? (Score:2)
"I speak it perfect" is grammaticality incorrect.
Slashdot coders needs to augment the available HTML markup to include sentence diagramming features.
There truly is nothing like tacking an adjective onto a verb in a troll-induced defense! It clearly shows an individual's ability to write professional.
...ly.
Re:Worst Console Add-on Ever (Score:5, Interesting)
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And the Wright brothers couldn't fly around the world in their first plane either.
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Neither did they advertise and sell it on a mass scale to rip off mug punters.
We can assume the first kinect prototypes were far worse but it still does not excuse releasing a buggy V*.* product to the public because they felt with sufficient advertising and blame it on the consumers clumsy use they would be able to generate a profit and take some steam out of the Wii and the Playstation, sort of a parallel advertising superiority of technology thing, even when most customers will not buy Kinect.
Reason
Joystiq - Kinect Is Absurdly Broken (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/11/04/kinect-vs-our-living-rooms-a-survey/ [joystiq.com]?
"For all the talk of revolutionizing the Xbox 360 experience and making gaming more natural/ accessible, it's bordering on absurd how broken Kinect is when it comes to something as simple as working in your home."
Jeez, that's brutal.
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Re:Worst Console Add-on Ever (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd recommend trying it before you bash it. I've tried it on several occasions in the past (and now own it) and it's accuracy/lag do not feel significantly worse than the wii. I've seen zero problems with lighting, clothing, etc. The voice recognition is actually quite excellent and it even works reasonably well while a video is playing.
The required distance from the device is annoying though. The menu system as well, but thats a software problem and can be fixed. Check out the dance game for a great example of an intuitive menu.
Even if it fails as a gaming device (which I doubt), I still see the ability to control your entertainment system without a remote as being common place in the future. For example, I was watching a movie on my xbox while I was reading slashdot. When I wanted to concentrate on replying to a post, I just said "xbox pause" without my fingers every leaving my computer. In fact, I hope the kinect is a finanicial success, because that will inspire competitors to emulate and improve the experience, which means even more awesome stuff for consumers.
xbox play...
the OP is spot on for lag (Score:5, Informative)
Highs:
* Just plain fun
* Limitless potential, could move beyond gaming.
* New, innovative technology will only get better.
Lows:
* $150 price on top of Xbox 360 console
* Half-second of inherent lag
* Fairly basic games
* Only handles two players at a time
german summry [gamecaptain.de]
Approximative transaltion in english :
The setup is a problem too. So kinect needs really much place and has problem with light. One tester from joystiq was not
recognized due to his glasses, because it was reflecting too much light.
Whoever want to paly to 2 needs 3 meter of free palce from TV (9 foot aprox) which needs a lot of moving furniture by many.
Which means also that the dashboard features like move command cannot be used when one want to do only a to watch a film, not to play.
Also the price is critized.
IGN video review linked ina rticle [youtube.com]
Mixed reviews for kinect [i4u.com]
My verdict from what i all read : the lag will probably limit it to games where it is not too important (casual family game, or game where a 1/3 to 1/5 second lag has no impact). Tech looks good and could be a revolution, but at the moment too expensive. Wait and see for Kinect 1.2 with a good offering of games.
"xbox pause" (Score:2)
I remember saying "calculator!" to Windows 95 using a free microphone and the built-in calculator would pop up.
15 years later and people are impressed by this...impressed enough to spend $150 on it?
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What's not be impressed with? [youtube.com]
Re:Worst Console Add-on Ever (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Worst Console Add-on Ever (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah the guy is a troll, look at his post history. He made a similarly stupid post last time Kinect was discussed. Criticism of Kinect is fair enough but some of the points he made don't even make sense- complaints about lighting etc. when it works using IR. Still he gets modded up because he's slagging off Microsoft and that gives your average Slashdotter a hardon no matter how factually incorrect it is.
That's not to say all his points are invalid, the distance thing is a bit of a pain certainly (although the Wii and Move struggle at very short distances too) but for the most part he's just trolling.
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The first quite can be (per wording from second...) a diplomatic way of not mentioning how much worse it is from 'hands on'...
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My only complaint as a non-kinect user is the update introduces significant lag in the menu system.
It's not horrible, but it's not nearly as smooth as it was.
There was no gain for non-kinect users as well... unless you like the windows 3.1 menu look and feel.
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I've not seen any issues with lag in the menu system or anything like that, but I agree the new design is horrible, but then, I never liked it since the original 360 dashboard personally.
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Seriously! They finally got it right with the last UI update, and then they went and screwed it up again. Change for the sake of Change is not good. There must be a purpose!
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Good, then go away. Meanwhile the rest of us sane people who aren't fighting a religious war over software companies will continue to enjoy our games.
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The first example I can remember was back in the dial-up days when they would upload the installed software list and send targeted advertising to the users of WordPerfect, WordStar, Borland Compilers, Quicken, ... to offer discounts on the MS more-or-less equivalent.
Since then they have regularly captured similar data, and around Windows 2000 SP3 or SP4 (SP2 doesn't have it; SP4 does) added explicit language to the EULA granting them access to all data on a Windows system.
Nice to know they can scan your liv
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"Nice to know they can scan your living room for market research purposes "
Google would put the images of your living room in Street View.
It might bring in more gamers (Score:5, Interesting)
like how the ease of use of the Wii did (well once they fixed that damned controller). The difference is, with the Wii you can "game" it. As in, half the time the motions you make with the controller really don't have any bearing on what your avatar is doing. What I have see of kinect is that we finally have a system which does what you physically do. None of the "interpretation" like the Wii controller .
It will probably open up gaming to more people now. I can see great uses in exercise programs here, your own personal trainer who really does know if your doing it right. Think of the ability to extend this to at home rehabilitation! That alone makes this device a break through.
Many of us keep lamenting all those wonder sci fi depictions of what computer technology can do and when its delivered some simply dismiss it because its from Microsoft.
It is a good start. Perhaps it will give other people the inspiration to help us make a real leap.
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It will probably open up gaming to more people now. I can see great uses in exercise programs here, your own personal trainer who really does know if your doing it right. Think of the ability to extend this to at home rehabilitation! That alone makes this device a break through.
If our society wasn't so litigious, I could see that. But the first time someone gets a little sore, they will hit the Kinect Personal Trainer software author with a multi-million dollar lawsuit.
Too bad; I think you really have a great idea there. If the kinect is accurate enough, I can see a lot of physical trainer applications here.
I'm trying to get set up for a shooting match; minor variations in position can lead to large errors which result in you being off target. A miss is being off 1" at 25 yards
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Or too many people might hate it precisely because "gaming" it is not possible - otherwise, maybe, by now, they would go out, exercise, et al already?
Though who knows, perhaps online system of achievements will result in some big gains in regards to population health... (the important remaining question would be how to trick people similarly with Farmville-like stuff & urban gardening / urban village)
Re:Failure in the making (Score:4, Insightful)
No "actual gamer" is going to buy this device. Most that might have been inclined have probably already been burned by the Playstation Eye(Toy). The Kinect has already been and will be lambasted by the traditional gaming community.
But as the Wii proved, "actual gamers" don't actually matter. This device is being marketed to just about everyone else, and will likely sell as to parents and the like as a supposed mini-console to a younger gamer. At least for this Christmas; I fully expect shops to be flooded with second hand Kinects come February.
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If you think it's annoying to get up and load a disc in a console and then wait for it to start, just imagine how annoying it would be to rearrange your room before starting a game. That's assuming your room can be arranged. Anyone wishing to use it in an apartment, flat, council house, bedroom, basement, or basically any room which does not provide 2 meters of clear space in front of the device is screwed. Perhaps we'll see a blip in the housing
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How nicely racist of you.
Haven't you heard? Some people say the Kinect is racist. [gamespot.com]