Kinect

[jaxa]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Kinect

http://www.creativea...pensource-news/

http://linux.slashdo...ruit-Bounty-Won

http://tech.slashdot...eady-Coming-Out

 

Microsoft's Kinect is bringing Wii-like functionality and more to the Xbox and with the open source driver out, already to the PC/Linux/Mac as well. It's called "Kinect for Xbox 360" so presumably there will be a Windows-specific release in the future. If it gets cheap and catches on, we could see a lot of PC games make cool use of these functions that have been limited to Wii. Wikipedia article mentions:

 

"During Kinect's development, project team members experimentally adapted numerous games to Kinect-based control schemes to help evaluate usability. Among these game were Beautiful Katamari and Space Invaders Extreme, which were demonstrated at the Tokyo Game Show in September 2009. According to creative director Kudo Tsunoda, adding Kinect-based control to pre-existing games would involve significant code alterations, making it unlikely for Kinect features to be added through software updates."

 

Although now I have this image of shooting arrows in TDM with your hands.

Edited November 15, 2010 by jaxa

[Serpentine]

I think it's a very interesting bit of kit on a technical level, it really opens a lot of doors due to it's multi-sensor approach to things. I think you'll be seeing a lot of quite interesting work done on it, tho only on the extremely high level now multi gesture desktop type hacks seem to be popping up quite quickly. I'm sure it'll also get adapted for 3d scanning of larger objects once they work on lower level access. I think the largest and most likely nicest impact will be that of media center integration, current methods using webcams and such are a bit crap and I think it might make that a bit more rugged.

 

As for games etc, I can't see it taking off on the PC, much like active 3D, it's a non-standard extra with no retroactive benefits in regards to other hardware.

[jaxa]

Well we now have webcams built in to almost all laptops, so if this kind of control mechanism proves popular or even easy to implement, I could see new hardware along these lines getting built into new laptops in place of the webcam.

 

Kinect is a video camera, an apparently high quality microphone array, motion tracking, depth sensing, uses IR. It's also proof that all of these functions can be unified into a single input device effectively. So similar functions could be implemented in place of the webcam in laptops and on some high end desktop/LCD monitors. So a low-quality or minimum standard of enabled motion tracking for these computers could be established, leading to wider (optional) support for motion tracking use in PC gaming. It's a long shot, but it's entirely within the realm of possibility and it would be a better/cooler innovation than all this 3D display crap.

[Serpentine]

And right on time