Kinect 2 - an unstoppable juggernaut?

[Sureshot324]

A bigger problem with motion controls in general is the way games are using it. Generally it works like this. You do a motion, then the game analyzes that motion and decides what action to do, generally have your character do a canned animation. The problem is, your character won't even start the motion until you yourself have completed it and the game has analyzed it. If that's how it's going to work, then just pushing a button is superior and reducing the lag isn't going to change that.

 

[psoomah]

Yep. Both of my viewing areas have huge coffee tables in the way. It's not possible to move in front of the tv without moving them...

Kinect 2 is reported to support sitting players. Easy enough to do with increased spacial resolution and a little additional programming.

Keep in mind Kinect 2 will be natively supported by Xbox 3 instead of being a tacked on afterthought as the Kinect was to the Xbox 360. It will have a massively increased resolution, bandwidth and processing power to make use of that high resolution data and years of additional research and programming to take advantage of the Kinect 2's increased power. And there's still another year to go.

 

[psoomah]

Just my assumption that since every motion detection system so far has been a disappointment the safe money is on the Kinect 2 being no different. I do believe at some point these systems won't suck, though.

Motion detection has some great possibilities. It's not likely to replace controllers entirely, even when perfected, though. Can you imagine playing a game for 2-3 hours and having to talk and/or move around the entire time? Doesn't sound overly relaxing

Change happens. In technology change happens very rapidly and the past definitely does not predict the future.

To give you a window into some the potentials currently being unlocked for Kinect ...

This is for the Windows Kinect, but of course these capabilities would also potentially apply to the Xbox Kinect 2.

This is not a sometime in the future potential, it is a happening now potential.
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Inside the Newest Kinect for Windows SDK—Infrared Control

Kinect for Windows Team
Microsoft Corporation

The Kinect for Windows software development kit (SDK) October release was a pivotal update with a number of key improvements. One important update in this release is how control of infrared (IR) sensing capabilities has been enhanced to create a world of new possibilities for developers.

IR sensing is a core feature of the Kinect sensor, but until this newest release, developers were somewhat restrained in how they could use it. The front of the Kinect for Windows sensor has three openings, each housing a core piece of technology. On the left, there is an IR emitter, which transmits a factory calibrated pattern of dots across the room in which the sensor resides. The middle opening is a color camera. The third is the IR camera, which reads the dot pattern and can help the Kinect for Windows system software sense objects and people along with their skeletal tracking data.

One key improvement in the SDK is the ability to control the IR emitter with a new API, KinectSensor.ForceInfraredEmitterOff. How is this useful? Previously, the sensor's IR emitter was always active when the sensor was active, which can cause depth detection degradation if multiple sensors are observing the same space. The original focus of the SDK had been on single sensor use, but as soon as innovative multi-sensor solutions began emerging, it became a high priority to enable developers to control the IR emitter. “We have been listening closely to the developer community, and expanded IR functionality has been an important request,” notes Adam Smith, Kinect for Windows principal engineering lead. “This opens up a lot of possibilities for Kinect for Windows solutions, and we plan to continue to build on this for future releases.”

Another useful application is expanded night vision with an external IR lamp (wavelength: 827 nanometers). “You can turn off the IR emitter for pure night vision ("clean IR"),” explains Smith, “or you can leave the emitter on as an illumination source and continue to deliver full skeletal tracking. You could even combine these modes into a dual-mode application, toggling between clean IR and skeletal tracking on demand, depending on the situation. This unlocks a wide range of possibilities—from security and monitoring applications to motion detection, including full gesture control in a dark environment.”

Finally, developers can use the latest version of the SDK to pair the IR capabilities of the Kinect for Windows sensor with a higher definition color camera for enhanced green screen capabilities. This will enable them to go beyond the default 640x480 color camera resolution without sacrificing frame rate. “To do this, you calibrate your own color camera with the depth sensor by using a tool like OpenCV, and then use the Kinect sensor in concert with additional external cameras or, indeed, additional Kinect sensors,” notes Smith. “The possibilities here are pretty remarkable: you could build a green screen movie studio with full motion tracking and create software that transforms professional actors—or even, say, visitors to a theme park—into nearly anything that you could imagine."

 

[psoomah]

A bigger problem with motion controls in general is the way games are using it. Generally it works like this. You do a motion, then the game analyzes that motion and decides what action to do, generally have your character do a canned animation. The problem is, your character won't even start the motion until you yourself have completed it and the game has analyzed it. If that's how it's going to work, then just pushing a button is superior and reducing the lag isn't going to change that.

Gaming over the internet, where all the processing is done on a remote server, has largely solved the lag issue, though not at twitch shooter speeds.

You do realize Kinect sensors and processors work at the speed of light and not at the speed of human perception and the human nervous system?

 

[psoomah]

More of the potential of Kinect. As you can see programming for the Kinect is already very advanced and multifaceted and will continue to rapidly advance into the indefinite future.

What will Kinect 2 be capable of after another year of progress?
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Kinect Fusion Coming to Kinect for Windows

Kinect for Windows Team
Microsoft Corporation

5 Nov 2012 9:05 AM

Last week, I had the privilege of giving attendees at the Microsoft event, BUILD 2012, a sneak peek at an unreleased Kinect for Windows tool: Kinect Fusion.

Kinect Fusion was first developed as a research project at the Microsoft Research lab in Cambridge, U.K. As soon as the Kinect for Windows community saw it, they began asking us to include it in our SDK. Now, I’m happy to report that the Kinect for Windows team is, indeed, working on incorporating it and will have it available in a future release.

In this Kinect Fusion demonstration, a 3-D model of a home office is being created by capturing multiple views of the room and the objects on and around the desk. This tool has many practical applications, including 3-D printing, digital design, augmented reality, and gaming. ​

Kinect Fusion reconstructs a 3-D model of an object or environment by combining a continuous stream of data from the Kinect for Windows sensor. It allows you to capture information about the object or environment being scanned that isn’t viewable from any one perspective. This can be accomplished either by moving the sensor around an object or environment or by moving the object being scanned in front of the sensor.

Kinect Fusion takes the incoming depth data from the Kinect for Windows sensor and uses the sequence of frames to build a highly detailed 3-D map of objects or environments. The tool then averages the readings over hundreds or thousands of frames to achieve more detail than would be possible from just one reading. This allows Kinect Fusion to gather and incorporate data not viewable from any single view point. Among other things, it enables 3-D object model reconstruction, 3-D augmented reality, and 3-D measurements. You can imagine the multitude of business scenarios where these would be useful, including 3-D printing, industrial design, body scanning, augmented reality, and gaming.

We look forward to seeing how our developer community and business partners will use the tool.

 

[RedRooster]

It's a nice tech demo, but your root argument of it replacing controllers is what is wrong. Console motion controls, even though it'll be the same hardware, will never be close to what 3rd parties are making it do on computers.
If there was a trustworthy escrow person on this site, I'd put some money on this prediction. But even that is too much work for my lazy ass.

 

[psoomah]

Microsoft is reportedly in talks with the major cable providers, including Comcast. I'm thinking Microsoft can make a pretty compelling case the old cable model is dying and they can provide the best future proof and lucrative solution, which is probably true. Replacing their present set top boxes with an Xbox set top box with Kinect functionality and allowing them to dip their beak into the Microsoft specific revenue stream that generates, including Xbox 3 games downloaded over their network, would be a compelling proposition.

Microsoft would get a toehold in tens of million of new households while providing an unparalleled interface experience and introducing them to Xbox based casual gaming, music and other services. Once they became familiar with the Kinect 2 in casual gaming, it would be far easier to upsell them to the full Xbox 3 gaming experience. As long as the cable companies got their beak wet on that too, what's not to like?

Apple and Google are no doubt working on this too, but hard to see what they can bring to the table Microsoft can't, whereas Microsoft can bring quite a bit to the table Apple and Google cannot.

Another factor is the rapid expansion of Kinect in various business and professional fields. Several businesses, like car companies, are using them to provide a compelling interface with the public to showcase their products.

A quick perusal of Microsoft's Kinect site reveals they are putting massive resources behind this, rapidly advancing the technology and programming tools across several fronts simultaneously.

As the utility of Kinect as a customer interface becomes apparent, and Microsoft provides a wide array of tools and help to customize Kinect for their needs, the use of Kinect by businesses is going to explode. Kinect will become ubiquitous and in a few years people will be interacting with it in one way or another on a daily basis.

It's a natural extension to put that capability into the living room.

The cable companies know their present model has a limited life as people increasingly find the internet, which their phone company's wireless and landline suffice for, provide for all their entertainment needs.

Cable companies are steadily bleeding subscribers. The wired high bandwidth capable infrastructure is already paid for and in place. Going with an Xbox set top box would reverse that trend and provide a compelling reason for people to go back to cable.

Hence the rumors of a free Xbox TV box with a cable subscription.

Kinect really is a juggernaut operating across an array of fronts to provide compelling synergies competing tech companies will be hard pressed to cope with. If these various Microsoft endeavors come to fruition it's not hard to see Xbox/Kinect becoming ubiquitous in households and crowding out Sony and Nintendo.

Be interesting to listen to Gabe Newell give his in depth take on all this.

 

[psoomah]

It's a nice tech demo, but your root argument of it replacing controllers is what is wrong. Console motion controls, even though it'll be the same hardware, will never be close to what 3rd parties are making it do on computers.

If there was a trustworthy escrow person on this site, I'd put some money on this prediction. But even that is too much work for my lazy ass.

You do realize Microsoft is providing the underlying technology and tools the developers are using? That Microsoft is steadily releasing newer versions of the SDK to the public unleashing more potential that Microsoft's internal teams already long had access to and that Microsoft's internal teams have access to capabilities not yet released to developers?

"even though it'll be the same hardware, will never be close to what 3rd parties are making it do on computers" ... ... because? is there some reasoning behind this statement?

 

[RedRooster]

You do realize Microsoft is providing the underlying technology and tools the developers are using? That Microsoft is steadily releasing newer versions of the SDK to the public unleashing more potential that Microsoft's internal teams already long had access to and that Microsoft's internal teams have access to capabilities not yet released to developers?

"even though it'll be the same hardware, will never be close to what 3rd parties are making it do on computers" ... ... because? is there some reasoning behind this statement?

Let me ask you this then. What incentive does Microsoft have to allow Kinect 2 do all these virtual reality dream things, which I admit will be very awesome when we can actually do them in 30 years, when game devs are going to just shovel out Gen 1 Wii garbage allowing us to dance in our underwear? Of course the stuff 3rd parties are doing is cooler, they aren't confined by trying to cram the tech into the limited window of what a game can allow.
There's no chance the big game makers are going to put the effort into making their games fully motion based(not that that would work good anyways), whether its FPS games or adventure games or even sports games. With the exception of voice commands and waving at the screen, there's no magic technology that can see your hands in your lap and determine if you're meaning to swipe your thumb to the left or up(you say it'll have the fidelity to see fingers).
Meh, I'm done. You're just cutting and pasting articles and posts from other forums. This isn't even interesting, and I'm starting to hate Kinect more just from this thread.

 

[psoomah]

Let me ask you this then. What incentive does Microsoft have to allow Kinect 2 do all these virtual reality dream things, which I admit will be very awesome when we can actually do them in 30 years, when game devs are going to just shovel out Gen 1 Wii garbage allowing us to dance in our underwear? Of course the stuff 3rd parties are doing is cooler, they aren't confined by trying to cram the tech into the limited window of what a game can allow.
There's no chance the big game makers are going to put the effort into making their games fully motion based(not that that would work good anyways), whether its FPS games or adventure games or even sports games. With the exception of voice commands and waving at the screen, there's no magic technology that can see your hands in your lap and determine if you're meaning to swipe your thumb to the left or up(you say it'll have the fidelity to see fingers).
Meh, I'm done. You're just cutting and pasting articles and posts from other forums. This isn't even interesting, and I'm starting to hate Kinect more just from this thread.

Thank you for your reply.

This adequately answers my "is there some reasoning behind this statement?"
query.

 

[Sureshot324]

Gaming over the internet, where all the processing is done on a remote server, has largely solved the lag issue, though not at twitch shooter speeds.

You do realize Kinect sensors and processors work at the speed of light and not at the speed of human perception and the human nervous system?

My whole point was that the lag of the Kinect sensor itself isn't the problem. Think of a sword fighting game:

How it should work: You swing your hand, and your character swings his sword at the same time, mirroring your movement.

How it does work in today's games: You swing your hand, and only once you've completed the motion, then your charter swings his sword.

Even if the Kinect sensor had no lag at all, this would still suck. The lag is still the time it takes you to do the motion.

 

[psoomah]

My whole point was that the lag of the Kinect sensor itself isn't the problem. Think of a sword fighting game:

How it should work: You swing your hand, and your character swings his sword at the same time, mirroring your movement.

How it does work in today's games: You swing your hand, and only once you've completed the motion, then your charter swings his sword.

Even if the Kinect sensor had no lag at all, this would still suck. The lag is still the time it takes you to do the motion.

??? ... No lag is no lag. The Kinect 2 will track and process your movement in real time. You swing your arm and the character will swing his arm, mirroring your movement in real time. Rotate your wrist and the characters sword will rotate. Move you wrist up or down, back or forth and your characters sword will wave up and down, back and forth.

Make a slashing movement with your arm while twisting your wrist and your character will slash with it's sword while the sword itself makes a twisting motion. All instantaneously ... in real time.

 

[Sureshot324]

??? ... No lag is no lag. The Kinect 2 will track and process your movement in real time. You swing your arm and the character will swing his arm, mirroring your movement in real time. Rotate your wrist and the characters sword will rotate. Move you wrist up or down, back or forth and your characters sword will wave up and down, back and forth.

Make a slashing movement with your arm while twisting your wrist and your character will slash with it's sword while the sword itself makes a twisting motion. All instantaneously ... in real time.

No. The Kinect 2 will simply send data to the game. It's up to the game programmers how to use that data. How they do that remains to be seen.

Mapping Kinect movements directly to a character in real time and actually making a game play well like that is a very difficult task. The traditional approach of using premade animations is much easier.

 

[psoomah]

No. The Kinect 2 will simply send data to the game. It's up to the game programmers how to use that data. How they do that remains to be seen.

Mapping Kinect movements directly to a character in real time and actually making a game play well like that is a very difficult task. The traditional approach of using premade animations is much easier.

Thanks for the valuable data.