The hardware in Kinect 2.0 looks to be amazing where is the software to show it off?

Mainly for TV, but I've used it with some exercise apps as well (Gillian Michaels is a bitch). It works surprisingly well.
 
You guys mainly using it for TV, games or both?

I use Kinect mainly for voice recognition from every thing like basic dashboard navigation, apps & TV/media in Netflix, Sling TV, Sling TV, Hulu & a few Blurays/DVDs. The Kinect camera gets its most use in Skype. I have only one Kinect game: Dance Central Spotlight for my wife. Though she also has a few Kinect game demos(Fantasia & Zumba).

Maybe project spark could use it so people could do their own motion capturing.

It's already supported for motion capture & voice capturing...

http://news.xbox.com/2013/08/gamescom-project-spark

I haven't built any games yet, but from the videos it looks really simple & cool. Maybe when my daughter is a little older I'll try it out.

Tommy McClain
 
This caught my eye for Unity. It's Kinect motion capture for Unity. The video shows it's not yet accurate/stable enough, but it's still an amazing bit of tech. The idea of having player controlled/captured anims in games is compelling, and there's lots that could be done with this. eg. Create you own combat moves and load them into an arcade fighter, or a puzzler where you have to create a set of moves to solve a level. I think it's mainly used to get canned data in though.
 
MS have recently said they have something in development. No suggestion on number or scope though.

Yep, supposedly...

http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/17/8796721/kinect-unannounced-games-xbox-one-microsoft-windows-10

BTW, in that link they interviewed Shannon Loftis who is now head of publishing at Microsoft Games Studios, was also head of Good Science Studio that was responsible for Kinect Adventures, Kinect Star Wars & Kinect Fun Labs. Before her current position she was General Manager of the now defunct Xbox Entertainment Studios. Wished we got see or hear about those projects, but it looks like only the Quantum Break & Halo projects survived.

This caught my eye for Unity. It's Kinect motion capture for Unity. The video shows it's not yet accurate/stable enough, but it's still an amazing bit of tech. The idea of having player controlled/captured anims in games is compelling, and there's lots that could be done with this. eg. Create you own combat moves and load them into an arcade fighter, or a puzzler where you have to create a set of moves to solve a level. I think it's mainly used to get canned data in though.

Like I said earlier there some basic mocap support using Kinect in Project Spark(even supports facial expressions too). Not sure how it compares with the Unity support, but you can try it out today & it's free.


Tommy McClain
 
Like I said earlier there some basic mocap support using Kinect in Project Spark(even supports facial expressions too). Not sure how it compares with the Unity support, but you can try it out today & it's free.
Pretty impressive clip, but that's only for canned anims, right? You can't use Kinect on arbitrary models and imports?

I feel the greatest travesty is having Kinect on one platform and Dreams on the other. The two are quite possibly ideal partners that'll be forever separated.
 
Pretty impressive clip, but that's only for canned anims, right? You can't use Kinect on arbitrary models and imports?

I feel the greatest travesty is having Kinect on one platform and Dreams on the other. The two are quite possibly ideal partners that'll be forever separated.

In Project Spark you can sort of create new models, but what you're doing is really applying attachments to limbs/joints to change the look, then with kinect its applying your tracking motions to the defined limbs/joints. The end effect is having a new model move but its only to the predefined limbs/joints. But they have a very vast and very wide variety of shapes and sizes of models, like critters (foxes, rabbits, squirrels, cats) but i dont know which limbs/joints those models have defined. At least i have not found how you can create brand new models with arbitrary limbs/joints yet.
 
I presume any Kinect tracking has to be based on a humanoid skeleton. However, in something fully programmable like Unity (depending on openness of API), it should be possible to link skeleton joints to arbitrary actions, allowing direct 'puppeting' of critters.

I suppose I should spend a little while searching for Project Spark creations to see what people are making with Kinect!
 
I'm wracking my brain for a core gaming use in existing franchises other than voice command to command ally units, but so many games don't have you controlling allies, but perhaps that is the wrong way about it. Perhaps Microsoft could create an ad revenue base partner with Youpron and create an Xbox app that utilizes the Kinects bloodflow monitoring and skeletal tracking.
 
Too bad Kinect isn't accurate enough for head tracking. It would be cool to use Kinect in place of the controller's "look" stick.
 
Too bad Kinect isn't accurate enough for head tracking. It would be cool to use Kinect in place of the controller's "look" stick.
People have mentioned this before, and one often mentioned caveat with the looking left or right is it means you have to turn your head to the left or right while uncomfortably looking left or right out of the corner of your eye at the tv screen.
 
Many people (myself included) have been using head/face tracking for years on PC. It's very intuitive and comfortable. You never need to go so far as to look out of the corner of your eye. The rotation on screen is typically exaggerated from your head motion, scaling exponentially the further you turn or move your head from it's normal orientation - so you don't really face or move too far away from your natural position to have a good range of free look. After a few minutes doing it, it feels very natural and you hardly notice it.
 
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I could not find a Sport Rivals thread, not that this post is that specific. So I got my Kinect finally, not sure why, but i like tech.

I DL'ed the Kinect Sports Rivals demo and my two kids play the wave race game. First the Kinect complains it cannot see my daughter's legs.. ok. Then once running it seems completely broken, they could barely make the racer go in the direction they wanted, often it went in random directions. Also it kept interrupting the game and asking them to raise their hands.

Let's just say it was not a great demo of the tech, but they had a lot of fun at the results. Now they want to buy the full game and make a Youtube channel called "Kids play Kinect" and have people watch the LOL worthy results.

I assume the game really runs fine if we take some precautions, right?

I was also disappointed that the Just Dance results were barely better than the PS4 version. It seems to track people a bit better, but it also kept swapping people's colors and IDs, making the coring all wrong. I'll chalk this up to Ubisoft and not the hardware.
 
My kids had the same experience with the original Kinect. Shame really as they loved the idea, but the games wouldn't really run.
 
Try kinect party from double fine. It's hella awesome and just works, including burning your room with virtual lava.
 
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