The non-standard game interfaces discussion thread (move, voice, vitality, etc.)

[Shifty Geezer]

Unless there are Kinect programs released, I don't agree with you. You're only going to have a few thousand sold, if that, if people are having to write their own code. Now if someone released interface drivers for Media Centre and stuff, then the market would expand. At the moment, pretty much every Kinect sold can be considered a Kinect enabled XB360, with PC sales being a vanishingly small fraction.

 

[Arwin]

Just the work that is being done right now is appealing enough to many already. Some of them are very close to workable applications. There are also definitely a fair share of more serious developers who will get one even if they intend to make a game for 360 eventually, but currently do not have a devkit/relationship with Microsoft. And there are people who want to see what's happening with this early on. It's not that dissimilar to the modding community for PSP and such - many more people do this type of thing than you think, and Kinect is something quite spectacular. Pretty (very) soon I imagine there will be a head-tracking driver for PC using it that allows you to use it the racing games, flight simulator, etc. and it will move on from there.

I know I am a geek, but if I would buy a Kinect now, it would be for the PC rather than the 360 - even though I do actually have a 360, I actually wouldn't be able to use it for Kinect games due to space issues, but some of these PC applications do work with closer ranges.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Unless there are Kinect programs released, I don't agree with you. You're only going to have a few thousand sold, if that, if people are having to write their own code. Now if someone released interface drivers for Media Centre and stuff, then the market would expand. At the moment, pretty much every Kinect sold can be considered a Kinect enabled XB360, with PC sales being a vanishingly small fraction.

Well, there are apparently some Kinect games being developed. Although of the "adult" variety.

Regards,
SB

 

[tuna]

I think free driver Kinect will be about as appealing and popular as otherOS PS3. But that is just my guess.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

May or may not be. But MS has already stated the Kinect will be coming to PC and "other devices." So whether it's open source drivers or MS drivers, it's only a matter of time.

As well, open source is far more compelling on PC than consoles, if for no other reason than the fact it's so accessible. How many PC users install open source video codec's for example? Even to the point where they are included in commercial products or recommended by commercial products. If game or application developer decided to include Kinect controls into their program, then open source drivers for Kinect won't be a barrier. Trying to buy one on the other hand in the next month or so will be far more of a barrier.

Regards,
SB

 

[Shifty Geezer]

May or may not be. But MS has already stated the Kinect will be coming to PC and "other devices." So whether it's open source drivers or MS drivers, it's only a matter of time.

If MS officially support it, I can see maybe hundreds of thousands of sales for media PC type interfacing. If not, I doubt the sales to PC users would make a dent in the total sales. We've no way of measuring this though!

 

[Silent_Buddha]

If MS officially support it, I can see maybe hundreds of thousands of sales for media PC type interfacing. If not, I doubt the sales to PC users would make a dent in the total sales. We've no way of measuring this though!

Speaking of media PC type interfacing, that makes me wonder if either the XBMC or Boxee projects are experimenting with Kinect.

Regards,
SB

 

[egoless]

Delete

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Cool, very rough, and the side to side motion looks glitchy. Nice to see press/push to select worked well, however.

Regards,
SB

 

[patsu]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-12-17-source-ms-quadrupling-kinect-accuracy

Microsoft is working to improve the accuracy of Xbox 360 motion-sensing add-on Kinect so that it could detect finger movement and hand rotation, Eurogamer understands.

Microsoft's Kinect team is said to be working "very hard" on a switching or compression technology that will allow a greater amount of data to pass through Kinect to the Xbox 360 console.

Kinect features are dictated by firmware so that they can be added and upgraded over time.

The depth sensor used by Kinect is also dictated by firmware – it is currently set at a 30 frames per second limit and a 320x240 resolution limit.

At a 640x480 resolution, however, Kinect could begin to detect fingers and hand rotation – an effective quadrupling of its accuracy.

The issue relates to the USB controller interface, Eurogamer was told. It is capable of around 35MB/s, but it only uses around 15/16MB/s.

This artificial limit is in place because multiple USB devices can be used at once on an Xbox 360. But Microsoft is working on a technology to allow greater throughput in this regard, Eurogamer understands.

If Microsoft achieves its goal it could double the spec of Kinect's depth camera with a simple dashboard update.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Sounds like they've been inspired by the homebrew space! They have a couple of options at least. They could allow a depth only mode without sending the video feed. They could filter depth range to extract a certain window and then report that in low resolution requiring less data per sample. That is, rather than returning the whole scene with 16 bit depth accuracy, select only the depth range that the player is standing in and normalise that to a 256 value scale and return 8 bits per pixel. If they have the processing power on Kinect, compression could achieve a lot; 640x480 with lossy compression will still be better than 320x240 without.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Kinect in PC MMO?!

Korean developer GamePrix has told website IncGamers that it intends to utilise Kinect in its PC game, Divine Souls. Though the game is a PC exclusive title, GamePrix claims that it will "resemble console games" due to the inclusion of a Tekken-style combat system and describes it as an "action fighter MMO".

 

[patsu]

http://www.engagedigital.com/2010/12/22/forrester-most-augmented-reality-is-not-true-ar/

Forrester Research has issued a new Mobile Augmented Reality report which argues that most augmented reality apps on smartphones now don’t deliver true augmented reality. Report author and Forrest Research Senior Analyst Thomas Husson argues in an accompanying blog post that true augmented reality technology involves object recognition and computerization happening in the mobile device, including real-time 3D rendering of the objects superimposed over camera’s footage. He says that only a few AR companies like metaio and Total Immersion actually incorporate these features into their products.

Even at that, Hudson says that mobile AR is overhyped. True AR should be ultra-accurate and seamless, a description he says simply doesn’t apply to most mobile apps calling themselves “AR”. Hudson says that there are more opportunities for delivering true AR solutions with Web-based and kiosk-based products, particularly in the field of eCommerce. While mobile AR is currently overhyped, Hudson still says that AR shouldn’t be dismissed by strategists as the technology is likely to become disruptive as it develops.

...

 

[upnorthsox]

I must say, what a total clusterf@ck by Sony with Move this holiday season. How can you expect to sell something if you don't have product on the shelves? How can you even gauge demand? Personally, I can say that money that would've gone to Sony ended up in Nintendo's coffers. Oh well!

 

[whome0]

Laser Harp, Laser Harp2
You need this to create a music instrument.
* Laser projector
* PSEye (or any webcam really) to capture laser dots (on, off, distance) on a wall
* PC computer, with simple Python OpenCV app to read PSEye video stream
* any sound application or midi to play audio

 

[Nesh]

I now own both Kinect and Move and I am pretty satisfied with both.
Where Move falls behind Kinect though is the integration with the console as a total experience.

MS updated the UI and whether you own a kinect or not, you are reminded of its presence in the dashboard itself all the time. Its as if Kinect is a missing piece of the puzzle that you have to acquire, And they expanded the peripheral's uses as well unlike Sony. Thats pretty good marketing too as it tells you all the time what you are missing if you dont own one and how much it excels from competition

Move on the other hand does nothing of importance, unless you play a Move game. There is no real integration with the XMB and the XMB doesnt tell you much about what you are missing once you switch on your PS3 if you dont own one. Also and most of its hardware features sit there unused most of the tune. There is a microphone for a reason. Add some voice recognition in the menus like MS.


Overall as a technology Kinect is far more impressive itself. If a friend tries to use Kinect through my profile Kinect wont recognize his face and will not identify it. When I am on its view it recognizes my face and welcomes me. And of course it does voice recognition, it reads your body blah blah blah bunch of stuff we already know.... The problem is, it needs space. I have a room I use for entertainment and its of normal proportions. I take all the furniture out everytime I want to play. Yet I continue to have space issues here and there when I am playing with a friend.

It needs MORE space than what I imagined when playing with friends and ironically thats the only way to enjoy Kinect so far. And you need lots of space away from the camera and from your friend. It makes me wonder how many people may experience issues even though they have a normally sized room (for your information I got my Kinect from a guy who was selling it cheaply because he didnt have enough room).

Then there was the occasional issue of not tracking me all the time correctly, laggy response at random times etc.

Kinect is the best peripheral I have ever tried out with friends so far. Its fun as hell. But playing alone with it is useless so far.

But it really makes me wonder what kind of experiences can Kinect offer me. other than party and sports games. I cant imagine shoot em ups and in general any game I d want to sit and play alone.

Thats where move comes in handy. I found less response, tracking and accuracy issues with that one, and although it isnt as advanced from a hardware perspective, I find it the most suitable motion controller for single player games that belong to the type of gaming I already play. It kind of brings the hardcore and casual world into one package, although unfortunately it can reproduce the same experience as playing Adventures or Kinect sports with a friend.

Kung Fu Live though came pretty close. Fun as hell but had even more issues with space, and the light was affecting it more. But hell it was fun as hell.

Taking all these into consideration, a solution that incorporates both motion controller and controller free/gesture recognition capabilities will be the most appropriate for the next generation and I hope that Sony takes a hint from MS and starts implementing better their motion control hardware with the total experience

 

[goonergaz]

Well I now own both and agree with some points but disagree with others.

You can control the XMB easily enough with Move - it's intuitive unlike with Kinect which seems to be a bit of a hit/miss mixed bag. For example, last night I was sitting there and my son said "kinect", at that point I remembered it could do voice control so I tried a few things - seemed pretty good however there was an issue signing in. Firstly you can only 'sign in' using gestures (ie I had to stand up and select the user), why there is no audio control for that confuses me. Secondly I couldn't seem to change the 'master' sign-in. My son was signed in - but I couldn't sign in myself. It was 'stuck' on my sons sign-in.

There were also other issues. My son was sitting on the arm of the sofa just moving in a natural way as we were talking and for some reason he was affecting the on-screen selections (even tho I was trying to do things via voice). Other issues I've had are that it's not as accurate as I expected, playing dance central (and not even paying close attention) I noticed my daughter managed to get 'flawless' on a move she didn't really get that close to. It also has other issues with accuracy noticed when I put my hand on my head but the avatar had is hand behind the back of my head, my son scratched his backside and the hand (on screen) appeared to be in front of his avatar. This translates into the games, so when playing adventures you can see it's just not very accurate.

This has been compounded by a couple of 'game breakers' for me, I have had to cold reset around 3/4 times and I also noticed that even if you change user in-game the main sign-in get's all the gamerpoints (to my daughters frustration). This is made even more frustrating as when she played fully signed in it seemed she could not get the points again (for example she earned me the 'break-it-down' points and then seemed unable to earn them in her own game).

So it sounds really negative right? Well, I suppose so, but I have just spent a lot of money on this and I expected a lot better than a bit of an improvement on eyetoy, however I like to end on a positive - and that is Dance Central. Whilst it had some problems I have to say it is a great little game - and is a great example of what can be done...so fingers crossed for future titles. Also without any doubt in my mind - the kids loved it...and I guess that's what it's all about?

Fingers crossed the problems I've had are teething issues and will sort themselves out, I also need to try and borrow a copy of the sports game to try that out!

Does anyone know why Dance Central couldn't be done on eyetoy? I guess it would be harder to setup, but I would have thought it could be possible?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Does anyone know why Dance Central couldn't be done on eyetoy? I guess it would be harder to setup, but I would have thought it could be possible?

Lack of player awareness. EyeToy didn't know that there was a player there, only that parts of the video changed. The moment you stood still you were 'invisible'. As Dance Central is, as I understand it, more a matter of matching a pose in time, it could be done to some degree with background removal. However, background removal is hit and miss, and you have no accurate means to track movements into screen like punches and kicks. I don't think such a title would work particularly well.

 

[goonergaz]

Lack of player awareness. EyeToy didn't know that there was a player there, only that parts of the video changed. The moment you stood still you were 'invisible'. As Dance Central is, as I understand it, more a matter of matching a pose in time, it could be done to some degree with background removal. However, background removal is hit and miss, and you have no accurate means to track movements into screen like punches and kicks. I don't think such a title would work particularly well.

Yeah, I was thinking if Kung-fu live worked then it wouldn't take a lot more to get it to work, but yeah Kinect probably offers that extra bit of fidelity that the game needs.

 

[egoless]

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