Xbox Kinect launches, strong holiday sales expected

[Guest]

naah. Kinect is new technology. Not accelerometers. MS has jumped the gun on this one though. I do face detection and gesture recog for a living and there are no 100% solutions out there in academia yet, so MS is just hoping that people will follow their guidelines to set kinect up and not complain too much. That said, MS is trying to use their E3 approach here, 'embrace, engage, exterminate' or something like that. They want to be remembered as the folks who first brought gesture recog to the market and hope that this pays off when the big-bucks apps arrive on the scene for gesture recog. E.g. for enterprise users (imagine not having keyboards) or for business presentations (not having to click through). Still, that's about 10 years away. MS has to wait for a whole new generation to come in before they can expect the new kids to adapt to the new tech. The current generation is still fixated on social networking. Imagine, MS and facebook together, 'schedule an event w/ all your friends to play volleyball in Antarctica (rendered environment) using kinect-enabled web technologies'. DAT's where the money's at me-homies.

 

[ElShotte]

omega00 said:
I'm wondering if the issue with poor facial detection due to darker skin tones could be rectified with better lighting during game play. One solution to this problem would be to attach detection points on a poorly detected persons face and body. However, such a solution would take away from Kinect's fun factor and ease of use. Plus, such a solution would not be accepted favorably in social terms.

Yup I agree, it is most likely due to the fact that there is low lighting in the environment. I like your idea of the detection points, but detection points could perhaps be a bright colored baseball cap, or a hoodie, brighter clothing maybe. Doesn't seem like that big of an issue to resolve if you put your noggin' in it.