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Exciting Kinect Stuff Already Coming Out
Just last week we learned that the Kinect had been hacked wide open and already we're seeing a flood of innovative stuff coming out. Jamie found a page with a lot of pictures and screenshots, and Engadget has more.
I can think of a lot of great uses for this technology.... I hope these hardware hackers keep it up
this is cool and what's going to happen is M$ is going to take the code and use it to add new features to Kinect in future releases. just like apple does with iphone jailbreak code and JB'd features
The amusing and quite cleverly done telescreen kinect as an advertising tool jokes I read here on slashdot were quite fun to see!
But.....I was very bemused to see this today, reported elsewhere:
"Microsoft's Dennis Durkin voiced an interesting idea at an investment summit last week -- the idea that the company's Kinect camera might pass data to advertisers about the way you look, play and speak. "We can cater what content gets presented to you based on who you are," he told investors, suggesting that the Kinect offered business opportunities that weren't possible "in a controller-based world."
And over time that will help us be more targeted about what content choices we present, what advertising we present, how we get better feedback. And data about how many people are in a room when an advertisement is shown, how many people are in a room when a game is being played, how are those people engaged with the game? How are they engaged with a sporting event? Are they standing up? Are they excited? Are they wearing Seahawks jerseys?
http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/15/microsoft-exec-caught-in-privacy-snafu-says-kinect-might-tailor/
yay?
"Microsoft's Dennis Durkin voiced an interesting idea at an investment summit last week -- the idea that the company's Kinect camera might pass data to advertisers about the way you look, play and speak. "We can cater what content gets presented to you based on who you are," he told investors,
Microsoft adds support for racial profiling!
After seeing things like this: http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/11/14/hacked-kinect-is-now-a-3d-video-capture-tool/
I start to wonder if microsoft did/does have greater plans for this product later on in the future.... but now theyve had someone beat them to the punch.
My mind isnt well suited to imagining the types of uses this might be good for but after seeing the kinds of things people are doing with it already I have a hard time imagining microsoft didnt have some similar ideas.. and thought profiting off of them might be good.
Actually, yeah, it was hacked. It was supposed to be protected from use like this, but someone figured out the protocol/handshake needed to start it up. They hacked it.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
They are a business. Their goal is to make money, not release cool things for hackers. What makes you think they don't have ideas for the kinect technology?
did you forget to take your meds?
Depends on the meaning of 'hack'. This does apply to the general meaning. I actually think this is better than any firmware changes. Legally, all people have done is reverse-engineered a software driver. MS may threaten all they want with all sorts of nonsense like the DMCA, but these hackers are covered legally. Any modifications might have gotten into some more grey areas.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I am sure it will be coming out, but the coolest thing to do would be to make immersible sports games where your body controls the motions of the player and you get a workout in return.
Baseball would probably be the easiest to start with.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
So we have depth data, and webcam imagery of the same place. Where to go now? That's the problem - the field of image processing isn't actually that well developed that we can do things really useful with it. Sure, the hand-waving paint demonstration is cool but you could do that with a webcam ten years ago if you had the right algorithms. The Kinect only adds the depth-map through some (admittedly clever) physics but that just adds a third dimension that needs to be analysed, filtered, recognised and interpreted.
Yes, we can spot if someone has one hand or two in the air but we always could. We can follow a particular point of interest with some vague accuracy (watch where the bloke's hands go in that green-line-painting demo and what the software draws - they are often out by the whole width of a hand, and lag behind his actual movements) but we always could. We can colourise the images and make them look cool (black for near, pink for a bit away, green for a long way away) but again, that's always been available just with slightly different technology.
The problem we have is that hardware access and access to raw camera data is INCREDIBLY easy compared to actually doing anything useful with them. The green-line-drawing problem is no different to the 200-line VB app I saw in the 1990's that could do handwriting recognition from a shaky pen/mouse stroke - it works, mostly, if you don't need complete accuracy but it's still easily confused and why would you need to do that in the first place? The hard part is now actually interpreting that data and that relies on computer visualisation which is regarded in the same breath as "voice recognition" (which I have *never* got to work well enough for me and I don't have a particularly strong / incomprehensible accent). Yes, you can do a demo that you think looks useful but actually, apart from the odd toy project, there's not much substance underneath it all.
Yeah, you probably can write a quick Wii-Sports-a-like that's fun to play but you probably always could. And the difference is several dozen thousand lines of code to vaguely recognise a particular, fixed, object with limited parameters using what is essentially a webcam image with a little more data (involving processing several 640x480 and one 320x240 image in fractions of a second to obtain a particular data point), or just reading some single-axis acceleration data from a chip that spits it out (e.g. Wiimote) in a format you can use directly and provides roughly the same, if not better, accuracy when it comes to interpreting the correct movement.
The Kinect isn't anything special or revolutionary - sure, it's a nice toy and the depth-function is the best part, but that just adds a whole other dimension (actually a whole other 2D set of data because it obviously can do true 3D) to analyse and try to interpret - you coulda got that with a rapidly scanning laser or even just analysing two stereoscopic images properly. Certain filters and image-processing techniques can form edges, boundaries, object-approximations etc. from the resulting data but they always could and overall you still have to solve the vital problem - what to do with the existing data that you can't already do somehow? Follow hands for cool interactive-whiteboard-like presentations? I saw a multi-touch table at the Museum of London yesterday that did exactly that from a projected image and a single returned 2D webcam image. Follow some object to play pseudo-games? We've been doing that for decades but admittedly required things like reflective spots - Hollywood makes ENORMOUS such of such things, so they might be interested but chances are that this particular toy is way under-performing compared to something their technical guys could knock up in a real studio.
It's a good thing for independent toy-like games but look at the target market - someone who owns a Kinect and a PC (and presumably a 360, but not necessarily), knows it can be plugged into PC, has a knowledge of such independent projects and decide
they produced the hardware, locked it to a platform, and then threatened to sue anyone who used it without a pre-existing agreement with them.
Who, specifically, did they threaten to sue?
Exactly. I'm starting to dislike this narrative that has developed here, namely that MS doesn't know what it has and that they're going out of their way to stop people from hacking it.
1. I'm sure the researchers at MS know exactly what they have and that a lot of what you're seeing now has been in their labs for ages. Its just that MS isn't in the 3D video space and aren't trying to sell 3D video software for movie production or whatever.
2. From what I've read from the guy who built the first drivers, there isn't any crypto or other tricks to stop PCs from communicating with the Kinect. Its just a plain jane USB device.
3. At the end of the day the interesting parts of the Kinect are its software. If you wanted a stereo camera or something that could do 3D depth, there are items like this in the 3D space that do a hell of a lot more than VGA resolution.
4. MS is monetizing this technology again in Win8. Gestures are built into the OS, etc. Its not like Kinect doesn't have a future on the PC platform as a commercial device.
Oh well, back to your regularly scheduled "ZOMG MS IS EVIL!!" 2 minutes hate.
This could have really gone crazy if they'd just released a little driver and maybe an SDK and let PC developers go crazy with it. They could even have charged more for the 'PC version' of it, just like they did with the XBox 360 controller, even though the only different was the CD that came with it.
MS could have done that but they have a vested interest in tying the Kinect to the Xbox like exclusive titles. Keeping the Kinect on Xbox only would guarantee that a large number of games would only be for the Xbox. For example, the game Dance Central can now be ported to PS3, Wii, PC, OS X, etc. If the Kinect was tied to Xbox, anyone wanting to play would have to own or buy an Xbox. They would have to buy the Xbox only title. Remember MS makes a little profit on each Kinect. They would make a lot more on game licensing. Now someone wanting to play the game can play on platform of their own choice and MS would not get any licensing revenue.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I can't wait until a stable, generic driver comes out for it that sees gestures! I'll use it to control my tv in place of the wii-mote. :)
check out the Mp3 Garbler I built!
I'd like to point out the fact that they called the product "Kinect for Xbox 360" means its highly likely they are planning on releasing a "Kinect for Windows" at some point. Along with support for the kinect being used as a multitouch input driver for Windows (7/8). But its nice we are getting a head start.
Um, how about the fact that Microsoft came out with the Kinect in the first place? Isn't that pretty innovative? We wouldn't have a headline that reads "Exciting Kinect Stuff Already Coming Out" if not for a previous headline that read "Microsoft Releases Exciting New Input Device That They Spent R&D Money On For The Last Couple Years".
Sorry, but just because MS didn't fully develop and support everything someone in a dorm room can think of at the launch of their brand new hardware product doesn't mean they lack vision or innovation or whatever. Anything they release has to be supported in SDKs, APIs, be tested, etc., and that costs money and time. It's great that people are hacking it and coming up with new things to do with it, and I don't know why they tried to lock it down, but it's not locked down anymore, so who gives a crap?
Because they would have made MORE money.
This is the problem, they are running with blinders on.
Sell product X to Y users that have our Product Y... or sell product X to EVERYONE on the planet.
Selling to everyone is ALWAYS more profitable than locking it down. Only mentally retarded Low IQ Business degree holders and IP lawyers think the first is the most profitable.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
For many who loath the idea of targeted ads I would assume many, if not most of those people are single. As a married old fart I can attest that A little intelligent ad targeting is nice. I for one get tired of feminine product advertisements because the wife uses my computer occasionally for shopping. Please, feel free to use the Kinect to determine if I am in fact: Male, Fat or Skinny, cheerful or pissed off. Because:
A: If I am male, I don't need tampon ads
B: If I am fat, don't advertise Big Macs, advertise weight loss because last I checked, fatties know where BK and McDs are. And no it's not your genetics, it's because you are irresponsible with your health. A predisposition just means you have to work harder. Thermodynamics proves this; your lack of responsibility, low self esteem, and discipline does not change the laws of physics.
C: If I am in a good mood try selling me a Beach Boy's collection. If I am pissed off Rammstien might be a better choice.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Cos like voice recognition, it has little use on the desktop. Still, it's USB isn't, so it will make its way to the PC eventually?
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
Exactly. I'm starting to dislike this narrative that has developed here, namely that MS doesn't know what it has and that they're going out of their way to stop people from hacking it.
But that certainly does appear to be the case, even though the Kinnect is sold with a healthy margin -- I recall seeing a hardware breakdown that suggested a build cost of around $55 to $60.
1. [...] Its just that MS isn't in the 3D video space and aren't trying to sell 3D video software for movie production or whatever.
A bit odd, considering Apple has been so successful at it. Microsoft's MO has always been to copy others' successes, particularly Apple's. Maybe they've just failed at this more spectacularly than they've failed at their other attempts to copy. (Hows that 'Plays For Sure' thing working out?)
Which is to say that despite years of effort and tens of billions in R&D, they're no more than marginal players in most of the 'spaces' they try to enter. It's all OSs, office suites, and business backends, and the clock is ticking in each of these areas.
I'll give you game consoles, although it will take several more generations of Xbox before the billions in development are paid off. Anyone other than MS, however, would have considered the Xbox project a failure years ago.
2. From what I've read from the guy who built the first drivers, there isn't any crypto or other tricks to stop PCs from communicating with the Kinect. Its just a plain jane USB device.
They're not interested in you buying their hardware without their software any more than you buying a white-box PC without a Windows license. I'm not sure their tactics from the '90s will work again.
3. At the end of the day the interesting parts of the Kinect are its software. If you wanted a stereo camera or something that could do 3D depth, there are items like this in the 3D space that do a hell of a lot more than VGA resolution.
Sure, but not in an off-the-shelf package that costs $200.
4. MS is monetizing this technology again in Win8. Gestures are built into the OS, etc. Its not like Kinect doesn't have a future on the PC platform as a commercial device.
Hee hee. I'll never get tired of Microsoft shills harping on the supposedly great stuff we'll see in the next edition of whatever. I don't know of any company ever that has so consistently over-promised and under-delivered -- and that behavior goes back to MS-DOS 1.0.
Remember how Longhorn was going to, like, totally change everything? Remember how WinFS was going to be revolutionary? Heck, remember how in the early '90s we were all going to be controlling our computers with voice commands?
It's coming in the next version of Windows, and it'll be, like, the most totally mind-blowing thing you've ever seen! Really soon now! Promise!
You should be happy with how many people hate Microsoft. Nobody will hate them when they are no longer relevant, and I don't reckon that's more than about five to ten years away.
How long it will be till TVs come with Kinects built in, and can't be turned off. It would be an advertiser's wetdream, and then the DHS could use it to monitor those who might be a "threat to national Security" (everyone).
_ _
Selling to everyone is ALWAYS more profitable than locking it down. Only mentally retarded Low IQ Business degree holders and IP lawyers think the first is the most profitable.
Accountant: We're losing money on every unit we sell.
PHB: That's okay, we'll make up for it in volume.
"Remember how Longhorn was going to, like, totally change everything? Remember how WinFS was going to be revolutionary? Heck, remember how in the early '90s we were all going to be controlling our computers with voice commands?"
I think it's amazing how you completely failed to mention that iPod-killer, the Microsoft Zune...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
A few years ago, work did an AD conversion companywide. They hired a MS guy to go to each site, work with IT on scripts, etc to tie each machine in.
I remember talking to him about iPod vs Zune and iPhone vs Zune Phone. He assured me that the next version of each was going to practically put Apple out of business. I tried not to snicker too loudly.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I tried to allude to the Zune with the 'Plays for Sure' comment -- I think it's important not just to point out MS' failures, but also what happens to people who get in bed with Microsoft.
And the potential list of world-changing developments that completely failed to change anything would just be too long.
E.g. The ribbon, tablets, WinCE, WebTV, MSN, Windows ME, Vista, the list goes on and on and on.
Anybody remember their Smart Watch?
Some of the images remind me of that Radiohead video ("House of Cards") which was shot entirely without optic cameras, just sensors.
If I recall correctly, Microsoft has mentioned in the past about releasing Kinect for the PC.
Still, by its very nature, Kinect is designed to be used in a Living room, in front of a Large TV for best results. Now, I know that most of us don't have 42" monitors and a 6x6m space in our offices, so perhaps that's the real reason why Microsoft is focusing on the causal gaming market. They've put a lot of research into this, so I wouldn't be surprised if we see the technology applied elsewhere eventually.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
That is why linux is not going to get into mainstream desktop as every thing you want to change you have to ..
edit some mysterious files...oh wait
Virtual Reality is finally tangible on mainstream?
The flood of innovative stuff that's coming out could serve as prior art to upcoming patents surrounding this technology... Perhaps this will lower royalties and increase freedoms if we can figure out all the cool stuff first before it becomes patented.
Twinstiq, game news
I know they have talked about making it tampering resistant, but downright threatened to sue? When did that happen?
what's going to happen is M$ is going to take the code and use it to add new features to Kinect in future releases
No they won't. Microsoft is notoriously unable to reuse free (as in libre) software that can't be repackaged into a binary that they can sell for $$$ without releasing the source code for. It's just impossible for them because of their very nature as a closed-source software vendor. Any GPL code out there will not be touched by Microsoft with a 10 foot pole.
So what if we write every possible iteration of code for Kinect and release it under GPL?
I can't be the only one who sees that this device could bring us Minority Report like interface interaction?
~Syberz
Selling to everyone is ALWAYS more profitable than locking it down.
This just isn't correct at all. Look at the history of the Mac. There are a million reasons you'd want to sell to a small market.
This video shows an interesting demo of someone teaching the computer how to recognize toys with Kinect as one of the sensors. The demo used all open sourced technologies that combines computer vision, speech recognition, and speech synthesis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ59dXOo63o
Microsoft announces firmware update for Kinect... (not quite true, yet.)
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Selling to everyone is ALWAYS more profitable than locking it down.
Then why don't Nintendo and Sony sell devkits for their consoles to everyone? Instead of having a semi-open model like Xbox 360 Indie Games and iPhone App Store, where anyone can buy a complete devkit for the price of a computer, the target device, and $100/yr, these companies perform a vetting process requiring all developers to have a dedicated office and "game industry experience" (which I understand as a prior commercial title on another platform).
Get a Kinect paired with a 3D TV/Monitor to allow me to manipulate and visualize my network traffic in 3D? YOU SIR HAVE MY MONEY.
In general, Kinect may be just what it takes to turn the gimmicky 3D screens into a real tool. Coders! Start your IDEs!
I do security
Unless, of course, its a loss leader, which is extremely common in the gaming hardware industry.
I know how we can make this announcement look bad
I'll do you one better; I know how we can make this announcement look downright evil.
[...] Are they wearing Seahawks jerseys?
http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/15/microsoft-exec-caught-in-privacy-snafu-says-kinect-might-tailor/[...]
Are they under the age of 18 and playing half-naked in their room? Are they having sex while watching a movie when the parents aren't home? Microsoft engages in the monitoring of and sale of information abetting child pornography!
This is what is called innovation. This is people doing different things with your Kinect device than you had ever dreamed of yourselves. Sorry you didn't think of it all yourselves.
That's right, because after hundreds of millions of dollars and years in the MS R&D department some of the most bright minds in computer science haven't thought of ANYTHING these hackers are doing. And, as we speak, they are in NO WAY developing further commercial uses for the device. Yup, they want to keep Kinect confined to 'Dance Central' forever.
douche.