Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft To Back Kinect-Based Startups
angry tapir writes "Microsoft has announced a program designed to help 10 developers or startups launch businesses around products for Kinect, the controller that senses motion and voice. Developers with Kinect applications for the Xbox or Windows are invited to apply to the Kinect Accelerator program, even though Microsoft does not yet allow the sale of products based on Kinect for Windows."
Oh goodie, more motion control games. A good control scheme should minimize the amount of movement required for me to interface with the game.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
Forget it charlie brown.
A good control scheme allows the player to have fun playing the game. Go back to your cave.
They just want to steal your ideas and patent them so they can keep the shakedown gravy train rolling. I read the list you gave barnes and noble. Practically every patent on it was a stolen idea that had been done elsewhere first. And you think I'm going to give you front row seats for my ideas? Fat chance.
.. no holodec for you.
- d
My experience programming Kinect is not very good..
It fails to detect a very large range of scenarios and poses and goes crazy with objects around the studio thinking it's persons. Put your arms together, show your side or move fast enough and it will get confused.
It's really easy to make it show broken poses and seems only designed for tracking people front-facing it directly with arms stretched outwards..
Even the unofficial opensource SDK does much better at keeping track of you than the real thing. Not to mention the enormous input lag.
So, is it me or has Kinect been hyped enormously for its rather lacking technical capabilities?
I have some raw 3d code which you could angle a player based on his arm/leg movements exactly. This isn't impressive. But I can do hit location depending on the body part. With a little work, I could calculate striking power when the two fighters collide. Then you should be able to fight computer players with actual punches and kicks being calculated on how hard you swing and stuff. I'm not sure if it would be good to fight over the Internet because the 50 milisec one way delay might not have limbs in the correct position, but maybe you could adjust by giving the defender the benefit of the doubt.
I would assume there is something like this out already, and a light sabre battle. But if there isn't, this is what the technology is made for.
God spoke to me
Memo
To: Steve Ballmer, etc
From: VP marketing/ Kinect
Dear Steve: I have a great idea for the Kinect product. Lets sponser some people working on kinect startups. It will cost us almost nothing - and the stupid techies will think we are trying to help startups, as opposed to just spending a trivial sum of money (I propose a miniscule 200,000 dollar program) for ads.
The amount of free ads we will get on slashdot, etc, will more then pay for the program.
Yours,
{redacted]
I misread the headline and thought Microsoft was starting Kinect-based backups.
who is not that impressed by Kinect? Its a great concept, but between the noticeable lag and issues it has with movement recognition I find most of my Kinect games don't see much playtime when my friends come over and try it for the first time. Kudos to MS for trying something fresh and new, but I just don't think it makes games more fun, or control "better" and instead tends to make me wish for a controller or keyboard. Perhaps its just that programmers haven't figured out how to get good results, but after a year on the shelf I think it might just be not quite up to the task of being a primary interface peripheral.
This sounds like some kind of MS lock in where you can only do stuff there way.
doctors? the eula for windows says not for use at nuke plant's. I think some things don't need stuff like this and are better off doing them with more of a hard button or at least a RF remote.
Now even banking is a little to far.
Then came Mark Andreeson. He thought, "may be if I give my product, the browser, away for free and try to make money by selling tools to create the web browser, may be I can survive". But Microsoft priced its browser below zero and killed his company. The developers were aghast. But they were fretting and fuming but could not do anything about it. Microsoft can just issue a press release saying, "We are thinking of doing XYZ" and the venture capital for startups trying to develop apps that do XYZ vanish like a curl of smoke. They were fooled many times more than once.
Now, with a plethora of systems available, from Android to iOS to linux to simple plain HTML you think developers would trust Microsoft as far as Ballmer can throw a chair? No way buddy. No way.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I feel like if you've got your act together, e.g. you have a good idea, you have expertise to build the product, and you are the sort of person who really could launch a startup, then this incubation business seems like amateur hour. Or more cynically, a way for talented industry newcomers and their ideas to be snatched up by the sharks. For myself, I'm a 20-year career engineer, with ideas for Kinect-based products, and I will put my ideas together on my own time (not March through May), in my own space (not in a TechStar office), getting whatever money I need as is appropriate for the stage of development. I will not waste time jumping through Microsoft hoops as part of their competitive screening process--that time could be spent developing. $20k is a small enough amount that it could simply be saved up in half a year of day job work. $20k is not quit-your-day-job money, either, which the 3 months in Seattle would force me to do, despite moonlighting being a sensible choice. When there is a solid prototype and business plan available, then I start the networking process. No hand-holding required, and no sharks sniffing around me.
The only people dumb enough to buy Microsoft's Sony Eye Toy ripoff were the same idiots who jumped on the dead HD-DVD format.
Both are now sitting unused in those people's junk closets.
You know, people have speculated about the existence of a Microsoft tool to post pro-Microsoft blog spam to forums and blogs. I was skeptical that any company would be that stupid, but I guess I was wrong.
Yeah MS, but you shit all over people who experiment with your stuff in ways you don't like.
It doesn't matter that you now have some projects you approve of, all we remember is that if you don't like it you'll fuck us over.
Sounds and Feels like the last gasp attempt of the great salesman (Developers, Developers, Developers).
Dedicated gaming consoles seem like they don't have inertia anymore given the evolution of devices over the last 3 years.
Sad...They will spend another couple billion dollars before Balmer is ousted.
Why is it hard for the Board of Directors at Microsoft to see this? Maybe because not hardly one of them uses games?
Both are now sitting unused in those people's junk closets.
Right next to their R.O.Bs. Console gaming systems have been notorious over the years for all sorts of gimmicks and flash-in-the-pan accessories, many of dubious quality or utility, thrown in to boost initial sales and with little thought given to product lifetime of after sales support.
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