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Microsoft Working On Kinect 2

Posted by Soulskill on from the xbox-paint-my-house dept.

itwbennett writes "Eurogamer published a piece on a rumored Kinect 2 system that will most likely launch with the next iteration of the Xbox line, which might be sometime between late 2012 and 2014. Eurogamer says this new Kinect won't be hobbled by the limitations of the USB 2.0 port that the current Kinect uses; instead the hardware will be designed to give the new Kinect a faster pipeline to the system's internals. What this means, says blogger Peter Smith is that 'not only can Kinect 2 read finger movements (high on the wish-list for the current hardware) but it can read lips, too. I don't think they mean this in the sense that it can extrapolate what you're saying from your lip movements, but that it can tell who in a room is speaking by matching lip movement to audio input.'"

14 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Read Lips? by ExploHD · · Score: 5, Funny

    "I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you play that"

    1. Re:Read Lips? by donaldm · · Score: 2

      When playing a game one of the most useful features is haptic feedback which for a while has been the "rumble" of the controller. Having this feature allows one IMHO to interact more closely with the game in that when you fire a weapon (sword, gun, spell, .. etc) or you are hit you can actually feel something via your hands. Even slight slight rumble can actually set the mood of certain games. There were some quite elaborate haptic feedback devices which could provide a "rumble" feature to other parts of the body (ok keep this thread clean), however these devices were quite expensive so they never took off. Basically at the moment the cheapest haptic feedback devices is the hand controller, be it the Wii wand, Playstaion Move/Controller and the Xbox360 controller. Also there are haptic devices that will work with some PC games as well.

      With the introduction of the connect you don't have any haptic feedback since and I quote "You are the controller". For many casual users this may be ok since most casual players don't really care or know about haptic feedback but for the more advance player haptic feedback can be very important which can make a mediocre game good and a good game very good.

      As far as the new Kinect being able to read lips I don't know if this is going to be all that useful although there may be some types of games were this may work well, but then again only time will tell. Of course I would expect Nintendo and Sony to come out with something along the same lines as well.

      Personally where I think the Kinect will shine is for the casual gamer and as an icebreaker at parties although you really do need a much larger room and also a large screen TV if you are going to have more than two players. In some respects this is not that much different for Wii and Playstation Move users (at least they do have haptic feedback) but when you are going to wave your arms or jump around then you need some room to do it. Of course with more than one person waving their arms you may have a few black-eyes, but unlike the Wii and Move you have less chance of someone breaking breaking your TV unless you have a really small room :)

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      There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
    2. Re:Read Lips? by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 3, Funny

      Wouldn't it need x-ray vision to see through your nose?

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      "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  2. News at 11 by OzPeter · · Score: 5, Funny

    $Company is working on ($CurrentVersion + 1) of $PopularProduct. The new version is expected to have better $CharacteristicDeJour and will be released in $SomeNumber years from now. This will fulfill the desires of people currently using $CurrentVersion, and enable them to do lots of really cool new things.
     
    However the ($CurrentVersion + 1) of $PopularProduct may or may not implement $PieInTheSkyFeature, although this will be vigorously debated by $FanBois and $AntiFanBois - even after the new version has come out.
     
    All that can be guaranteed is that /. will be inundated with stories about $PopularProduct no matter how trivial they are, or how many other sites reported on them $RandomNumber months ago.

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    I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
    1. Re:News at 11 by PortHaven · · Score: 4, Funny

      if(troll){
          feed;
      }

    2. Re:News at 11 by whodunnit · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Over 700,000 of them sold in one day on black Friday, so yes, I'd say that qualifies as popular.

    3. Re:News at 11 by Raenex · · Score: 3, Funny

      Pepper spray not included.

  3. USB 3.0 or proprietary? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So, the question is will it be USB 3.0 or something proprietary.

    My guess would be proprietary, so they don't have to worry about it getting hacked this time. Of course, that would also mean that there's a new XBox in the works.

    1. Re:USB 3.0 or proprietary? by Missing.Matter · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I know Microsoft was apprehensive at first about hacking the Kinect, but since then they have pretty much fully embraced it. Why would they go through all the trouble of officially supporting the Kinect on PC, and then not build on that with the 2.0 release?

  4. Re:Microsoft or the contractor? by exomondo · · Score: 2

    Didn't Kinect come from a company MS bought the rights from? or did they buy the company? Is this the same brain trust or the MS brain trust?

    PrimeSense developed the hardware, MS developed the software. Presumably PrimeSense will develop a higher resolution version of the current hardware and MS will do the finger tracking, lip reading, etc... software.

  5. Re:Microsoft or the contractor? by kamapuaa · · Score: 2

    What? MS is providing awesome hardware and letting game developers and home developers do what they want with it. I know basing Microsoft (sorry, M$) reflexively is part of the Slashdot experience, but Kinect technology is a really cool thing. It may have been pushed to market to compete with the Wii, but what's the problem with that? Different companies should compete and try to best each other, and anyway it's clearly not just a copy of the same technology.

    "Nintendo's goal is an emotional experience." Is that what you call endless variations of Mario & Zelda?

    --
    Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
  6. Re:Really? by syousef · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm waiting for Kinect 4

    Microsoft have a Checkered past. They have such a Monopoly on movement sensors, it becomes a game of Chess for developers. The whole Operation should be a Snap for Microsoft. But for customers who pay and pay again it's more like Snakes And Ladders. I hope they keep Up Words about how it's proceeding. I'll be jumping on it like a Hungry Hippo. Just hope they don't Sink My Battleship!

    --
    These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
  7. Re:MS Should Work On Making It Not Suck First by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    clearly you don't see the potential in a cheap consumer tracking device then.

    given the cost, Kinect is actually an amazing bit of technology, and it will be interesting to see where things progress in the next few years in this space.

  8. Re:Microsoft or the contractor? by exomondo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Didn't Kinect come from a company MS bought the rights from? or did they buy the company? Is this the same brain trust or the MS brain trust?

    PrimeSense developed the hardware, MS developed the software.

    except it didnt, unless by developed you mean MS ported PrimeSenses code (openni) to xbox360

    Except it did, otherwise the Kinect and Windows SDKs would merely be OpenNI, which they aren't. If you've actually used them you'll see the feature sets are quite different and operate in different ways.