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Microsoft Prepares To Push Kinect Everywhere Windows Is
An anonymous reader writes "Technology Review has an update on Microsoft's effort to push Kinect gesture control technology beyond the Xbox console and make it a standard Windows computer accessory. Microsoft has sold Kinect for Windows hardware to developers since February and now products based on it are appearing, such as GestSure's system for surgeons in the operating room. Microsoft won't say when it will begin selling Kinect for Windows hardware directly to consumers, but seems poised to do so once enough developers have readied applications."
Just hold your phone out in front of you, and wave you other arm and legs to control. It's so simple, even a three year old can do it.
....I don't really feel the need to spend four-to-five times the cost of their latest OS just to use the interface I don't need.
Well that is one way one to make Windows 8 easier to use on the desktop.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Microsoft confident all future technology to involve waving your arms around like a fucking crazy person
wants to be waving their hands around, trying to get their computer to do what they want, because that is the best way to interface with a computer!
How about they fix it on the xbox first. I can't even watch a DVD on the XBOX without a controller for some reason.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I have this application that keeps track of my personnel and HR resources. Before Kinect, I hated to fire people. It was always a miserable experience.
But now with Kinect, I love to fire people! I rewrote the code so all I have to do is highlight your HR Record, stand in front of my Kinect, and dance, baby, dance!!! Kinect made Christmas fun again. We're usually low on money around Christmas, and with the new fiscal year, we often have to lay people off in bulk. So, my HR staff and I have dance-offs to decide who goes and who stays! It's a real hoot! If HR wins, you stay for another day! If I win, *poof* you're gone!
Thanks Microsoft!!!
While it's true I do what an interface less stressing on my wrists than a mouse/keyboard, I can tell you right now that the Kinect is going in the opposite direction of that.
I don't have any issues with Kinect it's pretty good hardware, you can get better but the idea and the price is rather good. If it came with my PC or was a fairly cheep upgrade say 50 to 75 dollars i"d pick it up.
Until they get that though I really doubt I'll pick it up. That and there needs to be a genuine application that kinect is genuinely a must have for.
... have one of these.
GestSure? Gesture? More like "Guessed? Sure!" Am I right? High five gesture!
What sort of replacement gesture might be required to replace the traditional three-finger-salute?
When it first came out I thought "gimmick." Then I read blogs and new stories for over year after it came out with people talking about how cool it was. I still didn't believe it. But when it came time to buy the XBox for my kid, I decided we needed to have it just to see what it was about. I was actually excited to try it out. We lived our first weekend with the living room in disarray so we could have room to use it.
Of course, the novelty wore off very quickly and all it does now is collect dust and take up space in front of the TV. It's voice control sucks and using it with the menu system with gestures is just annoying. It's far easier to use the controller.
At least I can say I tried it, I guess.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
If Kinect allows Microsoft and partners receiving the video feed, recognize facial expressions and general movements, get audio, understand the room's geometry, etc. then I can see why a company would want to have such a device connected to every machine in every home!
There's no such thing as "illegal download"
The Kinect Gesture challenge over at Kaggle was a competition where the goal was to match gestures with a specified dictionary of previously-recorded gestures.
The problem isn't the resolution, it's the recognition algorithm.
A human looking at the videos could easily distinguish between gestures and interpret the meaning. The problem was even easier for a human because you only had to choose the closest match from within the dozen-or-so gestures in the dictionary. This leads me to believe that it's not a problem with the resolution, or the hardware in general.
Despite this, gesture recognition is a very difficult problem. Aspects which humans would naturally interpret as similar can be wildly different for the computer. Hold your hand up and wave - if the hand is in a different position (relative to the torso), the angle of waving is different, the body is waving back and forth instead of still, the number of waves is different, the time cadence of the waving is different... all of these confuse the heck out of a match algorithm.
(One video had curtains in the background, apparently waving ever so slightly in the breeze - causing lots of motion for the camera. Another video (color channel) contained an intricate flower pattern, which was very complex to match against.)
Finger position and motion have limited resolution (they form only a small part of the input field), but a human could still interpret various ASL hand signs to a large extent. Perhaps very similar hand signs would be difficult to discriminate, but certainly many of the ones shown were recognizable.
This is pretty-much an aspect of hard AI. We're not that close to solving this problem, and breakthroughs are not expected any time soon.
Reminds me of
https://leapmotion.com/
(Was discussed on Slashdot a while back.)
Let's see here.....
Booting up: Works.
Launching web browser: Works.
Playing latest games at medium to high detail level for hours on end: Works.
Voice chat with friends via Teamspeak server on WHS box in same room: Works.
Entering in and out of sleep mode a couple times per day: Works.
What's that, now?
I wonder what the terms and conditions governing the 'anonymous' gathering of information for Microsoft's advertising arm will be?
Is it just me? Or didn't everything even remotely cool that was done with the connect happen on something other than windows?
I wonder if they make the system shutdown or restart the same gesture as picking up a cup of coffee and setting it down?
Why the hell would a surgeon use hand gestures? Their hands are the most occupied part of their body! Speech recognition, or a helpful nurse/assistant that can hear you talk would be 1000 times better. The ONLY use I can see for a kinect in the operating table would be for recording physical locations by pointing and posibly measuring stuff on the fly (though I don't think the resolution is high enough yet for either of these tasks).
My kids and I love our Wii, but I can't imagine holding my arms up in the air all day. With a mouse the weight of my hand rests on a desk. A pen is the same thing - the desk holds some the weight of your arm. Perhaps someone can explain to me how gesture control will be used in a work environment, because it sounds like a 8 hour workout to me.
Sounds like you're the one out of touch, LaTeX plays all my HD videos perfectly.
Misguided sense of superiority is missing.
If Microsoft is really serious about this, they should actively approach developers and send them SDK kits.
I wouldn't mind having access to the tech and SDK for Zoom Player without having to jump through too many hoops.
Zoom Player Lead Dev.
Misguided sense of superiority is missing.
How about actually trying to get work done without the operating system changing in behavior on you, inexplicably losing data in applications because some requester popped up when you were exiting and intended to save, have the keystroke stolen and then the app exits without saving. Dumb crap like that. Also, less nagging, just shut up and let me do my work.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Kinect is a success in that it sold a lot of units, but it's a miserable failure at selling games outside the dance genre. This year's release list is littered with Kinect games that bombed in spectacular fashion, as it's just good a good system of control for gaming.
Are they going to fix that, or are they going to just make everything else equally as bad as the gaming experience?
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Gee, how much has M$ paid you to shill for them? Yeah, the three packages I have mentioned lacks the features their non-free counterparts from M$ have: digital restrictions management, malware, and inferior formats that are proprietary, I'll stick with something that will ensure my freedom. Soon you will figure it out like everyone else that M$ will lock you into their monopoly once again.
--
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk
Friends do assist M$ addicted friends in committing suicide.
The new WinRT tablets coming out will all have USB ports. They really should build the Kinect SDK into the Windows Runtime so Metro (i.e. "Modern") apps can access it. Right now only desktop apps can access the Kinect SDK.
I like it. I would get one, if the price were right, and I'm assuming that it would bring something beyond what my HD web cam can do (and Kinect seems to have infrared now, so apparently that's a yes). The implications for Skype are obvious, but this could potentially be an easy way to perform simple tasks in Windows.
There is potential here. I love technology, so I say bring it on and let's see where we can go with it.
IS who going to fix it? slapping kinetic usage on top of a game not designed for it by smart people is a developer issue.
I've seen it work well in too many instance to think it's a kinetic issue as opposed to a developer issue.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on