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Microsoft Confirms Disconnecting Kinect Gives Devs 10% More GPU Horsepower
MojoKid (1002251) writes 'Microsoft confirmed a development rumor that's been swirling around its next-generation console ever since it announced Kinect would become an optional add-on rather than a mandatory boat anchor. Lifting that requirement will give game developers 10 percent additional graphics power to play with and help close the gap between the Xbox One and PS4. The story kicked off when Xbox head Phil Spencer tweeted that June's Xbox One dev kit gave devs access to more GPU bandwidth. Further, another Microsoft representative then confirmed that the performance improvement coming in the next version of the Xbox SDK was the result of making Kinect an optional accessory. No matter how Microsoft may try to spin it, cancelling Kinect isn't just a matter of giving game developers freedom, it's a tacit admission that game developers have no significant projects in play that are expected to meaningfully tap Kinect to deliver a great game experience — and they need those GPU cycles back.'
Also on the Xbox capabilities front: Reader BogenDorpher (2008682) writes 'In August of last year, a Microsoft spokesman confirmed that the Xbox One controller will be compatible for PC users sometime in 2014. That time has finally come. Windows gamers can now use the Xbox One controller to play games on their computer. If a game supports a USB gamepad or the Xbox 360 controller, it will also support the Xbox One controller.'
Doesn't that then lead to a bad situation for kinect users? If you design a game that relies on that overhead, then those that don't have it will have a poor experience. Granted, you can probably just disconnect the kinect and be just fine. Be all know what the general masses will do. Complain.
yvan eht nioj
Does anyone think that it is interesting that the Kinect requires 10% GPU resources and not 10% CPU resources? Was MS using the GPU to handle processing because it would drain the CPU more?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I still haven't hooked my kinect up yet. Tho' it's a pita having to type in my secure XBL password *every time*
Great,
Can anyone tell me why, as a subscriber with the "Disable Advertising" button, I keep getting ads at the top of Slashdot, not matter the status of the button? Only happened the last few days.
Pretty sure the terms of what I paid for say I shouldn't be seeing it, even years after paying.
I bet support for the Xbox One controller would've come out much sooner, had Microsoft not been responsible for horrible controller support on PC games. Most games on Steam that support a controller are hardcoded for the Xbox 360 controller - using anything else requires a hack like MotionInJoy or XPadder. Even the ones that do support non-MS controllers will only display button prompts in terms of the X360 controller. This is, of course, because most games these days are multi-platform with consoles as the lead platform, and usually the PC port is a port of the X360 version.
With the way MS forced the X360 controller on PC, it's no wonder it took them forever to make a compatible driver.
'In August of last year, a Microsoft spokesman confirmed that the Xbox One controller will be compatible for PC users sometime in 2014. That time has finally come. Windows gamers can now use the Xbox One controller to play games on their computer. If a game supports a USB gamepad or the Xbox 360 controller, it will also support the Xbox One controller.'
That is interesting given that my brother and my cousin - both big into gaming - use PC-style controls with their Xbox because they feel it gives them an edge over users of the Xbox controller.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
Next time, let your engineers spec the console up for you instead of the Marketing Department.
It still doesn't close the gap between PS4 and Xbox One. Our biggest challenge is that we have to parallel develop everything in the asset pipeline such that it isn't a vastly different experience. The PS4 is much quicker for almost everything.
No matter how Microsoft may try to spin it, cancelling Kinect isn't just a matter of giving game developers freedom, it's a tacit admission that game developers have no significant projects in play that are expected to meaningfully tap Kinect to deliver a great game experience
First, Kinect isn't cancelled.
Second, it isn't a tacit admission that game developers have no games coming out that meaningfully use the Kinect because game developers that need Kinect for their game simply keep using it (because it isn't cancelled...)
It's really just what they should have done in the beginning, allowed developers to use the GPU the way they wish. I fully expect devs to allow users to pause their game, which re-enables Kinect support in order to allow me to perform whatever non-game actions I wish to initiate (like answering a Skype call.)
What's the big hairy deal?
Like the PS4? Buy one, enjoy.
Like the XBox One? Buy one, enjoy.
Christ, get over yourselves.
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Where's "Option Iginore Kinect" or whatever it should be in the programming language they use there? Is this saying Kinect is always on, even if it isn't running anything for the game?
It has been known for months that this change was coming. The xbox one currently reserves about 10% of GPU power for the Kinect even it is not used by the game. The only thing that is changing is that the game developer will be able to indicate if they are using the Kinect or not. If not they will be able to use those additional gpu resources for whatever they want. So this has nothing to do with making the Kinect optional. Even people with a Kinect will get this performance boost in games that don't use the Kinect.
I can't believe they let that guy play xbone...
He is supposed to be serving a 19 year prison sentence...
Anyway it's not uncommon for consoles to be quite conservative and reserve more resources than they need (as a form of future proofing) and loosen up as the firmware matures. I'm sure Sony holds some CPU back too for stuff and might also have some slack it can give back.
This is a terribly written story that doesn't mean what the title implies it means.
Microsoft is giving game developers the option to opt-out of gesture tracking if they aren't using it. If the developer opts out, they get those GPU cycles back to use in their game, regardless of whether the Kinect is attached or not.
I don't think you can opt out of the system speech recognition, but you may gain a few cycles if you opt out of including extra grammars for your game.
| "Windows gamers can now use the Xbox One controller to play games on their computer. If a game supports a USB gamepad or the Xbox 360 controller, it will also support the Xbox One controller."
Patently stupid. Any Windows game can be played with almost any controller using a key mapper (I personally use XPadder).
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
I am not at all shocked that the Kinect eats GPU power. Machine vision isn't exactly computationally light, there is a lot of math to run on each frame plus the I/O overhead. They have to run those algorithms on something and my guess is they used DirectCompute to utilize the GPU to save money on hardware.
They could use a dedicated DSP in the Kinect but that would drive up the cost of the Kinect making it an overpriced and unappealing accessory. A quick check on Digikey for the Analog Devices Sharc DSP reveals that even a 450MHz chip costs about $32 in quantity. Perhaps there is a higher performance DSP that is cheaper but you also have to factor in the cost of memory for it and other ancillary components. It can easily add $50+ to the hardware cost. I know its a VERY rough guesstimate but it illustrates why dedicated processing in the Kinect is not utilized. Another thing to consider is using the GPU gives more flexibility in designing newer and better algorithms which might be constrained by a DSP with limited performance.
Looking at the numbers, this generation has been a complete flop compared to the last, the big 3 have sold about 1/5th as many consoles and about 1/8th as many games as the last generation. No way to catch up at this point, the systems are already falling behind. So do they double down or accept that mobile is going to eat their lunches?
That is a horrible efficiency loss for something that is doing NOTHING. I can't imagine what kind of dumb-ass code resides in the Kinect device driver to make it that bad.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Casual gamers are moving to tablets and phones, while hardcore gamers play PC games. There's not much room left for consoles, particularly when the new generation are just low-end gaming PCs.
great so the camera can't watch you playing certain games. That spells doom for NSA and additional MS ad engine.
Look back in the history of gaming. You will invariably stumble upon various attempts at more "immersive" input systems rather than mouse, keyboard and gamepad... and invariably, they all sucked donkey balls. They were gimmicky and "new", a select few of them were maybe even fun to use or enjoyable, or they offered some sort of interesting gameplay experience for a while, at least 'til that "new car smell" was gone, but in the end, they sucked.
Why?
Because an input device should first and foremost be one thing: A translation of what the player wants to do into a form the game can understand. That has to be as precise and complete as possible for it to be enjoyable by the player. Players enjoy having control over what they are supposedly controlling in a game. Sluggish controls and a bad user interface, any player will agree, are often game crippling. If the difficulty of the game consists of actually controlling what you're doing, the game is not enjoyable. The controls should be easy and precise, and the difficulty should come from having to use that precise control to overcome the obstacles presented.
And that's where the problem with the various input devices lies: They lack precision. It is usually more complicated to get the game to do what you want than actually playing the game. In the end this means that games that rely on various gimmicky input devices have to be dumbed down and "made easy", to the point where, when you somehow manage to play those games with a "normal" controller/keyboard/mouse, they instantly become trivially easy to beat.
That is not what's enjoyable. The game has to be the challenge. Not the input device.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Not just more power, not just more cycles, not just more mhz, but actual 'horsepower'. Neat.
this generation has been a complete flop
You can tell that after only 7 months? The PS4 and Xbox One just came out last November, remember?
So do they double down or accept that mobile is going to eat their lunches?
Mobile is a different market, no one is going to give up the full console experience for Angry Birds.
Even the phone/tablet and portable consoles (PSP/Vita/DS) are different markets. People playing Monster Hunter on the Vita or Animal Crossing on the DS aren't going to give up those kinds of experiences for your typical tablet game.
but there kinect will become a brick while they are playing those games and not respond to all the voice commands that were the primary marketing feature of people originally buying the Xbone.
they got you in the door.... now prepare to have your nuts cut off.
I think your brother and cousin are full of shit. Microsoft spent over 100 MILLION dollars on controller research. Their controller is hands down better than any shit controller by some lame company that purports to sell advanced control devices for PC gaming...
Thank goodness, somebody with a clue. Just because they're all "vidya gaems" doesn't mean they're one overarching market. It's more like a venn diagram.
It's such an awful generation that PS4 is setting sales rate records, and there were over 10 million machines in the wild in the first 6 months. Yup, that's abysmal all right.
I could load Spyhunter into FCEUX, but what good would that do on a Linux laptop?
Nicely put. Too many people are spouting off without a clue.....but this is slashdot so I guess that is the norm.
MS long ago could have released a windows PC with a gaming GUI instead of the xbox line.
Users could then either buy that machine or put any gaming PC in the same role.
That would eliminate all of these problems.
Someone is going to say something bad about windows... but its fully capable of running any game you can imagine just about as efficently as anything.
And again... this would be with a custom GUI that was designed for the living room. Obviously they wouldn't be lugging a mouse and keyboard around the thing unless they actually wanted to do that.
There are only upsides to MS doing this and no downsides to MS.
They increase their market by combining two gaming markets. They annihilate Sony because sony can't compete with the game library, backward compatibility, and adaptability of a PC.
Ports become instant rather then an annoying expense devs go through to get their game to multiple markets.
Etc etc etc.
Also the hardware doesn't matter so much because a lot of people are going to buy from one of many companies making machines on this line.
MS from what I understand also tends to make nothing or lose money when it sells an xbox. Okay... why not simply go back to software and leave hardware to people that want to do hardware? By all means, come out with peripherals such as the kinnect... but its in everyone's interest if the thing isn't directly associated with gaming. Its a very cool piece of technology... don't hobble it by tying it to a system mostly used for halo.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Yaa, Kinect is somehow good tool to expand the performance for gamers. Atleast one should try this.