Project Natal...

[Ravi08]

Hi,

I saw Project Natal a few weeks bak and was wonderin wat u ppl think of it.

If u dont know wat it is well its "controller free gaming and entertainment experience by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 video game platform"

I think its goin to be gd and i hope its worth the money, also i think it would be cool if u could scan in weapons for shootin games such as playin cod with a replica mp40 would be sick

Just post ur thoughts and thanks for ur time

PS no console h8er in here

[m_krzywy]

It's great IMO. It's normal evolution of video gaming entertainment.
It slowly getting matrix like. Just wait for 3d gaming glasses from nvidia

[Ravi08]

Just wait for 3d gaming glasses from nvidia

lol, hopefully it will get like in futurama

[XXChester]

Got my Kinect (renamed from Natal) this weekend, it is incredible. The game "Fighting" from ubisoft doesn't work very well from what I can tell but the Adventurers game and Kinectimals (for my kid) work very well.

Now if only they decided to release the damn Kinect SDK publicly that would be awesome.

[Adler1337]

I heard there is a lot of lag between your movements and the game. Is that true?

[Strong99]

There is some lag, not much, just a few built in ms to be sure peeling your nose isn't recorded or something like that. For better movement bla bla... If it was a problem I don't think microsoft would sell Kinected right now, it would bring down there good name on the xbox

And... maybe built in so you won't miss those cool moves you did, in for example Sonic racing. You're turning and moving like crazy. I think you could easily miss what you did or tried to achieve.

[XXChester]

Yeah I agree with what strong99 said. As I previously stated I have only found a problem with the "Fighting" game from Ubisoft where it doesn't track your body very well. But of the games I have played I have not noticed any lag (that affects the overall experience). One fun thing I noticed though is when your dog(s) walk inbetween you and the sensor your legs go crazy (in games like Adventurers where it tracks legs). The kinect hub itself (its main screen) is very difficult to use, I found it has a hard time tracking your hand but all of the in games menus seem to work fine. The other thing I noticed is that if Kinect seems to be having a hard time tracking you or is behaving strange, close your blinds so the sun isn't beaming in.

[jawdy]

Hey folks,

I hate reviving old threads... but there aren't any others in the Forum (checked with the Search tool, so hopefully I haven't missed any!).

Anyway, I've *JUST* gotten Kinect working within Irrlicht

I'll write up a quick tutorial and my code that works - it's ugly (so very very ugly) BUT it works - so hopefully it'll help other Irrlicht programmers out there!

[Radikalizm]

Hey folks,

I hate reviving old threads... but there aren't any others in the Forum (checked with the Search tool, so hopefully I haven't missed any!).

Anyway, I've *JUST* gotten Kinect working within Irrlicht

I'll write up a quick tutorial and my code that works - it's ugly (so very very ugly) BUT it works - so hopefully it'll help other Irrlicht programmers out there!

Wow, awesome

you should create a new thread in the project announcements for this

[pippy3]

90% chance it's a fad - it will die out in a few years. Programming & making it work well is too hard. Some of the early games using it are laughable, this combined with the delay and potential hardware issues will keep it from everyday use.

Other implementations - it has a lot of potential. Medical science, 3d modeling and UI research are limitless. Microsoft has to switch its marketing strategy first of course. MS has already realized this and released an SDK to compete with the open source one already (I predicted this on reddit).

Kinect has similar specs to the eyeToy, apart from it can see depth. Of course the hardware has changed since, so really the commercial success of the device relies on the programmers making quality software products.

[jawdy]

Wow, awesome

you should create a new thread in the project announcements for this

Thanks Radikalizm!
It's only a basic implementation... but that's not really the point, the fact that it works was the biggest thing!

90% chance it's a fad - it will die out in a few years. Programming & making it work well is too hard. Some of the early games using it are laughable, this combined with the delay and potential hardware issues will keep it from everyday use.

Other implementations - it has a lot of potential. Medical science, 3d modeling and UI research are limitless. Microsoft has to switch its marketing strategy first of course. MS has already realized this and released an SDK to compete with the open source one already (I predicted this on reddit).

Kinect has similar specs to the eyeToy, apart from it can see depth. Of course the hardware has changed since, so really the commercial success of the device relies on the programmers making quality software products.

pippy3, I agree with almost everything you've said.
Almost
The Kinect delays are software/programmers problems, not the hardware! I've got hand detection working 1:1 (so 30fps, from Kinect). The skeletal tracking on my old-old-old-Opteron (7 years old, 2GHz, single core, single threaded) runs around 15fps, so the only delay is my hardware - not Kinects detection.
If I run the same demo on an AMD Phenom X6 box we have here, with a workstation graphics card, then it's 1:1 again - each movement is seen, processed and updated on screen at the maximum frame rate.
Of course, I bet once we start doing some fancy gestures and all that, that our nice speeds will just plain plummet!

As for the PSEye - it's just a camera... albeit with awesome frame-rates (60Hz @ 640x480, 120Hz @ 320x240). The underlying software from Sony does kick-ass, but if you use OpenCV (like I do) then you get almost entirely the same set of features and open source, to boot

My whole project is relying on the fad factor, though... so I can't lie about that


Anyway - a whole new thread to start any second...