Have you ever imagined, how it would feel like playing games without any kind of joystick or controllers; and how about hiding behind couches to avoid shots from a first person shooter game? Got your jaws dropped? thinking whether am I hearing a Flash Gordon sci-fi story? Yeah me too was in the same situation, when I first heard about Microsoft Kinect.
Nowadays motion controllers being the buzz word in the gaming industry, which got Nintendo’s Wii on to the market forefront, but this time Microsoft made a giant leap, which took the gaming industry by storm. The ground breaking product from Microsoft, code-named "Natal" had finally hit the stores christened as "Microsoft Kinect", this time Microsoft has not only come up with something which is innovative, but moreover something for the open source community as well.
Microsoft Kinect the next generation gaming add-on for Xbox 360, redefines the way we interact with games and gaming consoles. Its not something we had seen anytime before in the gaming arena, no controllers, no joysticks, no remotes nothing but just human gestures!!!!. Yes you heard it right, just gestures. No device's attached to you body or surroundings. An excellent piece of technology which I had ever experienced. So before moving on, let me show you this marvelous piece of technology in action.
Got astonished at just what you saw? Keep reading there's still a lot more to see on this wonderful piece of engineering. So whats behind this next generation device? lets find out. Microsoft Kinect at its core is like that of a human with eyes and ears. Practically it could see you in 3D, i.e; height wise, width wise and depth wise and could interpret your gestures. Moreover it could recognize your face and even comprehend your voice. So what gives this marvelous device these capabilities? At the heart of Microsoft Kinect is a 3D camera(from PrimeSense an Israel based company) aka "radar camera", a motion sensor, a tilt motor, a Mic and definitely the software to process data from all these sources. The device provides USB interface for connecting with consoles.
If you were to dissect this device, you could find four microphones for voice input, two camera's, one infra red projector, a three axis gyroscope, 64 MB of DDR2 RAM and a motor to point this device to a particular point.
The 3D camera could even operate in complete darkness, as it relies on a infra-red beam to analyze the objects. The depth information is computed by measuring the time taken for the beam, to bounce off from an objects back to the camera. While the motion sensor is capable of tracking 48 points of movement in the human body which could track your finger movements. Despite of all these glittering features, a UK based firm had reported that Kinects facial recognition didn't work for dark skinned people, while some had denied that, they didn't experience any such problem with Kinect.
I think you should see how the depth and motion sensing capabilities of Kinect looks like in real world.
So now after seeing all these, you might be wondering how to get yourself this wonderful piece of hardware. If you already own a Xbox 360, then you are lucky that you just need to shell out Rs.10,000 to own this. You could find more information on pricing related stuff over here at TechnixUpdate.
Open Source and Microsoft Kinect
In case if you interested to programme this device then read on, else you could skip this section. If you were look at Kinect from a different perspective, you could see that, this device opens up tremendous possibilities at what you could achieve with this marvelous piece of engineering. So the first question which could be lurking in you mind could be, how about interfacing this with my PC? If this was your concern, then no need to worry at all, as this had been already taken care of by the open source community. Here are a couple links providing driver for this device.
The other cousin - EyeToy
If you had heard about PS2's EyeToy from Sony, then you could find a lot many similarities between these two, but for those who are new to EyeToy, here is what its all about. EyeToy released by Sony in 1999 for its gaming console had gesture recognition capabilities, which allowed players to interact with the games using color, motion and voice recognition. But unfortunately the device didn't catch up the market as expected during those days, which spelled doom for the EyeToy.
Finally the ultimate question from every gamer would be, are there any games out there that could take advantage of Microsoft Kinect. Absolutely Yes !!! indeed the Xbox forum is full with this very same query. Take a look over here to see the long list of games being showcased which are specifically targeted towards Microsoft Kinect.
Microsoft Kinect has a whole lot stuff to offer other than from the gaming arena. Definitely the applications of this wonderful piece of hardware is yet to be unleashed, once this is interfaced with Mobiles, Tablet PC and even with workstations. Well this device is definitely going to rewrite on how we are going to interact with entertainment systems as well in near future, well wait and see....
If you are anxious to know more about Microsoft Kinect click here to explore further.
Microsoft Kinect has a whole lot stuff to offer other than from the gaming arena. Definitely the applications of this wonderful piece of hardware is yet to be unleashed, once this is interfaced with Mobiles, Tablet PC and even with workstations. Well this device is definitely going to rewrite on how we are going to interact with entertainment systems as well in near future, well wait and see....
If you are anxious to know more about Microsoft Kinect click here to explore further.
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