Kinect Can Sense Children, Adjust Difficulty on the Fly

[Ironman273]

This is kinda cool

Kinect Can Sense Children, Adjust Difficulty on the Fly

Microsoft's Kinect may not be able to detect seated gamers, but it can make some educated about the age of gamers who are standing and put that information to good use.

Playing around with upcoming Xbox 360 Kinect game Joy Ride I asked the developers about playing the game with friends and children. They told me that the game can tell, based on the skeletal anatomy of a gamer, if they are children and then automatically adjust the difficulty.

What if, I asked, someone tried kneeling to cheat?

That won't work, I was told, because Kinect would notice that the player was missing the knee joints.

What if the player were a little person, or perhaps just really short.

That, could cause a misdetect, giving the shorter gamer the competitive edge in a race.

Curious. But I'm sure it's a feature you can turn off. Neat that the developers are playing around with ways to use this technology. I'm sure that's going to result in a flood of new ideas, some good, some bad.

Source: Kotaku

[nycmattw]

That is cool. ANd its better for shorter people like me =D

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

The very first thing that popped into my head was what about little people, and Kotaku had it covered. (Y)

[Knife Party]

what about midgets? :rofl:

[lnmnky]

[Spookie]

A better, well more sensationalist title at least, could have been: "KINECT DISCRIMINATES AGAINST DWARFS!" :p

Nice idea though. :)

[thechronic]

"KINECT DISCRIMINATES AGAINST DWARFS!"

Silly really, but what if a 'dwarf' wishes to showcase his gaming talents and is stuck in 'easy' because he's on the extremely small side.

[George P Global Moderator]

Pretty cool, they keep tweaking it and so on, should be interesting to see how it ends up come Nov.

Silly really, but what if a 'dwarf' wishes to showcase his gaming talents and is stuck in 'easy' because he's on the extremely small side.

Turn the option off in the game menu? I'm sure you'll have the ability to.

[kaffra]

it should be the other way round, kids should play at hardest, and oldtimers at easy

[Ironman273]

A better, well more sensationalist title at least, could have been: "KINECT DISCRIMINATES AGAINST DWARFS!" :p

Nice idea though. :)

Actually, it would discriminate against tall people. ;) Thems little persons be taking our jorbs!!!!!!

[Ayepecks]

The very first thing that popped into my head was what about little people, and Kotaku had it covered. (Y)

Same :laugh:

[Unrealistic]

The very first thing that popped into my head was what about little people, and Kotaku had it covered. (Y)

I thought about the opposite (tall kids).

[SimplySchizo]

I sure there will be a manual override on difficulty. too silly to not implement it.

[BoredBozirini]

What about the goddamned ****ing midgets?

Oh, ok, it was already answered.

Well, if midgets get easier difficulties and I lose to a midget I'm choking a midget. That is final.

[NoLiMiT06]

What about the goddamned ****ing midgets?

Oh, ok, it was already answered.

Well, if midgets get easier difficulties and I lose to a midget I'm choking a midget. That is final.

:rofl:

[red.]

Ha, so i'm not the only one that thought this when reading the headline.

[Valerus]

SENSE CHILDREN???

[spikey_richie]

So someone who's say 6' 6" has to play the game in uber hard mode? No fair :p

[Nicholas-c Veteran]

Thats pretty cool really, However what is the treshold? Do teenagers get medium automatically and really tall adults hardcore? :p

[Neowinian]

Nice little feature. I am a little tall so it does not matter to me.

[Jimmy0]

"They told me that the game can tell, based on the skeletal anatomy of a gamer, if they are children and then automatically adjust the difficulty."

Well, not really. It can tell how tall you are and based on that it decides you're a child if you're below x metres tall.

[Ironman273]

"They told me that the game can tell, based on the skeletal anatomy of a gamer, if they are children and then automatically adjust the difficulty."

Well, not really. It can tell how tall you are and based on that it decides you're a child if you're below x metres tall.

Yes, really. It uses the skeletal joint locations (or "skeletal anatomy") to determine if you're a child (or a midget). If it was only how tall you are then getting on your knees would work, which doesn't.

[Jimmy0]

Yes, really. It uses the skeletal joint locations (or "skeletal anatomy") to determine if you're a child (or a midget). If it was only how tall you are then getting on your knees would work, which doesn't.

Well what I was trying to get at is the whole midget issue. Because it still determines based on your height (of the entire body, so as you said getting on your knees wouldn't work).

I'm just trying to point out that it hasn't got a clue if you're a child or just someone who isn't tall.

[Skulltrail]

Great idea. :hmmm:

[Ironman273]

Well what I was trying to get at is the whole midget issue. Because it still determines based on your height (of the entire body, so as you said getting on your knees wouldn't work).

I'm just trying to point out that it hasn't got a clue if you're a child or just someone who isn't tall.

I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but in the US the population of people with any form of dwarfism is roughly 0.65% of the total population. Why is the benefit of this feature being overshadowed by this midget issue?