[Official] Kinect - Over 4 million units sold!

[Hedon]

More confirmation that you can sit with Kinect:

My link

Kinect software will work with seated players when 'developed with sitting in mind'

Microsoft has clarified that Kinect is very capable of recognizing a user that's sitting, an aspect of the new tech that continues to be a point of confusion. "Kinect can be used while sitting when an experience is developed with sitting in mind," a representative for the company confirmed to Joystiq today.

As for previously revealed Kinect applications that are being developed with a seated user in mind, Microsoft pointed to navigating the Dashboard, along with using the ESPN, Zune and Video Kinect apps as "experiences where we expect people to be sitting."

Microsoft concluded that what it showed at E3 was "only the tip of the iceberg" and that it's going to be "natural for Kinect games to be designed to get you off the couch: dancing, running, dodging, bending and kicking." It's just good to know that we'll also have opportunities to stay seated and move as little as possible to connect to this motion-based gameplay technology.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

"Kinect can be used while sitting when an experience is developed with sitting in mind."

In other words when it's voice commands for a movie

[Hedon]

Where does it say that?

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Where does it say that?

Where do MS say nearly anything about Kinect clearly?

It's been two E3's and it's months before launch and there's still fake demos and confusion about how it actually works and what it actually costs.

The pre-launch marketing so far has been a shambles.

[Hedon]

So it doesn't say it. Ok, cool.

[Spookie]

Where do MS say nearly anything about Kinect clearly?

Aye I've noticed that, so has people over on GAF/SA. Nice to see someone else can read PR. ;)

It's a very cryptic statement. It doesn't come out and say: it works sitting down. If it did I'm sure they would have done just that- it'll no doubt appease most people though.

[Hedon]

Rofl

[BajiRav]

Where do MS say nearly anything about Kinect clearly?

It's been two E3's and it's months before launch and there's still fake demos and confusion about how it actually works and what it actually costs.

The pre-launch marketing so far has been a shambles.

fake demos? They'd fake if the games didn't work. Apparently all of them do.

Rofl

did you expect anything different?

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

fake demos? They'd fake if the games didn't work. Apparently all of them do.

All the pre-recorded stuff at E3, you know what I'm talking about.

[Hedon]

fake demos? They'd fake if the games didn't work. Apparently all of them do.

did you expect anything different?

+1. nope ;)

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

All the pre-recorded stuff at E3, you know what I'm talking about.

I'd lay low on the fake comments, unless we want to bring up E3 2005 :whistle:

Yeah, you know what I'm talking about :p

Also, the statement is true. Who the hell is going to play a dancing game sitting down? There will be games where sitting makes sense. Kinectamals already supports people not standing.

[BajiRav]

All the pre-recorded stuff at E3, you know what I'm talking about.

A pre-recorded demo is still a demo.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

I'd lay low on the fake comments, unless we want to bring up E3 2005 :whistle:

Yeah, you know what I'm talking about :p

Also, the statement is true. Who the hell is going to play a dancing game sitting down? There will be games where sitting makes sense. Kinectamals already supports people not standing.

Why would that bare any relevance to Kinect?

A pre-recorded demo is still a demo.

Okay

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Because you keep bringing up fake demos of Kinect, and we could keep bringing up fake demos of a handful of games Sony showed?

Or hell, fake demos of Move as well.

[Spookie]

Or hell, fake demos of Move as well.

Interested in seeing this. Which demo on stage was faked for Sony?

/offtopic

[Hedon]

Because you keep bringing up fake demos of Kinect, and we could keep bringing up fake demos of a handful of games Sony showed?

Or hell, fake demos of Move as well.

I am still waiting for confirmation from Microsoft (and Sony) on all these fake demos btw :)

[Corris Veteran]

This topic doesn't look like its going to head in a good direction, lol.

Yes, we all know that Sony used pre-rendered Trailers to show off future games at E3, not demo's, trailers.

And we know that MS has used some pre-recorded footage for some of their shows of Kinect on stage.

There, can we move on now?

We've already gone through this plenty of times already, its boring now.:p

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

This topic doesn't look like its going to head in a good direction, lol.

Yes, we all know that Sony used pre-rendered Trailers to show off future games at E3, not demo's, trailers.

And we know that MS has used some pre-recorded footage for some of their shows of Kinect on stage.

There, can we move on now?

We've already gone through this plenty of times already, its boring now.:p

Indeed (Y)

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Interested in seeing this. Which demo on stage was faked for Sony?

/offtopic

This...

It's more about still doing it months before release, not years before release.

Just want to know what the hell Natal can actually do or can't do and how much it is.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

We know what it can do? We even have the tech specs. What more do you want to know?

[Sethos]

This...

It's more about still doing it months before release, not years before release.

Just want to know what the hell Natal can actually do or can't do and how much it is.

You don't even want the thing, so why do you care :p ?

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Can Kinect handle a player lying down? Yes and no

Amidst all the hubbub around the question of whether Kinect can or can't handle a player sitting on a couch, one related question seems to have been lost: Can Kinect handle players lying on the floor? This important issue was finally addressed at a session of the Develop Conference in Brighton today, and the answer is a definitive "kind of."

Speaking at the session, Blitz Games CTO Andrew Oliver said his team ran into this very issue when developing their The Biggest Loser: Ultimate Workout game for Kinect. Many of the exercises on The Biggest Loser TV show, such as push-ups and certain yoga poses, require lying on the ground.

Replicating these in the game offered a new challenge for Microsoft's 3D motion sensing hardware, and apparently it's a test the hardware fails. Oliver reported lying on the ground fundamentally breaks the 3D skeleton of your body detected by the Kinect camera and technology. "We had to consider, would this skeletal tracking ever realistically be able to work out that a player is laying on the floor," Oliver said. "We asked – believe me we asked – and we were told it wasn't going to happen."

The case of the lying down Kinect player doesn't quite end there, though. Oliver said that after a bit of tinkering, the Blitz team found that Kinect could still successfully detect a push-up simply by observing the player silhouette transmitted by the system's camera. While the solution required a bit of extra coding on the developer's part, Oliver said that what the team came up with demonstrates the versatility of the Kinect hardware in the hands of a resourceful developer. "You don't need to rely on the system," Oliver said. "You can write your own [detection routine] if you know what you're looking for."

As for the old sitting versus standing canard, Oliver said the results depend largely on what you're trying to do with your game. Navigating menus from a seated position works jut fine, for instance, and Oliver said players are sitting in nearly half the scenes included in the Kinect version of Yoostar movie karaoke that Blitz is working on. Oliver's presentation partner, Rare's Nick Burton, said his company didn't really prototype any seated experiences when they were designing Kinect Sports. That said, "if you want to design a seated experience, you can design a seated experience," Burton stated firmly.

Source: http://www.joystiq.c...own-yes-and-no/

[Hedon]

Great news

[Spookie]

So what what they're saying is: MS never made the libraries to detect sitting/lying down players and we've had to create our own. Oh dear. :/

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

No the sitting never involved creating anything in-house, only the lying down.

Even then they never had to create anything either really, the camera was already able to detect it with silhouettes, but not with the skeleton detection. All they had to do was change their game around it.