Crap for games, great for everything else
Whilst gamers have unders
Microsoft researchers are working with Chinese boffins to tap the XBox 360 Kinect motion sensor's body-tracking capabilities to provide sign language recognition capabilities for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. Members of the Microsoft Research Asia team have produced a new paper (PDF, 2 pages, abstract) - Sign Language …
Crap for games?
Depends on the game. Call of Duty? Yeah, crap for that.
Dance Central? Try that with your controller, couch-bound fatboy.
So... horses for courses.
This research, by the way? Great. Truly great. Keep up the good work, Chinese Boffins+MSR.
Agreed. Played Kinect Sports at a mate's house a few weeks ago and was impressed at how well the Kinect worked, it even knew when my mate was playing.
I watched a demo of a piece of medical imaging tech whereby a consultant oncologist was able to manipulate a 3D MRI image of a tumour using the Kinect sensor. Very impressive, but also useful in theatre settings where the scrubbed-in surgeon can manipulate the image of his or her patient's innards without having to fiddle with a computer wrapped in a condom or such.
"Also they may be using the new version, which reportedly is much more acurate."
There's more than one prototype depth camera floating around MSR. They're all a wee bit better at capturing fine detail than the original system, but it is the application software that makes them accurate at tracking gestures, not the camera itself.