Kinect Discussion

[dfusioness]

The First Moron To Break His TV With Kinect



Well, the first moron that we've heard of. He's not really a moron, he's Phil Villarreal, author and critic. And he's out a pricey television. You are the controller? No Phil, you are the guy with the broken TV.

"A public service announcement: Do not under any circumstances play Kinect Sports Volleyball at 1:30 a.m. while standing under a ceiling fan with a dangling chain for a light switch," he writes.

The result was that Phil apparently spiked the dangling chain into his 47-inch 1080p LCD HDTV, leaving it with a rainbow LCD teardrop of death. Kinect went on sale on November 4. It is now November 5. That television was purchased last December, and it never lived to see its second Christmas. How sad.

When the Nintendo Wii launched in 2006, there were also claims that flying Wii Remotes caused accidents — some real, some not. Anytime you get gamers off the sofa and floundering around the living room, you're asking for trouble.


and so it begins...........   

ooh rainbows-pretty

[nCogNeato]

Kinect is Racist?  (KKKinect)

You're at a family get-together. Relatives you haven't seen in years are all gathered to celebrate four generations of familial unity. You whip out your Nikon Coolpix S630 digital camera to mark the occasion. Luckily, its facial-recognition software helps capture that perfectly poignant moment. You snap a photo and a notification pops up. "Did someone blink?" A helpful box appears over the offending party. She didn't blink. She's Asian.

You're working at a computer shop. Every week, new technology comes flooding in, replacing the old. Displays must be set up so that customers may test out the revolutionary products and decide if it's worth their time. Among the hands-on products is a Hewlett-Packard webcam with facial-recognition software which allows the lens to follow the user and keep centered in the frame. For your coworker, it performs perfectly -- panning and zooming when necessary. Unfortunately for you, it doesn't pan. It doesn't zoom. It can't recognize your face. Why? You're black.

And so it goes for the new Microsoft Kinect -- a motion-detecting peripheral for the Xbox 360 which allows players to control on-screen action via 3D motion capture, facial recognition, and voice commands. And like Nokia cameras and HP webcams, it doesn't work so well with dark-skinned gamers.

Gamespot noticed the issue during a product review when two of its employees had trouble being recognized by the camera sensors. One had "inconsistent" success, the other wasn't identified at all despite numerous recalibration attempts. Light-skinned employees had no difficulty with the facial-recognition system.

Gamespot's Brendan Sinclair had this to say about the device:


It's important to note that the problems were only experienced with the system's facial recognition feature, and don't prevent users from playing Kinect games. Skeletal tracking, a primary means of controlling games with Kinect, appeared to work the same for all GameSpot employees.

The system's inability to recognize a user only means that he or she would need to sign in manually, and some games' features may not work properly as a result. For example, when a second player joins in to Kinect Adventures during the title's drop-in, drop-out multiplayer, the system can't bring up that player's proper in-game avatar automatically if it can't identify the new user first.


While Kinect's lack of racial sensitivity is grabbing the headlines, another act of discrimination seems to be buried. In order for the peripheral to work properly, a minimum distance of six feet -- eight feet for multiplayer -- is necessary. Ever see a dorm or an efficiency apartment have that much free space?

Sorry college students and New Yorkers.

[dfusioness]

oh dear, better get patching boys

[Failed]

damn, it's because of the technology but your gonna be gutted if you get Kinect and it doesn't recognise you.

Christmas is a high time for suicides; 'I feel like i don't exist' 'Perhaps some Kinect will cheer me up' KINECT DOES NOT RECOGNISE YOU OR THINS YOUR SCENERY' (queue long drop and short rope).

Kinect = Suicide AMG!  

[dfusioness]

ha ha lol xx

[GamerMan316]

Leona Lewis launches Kinect with her voice, which ironically is something you can't do, shame nobody queued up to give the oxygen thief another smack, but you can't have everything can you?   

[DFUSIONITE]

i now own kinect thanks to fizz for giving me my 30th birthday present early, as my actual birthday is on xmas day. The tech is amazing, kinect adventures is great fun especially with my daughter. it's very accurate once you have dialled it in with the kinect tuner interface and the lag is very minimal (miliseconds, hardly noticeable) and they are patching and updating it in the new year to improve the accuracy and  response times and improve the voice and gesture controls. Once they have done this  it will go from being great to excellent and the second wave of games look like they are gonna take kinect to the next level in terms of gameplay, creativity and adult content. I am over the moon with it and i went and bought kinect sports today which i am gonna play with my daughter tonight, who incidentally bloody adores the thing, i will review both games in full in a couple of weeks but my first impressions are really good and i know that the kinect experience is just gonna get better and better over the next twelve to eighteen months i the same way that the xbox 360 experience did and is still doing, so thanks for my pressie fizz!!   

[Failed]

knew you'd like it, you big kid!

[GamerMan316]

Whether it improves or not in the next 18 months depends on the top devs I guess, some aren't bothered about embracing Kinect while others are.  Still less than zero interest in it for me but i'm glad you like it mate.   

[DFUSIONITE]

just wanna say quickly that kinect sports is amazing and way better than any motion control game i have ever played, and i used to own a wii. it's full of tiny nuances in control and you are able to put varying spin on the ball as in real life during table tennis and bowling, put curve on the ball when taking a free kick in football and hit the ball at varying speeds and angles during the excellent beach volleyball. i was amazed how accurate and nuanced the controls were, and it's much better as a game than the fun kinect adventures. lag is also minimal and barely noticeable. only problem now is i am aching in places i didn't even know i had and i was sweating profusely after 30 mins, maybe playing for 4 hours was a mistake lol. at this rate i am gonna be in great shape before i know it and without even trying!!

[Failed]

your enthusiasm is infectuous .... damn you Dfuzz

[GamerMan316]

your enthusiasm is infectuous .... damn you Dfuzz

Not for me it ain't   

[DFUSIONITE]

your enthusiasm is infectuous .... damn you Dfuzz

Not for me it ain't 

that's good 'cos kinect doesn't recognise gingers as it can only map human skeletons  only joking mate you know i love you with all my heart  on a more serious note craigs middle name used to be 'fun' but he didn't like having 'fun' as his middle name so he snapped his middle name's neck and threw it in a river tied up in a black bin bag. and thats why he will never buy kinect 

[dfusioness]

couldn't have put it better myself hunni x

[GamerMan316]

My middle name has always been 'Danger', nothing, fun included, can ever change that.