Kinect - only works when standing - Page 2

you could say that about any trade show. companies always promise more than they deliver. the purpose of e3 traditionally was to get the retailers and analysts excited to sell the product. it was never a consumer trade show. the average consumer wasn't even supposed to be able to attend the event (although many people got into the show through friends and others somehow associated with the show). but now, with the internet and the explosion of internet media (all these blogging sites didn't exist 15 years ago), the companies are reaching a far greater audience than just industry-related personnel.


even move is getting criticism for accuracy. for first gen games, these are good tries.

but the point is that there's enough for motion enthusiasts to like either move or kinect. there's enough potential there to see where this technology can go.

i can't wait for dance central. child of eden is a must.

i'm part of the market that loves these games. i have ddr, lips, singstar, karaoke revolution, RB, GH, etc.

if wii had more diversity in gaming, had better graphics and sound, and if it was more accurate, i'd be a big wii fan. but it doesn't. and that's why i prefer 360/ps3.

what i do think is that since sony has set the price of move games at $40, that probably means that kinect games will be $40. that's where competition is good. a gaming world without sony, microsoft, nintendo, etc. is not a good world.

http://gizmodo.com/5565294/playstati...-than-a-wii-hd

PlayStation Move Isn't Much More than a Wii HD

"I had high hopes for PlayStation Move since its announcement. Having played around with various titles for about an hour today, I have to say: if Sony's technology is better, it isn't showing in its first-gen software."

"So I tried The Fight: Lights Out.... The combat? Laggy. And I never felt like my punches were registered the way I threw them onscreen. Rather, my uppercut registered a precanned animation. I understand that my punches probably looked too horrible to use, but a lag, combined with pure animation cues, stops you from feeling like you're fighting. Heck, even Wii's loosely controlled Punch Out! feels more like actual boxing."

"And things didn't get much better for a while. Shoot was a tiring, slow, aim-the-camera-at-the-TV shooter. Singstar Dance? It looked polished, but since when is waving one arm dancing?"

"Sports Champions, Sony's now-mandatory answer to Wii Sports but with a gladiatorincluding a shield-and-sword modereally shined as well. It's not that the motions were perfect 1:1, but the animations and motion tracking found a natural, comfortable balance. "



you go white dude, show them how it's done...

Except you could still use the voice commands to control the playback. So maybe you would have to go with Star Trek instead of Minority Report every once in a while.

It'd HAVE to work from a seated position since I'm not moving my HDTV so there's more than a 2-foot gap from where I sit now. Sitting close makes it easier to see little things about to kill you.

Seems like Microsoft priced this based on how Sony's controller is priced: that's about $130 for one user unless you already had the camera which I don't. If Microsoft eventuall sells small clickers for each hand due to demand for 'triggers', it'll look like an upgrade rather than something that'd hurt initial sales by bloating the price.

Unlikely to get one this year, but maybe someday...

Actually, Sony has confirmed that you can use a regular DualShock, or SixAxis controller in place of the navigation controller in the left hand. So, technically, the price of playing a game for two players with an eye is $130 (without software), or $150 with bundled game (Sports Nation bundle plus extra Move controller). The buy-in price for someone like me who has had a PSEye gathering dust for a year is $100 for two Move controllers and no software.


And, I can't imagine for a second that something as advanced as the Kinect can't tell the difference between a body and a couch using the IR. So, I would think that you could control Netflix/Dashboard/etc from a seated position. It'd be pretty daft if you couldn't.

LOL. That could have hilarious consequences. Picture turning on your 360 with that workout game in the drive. It scans your body, shows your character as having an ass as wide as the couch your sitting on, the instructor says "Damn you're fat. Here's the phone number for the closest lipo doctor." and shuts off your Xbox.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Schloob1
I find this hard to believe it is 100% true when just 1 year ago when they had videos for it they showed poeple sitting down as well as standing. The exact game was the daughter was "driving" the car while sitting and then had the goofy dad get off the couch and he started to change the tires of the race car.


Yes, I know it was not a demo and that is why I stated video. However, even with a video I at least personally feel(think) you would only show what it was capable of. Otherwise that would be false advertising, be it a mock-up or not. I believe at least in the end that many of the games it would make sense to play seated or standing we will be able to. Who knows 100% for sure what devs or "sources" are saying this about not being able to play standing? For all we know it could be someone just trying to cause a little trouble for MS

Lying about what your product is capable of before it comes out is part of how the gaming industry works. Especially at trade events like E3.

Stephen Totilo of Kotaku talked to developers and asked questions about just this topic.

It's actually not looking very good for Kinect right now. Microsoft is explicitly asking developers to not make games for sitting down. Whether that's for some dumb ideological reason ("it's more fun to get off the couch") or technical reasons, who knows, but that's what they are doing.

http://kotaku.com/5565777/xbox-kinec...couch-potatoes

you sit 2 feet from your tv?

Wow, I've never seen a product with so much hype, crash and burn so quickly. Although I haven't really been interested in the whole motion control thing from the beginning, I actually had some slight interest in Natal. After this e3 though, my interest has fallen off a cliff.

Total Fail.

Virtual Boy? Ginger device? Sega CD? Jaguar? The Hindenburg?

Why do you say that people are not clear on this? Are you one of the developers?

As with most things, there are 1st party developers and then everyone else. The 1st party gets to work very close to the Natal team and get the latest builds. Everyone else to wait for the official builds released at timed milestones.

I don't see 1st party developers complaining, so personally, I don't think this is an issue. And even third party developers don't have to worry about it as it is not like you have to code differently for sitting motions. Kinect does the skeletal modelling, not the game. All game developer has to do is to look for a raised hand (for example), they don't need to know whether or not they are seated.

There are still about 3 months of coding left by my calculations. Plenty of time to fix this, if they have not fixed this already.

This is the silliest logic I have ever heard. If a bunch of 1st party developers started talking **** about Kinect... they'd be fired.


Read the link in my above post... MS is explicitly asking developers to make games for standing.

If true, my interest just plummeted to pretty much zero. Pfft, and these are engineers working at Microsoft? How about including 2 or 4 cheap, little plastic clip-on color coded "tags" the player would clip to, say, their shoulders and knees. I mean, if the only problem is, how the camera will see the player versus their surroundings I don't think that's all that hard a problem to solve. Is it harder than differentiating one player from a room full of people? Does Natal do that even? Now I'm worried ha ha.

The funny thing about both Kinect and Move is people are talking about all these cool things you can do with them, yet no developers have done that. Do you really think if they could easily do controls while seated they would just choose not to? Or if they could do easy FPS head tracking they wouldn't do that?

There is an obvious reason they haven't demoed those things. It's because they are hard to do or can't be done. These motion controllers always sound cool in theory until you see the actual games. If you like rhythm and kid party games then these products will probably be a lot of fun. But expecting them to replace game controllers is just ridiculous.

...and yet somehow according to the poster in the other thread, I'm the "fanboy."

It never surprises me how something is said in an interview or anything else how it can and sometimes is misinterpreted. I can't read the link above here at work but I can see someone at MS telling developers to focus on games where you are standing up.
1. Because they want to get you off the couch.
2. Want to get more party games.
3. Might be easier for developers to focus on one thing before the other.

I can see a developer asking questions about Kinect which you would think would be reasonable. The next thing you see is an article that developers are "concerned" with what Kinect or Move can actually do.

When I say 1st party, I am not just talking about MS game houses, I am talking about high priority game developers like EA and Ubisoft. Trust me, if EA thinks there is some bug or feature delay that is going to force them to slip, the would already be out bitchin' and moanin'.



Just because MS wants games to be for standing does not mean that sitting position will not be supported at all. You have to remember that when people are sitting, you are bringing in quite a complexity to the game.

Take the River Raft game for example. If I am sitting down and playing the game, how is the game supposed to register when I am jumping? When I raise my feet? But what if my feet just stays in the air?

They are asking for standing games because in most games the character is standing. It is much simpler to do 1:1 mapping of skeleton. If you have to support people sitting down, you have to start guessing and translating, which will lead to more bugs.

But if the game is designed to be sitting (i.e the game does not use lower body data), it is going to work just fine on Kinect.

TV's about 24" from the end of my bed. I sit on the end of the bed to play. Makes for a very nice setup. 38" RCA tube HDTV, not 720p compatible but unlike the PS3, the 360 supports everything in 1080i so I'm good...

EA and Ubi are 3rd party. MS tells them to make standing games and they make standing games. Every system has limitations, it's just a matter of working around them.

COnsidering the amount of money EA and Ubi are spending on these games though, I don't think the developers have carte blanche to go out there and bitch about how stupid they think Kinect are. Holding your tongue is part of working for any big company. I'm not a psychic and don't know what they are thinking.


Too soon to tell. Again, in the Kotaku article, Totilo asked a guy working on I think the Kinect Video stuff and he said, "we're not calibrated for sitting." Clearly Kinect Video and that dashboard stuff is not using lower body data. So who knows what that means?


This is pretty much how I feel. We've had motion control for 4 years and haven't gotten much out of it. The idea that Sony is going to bring some amazing new stuff to the table is pretty fantastical. Kinect is new, yes, but the fact that all we have seen to date is pretty much just motion control without a controller says a lot.

Not to mention there is definitely an institutional bias against making amazing new stuff. As an example, GT5 is doing head tracking with PS Eye, but PS Eye has been around since 2007 and nobody else has done it. These features are risky and add cost and it's easier just not to do them. Fitness and dance **** on Kinect is safe so you will see a lot of that.

"But if the game is designed to be sitting (i.e the game does not use lower body data), it is going to work just fine on Kinect."

Why don't we wait and see before we claim to know everything that Kinect is capable of.

Maybe it can do that, but they have been avoiding that so far. In the Forza demo the player isn't even controlling the acceleration! Don't you think if they could do those things they would show that off?

why you can technically use a regular controller instead of the nav, do you think you can actually manipulate it well one-handed? you have a move in one hand and the regular controller in the other hand.

and many of the demos used 2 move controllers for 1 player. so that's $130 for 1 player: 2 move controllers and 1 cam.



white dude FTW!

LOL Nice graphic. If I only have to use one joystick, I'm sure it'd be fine for a while. A "hardcore" gamer is going to buy the Move, Nav controller, camera and Kinect regardless of price. But, someone can technically buy the bundle and have a full Move experience. I don't know what the controls will be for the Sports Nation if you only have one controller--I doubt your gladiator stands there with a paralyzed arm. It could be as simple as pressing a button on the other controller for "block"--you know, like the way we do it now? So, using two Move controllers is "better," but not "required."

My prediction is that they told them to focus on standing for Kinect because it's easier now. They are trying to map 17 points of a skeleton in a 3-D space, after all. They might go through a stage where you have to be mapped standing, and THEN you can sit down. And, then it can save your skeleton so you can start sitting. I dunno. But, I am sure they'll figure it out at some point.


There is something oddly poetic about games coming full circle from arcades where you stand to living rooms with 60" HDTVs in 3D....where you stand.

Yup. For now, that seems to be all Kinect can do. We'll have to see at Gamescom if it can do anything else.


Well, MS isn't helping the situation. They introduced the product at last year's E3, and now this year, they've added barely anything to what we already knew. It's not doing anything more than the little they showed last year, and in some cases (like with Forza) it's actually doing less than what they showed last year (in the Burnout demo for the press). Why are they still avoiding showing live demos to the public? The closest thing we've seen is the staged demo for the Parade writer, and all that showed was him and a woman and two kids flailing around.

MS does this huge circus act to kick off E3 and announce the name "Kinect," and then... nothing. Sure, we should "wait and see" before we pass judgment. But MS isn't helping the situation by being so secretive. All it does is convince people that the tech isn't ready.

EDIT: And then there's the update to Totilo's article on Kotaku:


Confirms that, yes, they're working on it (for media controls, not necessarily for games), and that, no, the tech isn't ready yet. And there's no indication that sitting will work for games. But if they can get it working for media control, then hopefully they can get it squared away for (at least some) games.

http://gizmodo.com/5506395/the-myste...natal-revealed



it seems like they can see them on the couch okay.



cool look at the kinect tech.

Heh--that picture makes me think of GLADoS.

It's coming down now to a "he said, she said" situation between MS and third-party devs. We do know that current tech doesn't allow for sitting (according to both MS and 3rd parties), but that doesn't mean future tech won't. The Totilo article is the best I've read on the subject. Anyone interested/concerned should just read that. Otherwise, it's just a waiting game at this point to see when/if/how MS improves the tech.

AHAHAHAAHA!!!!1!!!11!!! Can't be a fatass on the couch.

Edit: What happens if you're a midget?

It's Forza for the masses.

Ugh.