Testing Microsoft's Kinect
Having had a few opportunities to play around with Microsoft's Kinect camera peripheral over the past year (then it was still called Project Natal), we were eager to try the seemingly finalized version displayed at E3 (see the video below for highlights from our hands-on session).
The first thing we noticed was that the Kinect hardware was visually very close (as far as we could tell) to the demo devices seen as far back as E3 2009, despite rumblings from Microsoft reps during the year that the design was subject to change. It's a physically large device, and not as easy to blend into a home entertainment center as a thin Wii sensor bar.
In our previous hands-on experiences with the then-Natal, we thought it recognized human forms well, but there was typically a slight delay in translating movement to the screen, and occasionally, the entire skeletal structure of your on-screen avatar could get twisted around. The current Kinect camera/software package at once seems more responsive and stable, although it still felt a hair away from direct one-to-one movement.
We were particularly interested in trying out the Xbox Live media functions of the Kinect system. While several parts of Xbox Live will purportedly work with the device, the only one we could demo in person was the Zune library. There, we were able to start and stop a video file, as well as jog forward and back, just by using hand gestures. The experience had a learning curve, but a small one, we managed not to trigger many false positive inputs.
Read the full article at CNET. Also, see Dan's take in the Kinect video below:
