Archive for the 'XBox 360 Kinect' Category

Microsoft heavily promoted the Kinect XBOX 360 games today at E3. Developers have had a another year to generate new uses, and it shows in the latest line-up of games.

The Kinect is a USB peripheral.  I know you remember that the Kinect is Motion Sensing Video Camera that let’s you use your whole body to play games. 

More Creatitivity with 3D Web Cameras

A 3D Camera like the Kinect allows you to really find ways to be creative.

See a demo of Drawing in 3D at 3:00 in the video below.

Or advance to 4:00 to see you you can use the Kinect to take a real 3D object and bring it into a 3D world inside the XBOX

Fun Stuff

Here’s a Demonstration of Dance Central 2 – The game detects your movements so:

a) You can dance with your kids for hours
b) You can be a better dancer (hiding your inner nerd)
c) Your kids can be better dancers that you ever will be.

If a bunch of people post comments, maybe I’ll post video of myself playing Dance Central on the XBOX 360 with Kinect.

Here’s the Star Wars Kinect Demo.  I’m sure the kids will love that too.  It’s the closest they’ll ever become to being a Jedi.

3

As a Concept – 3D Art drawing is interesting. Advance to 3:11 to see this demonstration.

The Best BlackBerry Ever

After my 20th trip to Japan where my phone didn’t work (during the earthquake), I requested a replacement.  I’m excited to say I received my 6th Blackberry phone, and it’s fantastic.

The BlackBerry Curve 3G has:

1) beautiful interface
2) fast response time, and
3) superb voice recognition. 
4) 3G
5) Better WiFi (as far as I can tell)
6) Even the USB seems faster.

And it hasn’t crashed or frozen on my even once.  So I’m loving this phone.

Tango on the iPad 2 and iPod Touch 4

I installed “Tango Video Calls” on my iPod Touch and iPad 2 (yes I got one) and had a call with my Dad in less than 2 minutes.  It was super easy, and good quality over WiFi.  FaceTime has taken longer for me to set up, but it also seems to work.  FaceTime does not work on my corporate WiFi, but Tango does.  Tango is free, so give it a try.

More on my iPad 2, and maybe SSIC next time.

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Yes, 3D TV has it’s skeptics, but at the beginning of the last century, people thought “talkies*” would fail.

Because you’ve been reading this blog, the Kinect for the XBOX 360 uses multiple cameras to create accurate 3D images of the body, to track body movement.

It has a built in microphone also, and the ability to video conference.

Using existing chips and the Kinect (out-of-the-box tech), MIT’s superior intellects created moving holographic images.  You can see this in the 56 second video below.

According the video and this article,http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/01/24/kinect.used.for.15fps.holographic.internet.video/ , this eliminates the need for glasses.

And, to increase the frame rate you just need higher speeds, something like 1.5 Gigabytes per second.  Since USB 3.0 will transmit something like 3.2 Gigabytes per second, you should be able to run 30 frame per second from USB 3.0 video “web” cameras to a display for a holographic image.

It would be funny if the only way we actually enable holographic video conferencing is because someone invented USB 3.0 Video Cameras.

CES 2011 – Sony TV with video conferencing

I did catch a picture of a Sony TV demonstrating Video Conferencing at CES.

The USB Camera mounted above the screen is barely visible. 

The dork in the white baseball cap taking the picture can be seen on the screen.

*talkies = movies that have a sound track with voices.

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Sony and Microsoft have added Motion Control to their game systems.  Specifically, Sony has wireless motions sensing remotes (called the Move) similar to the Wii controller (WiMote).  Microsoft has the Kinect.

Microsoft Kinect gives the 5 year old XBox and will likely boost sales and lengthen the life of the XBox 360 further.

In fact, the Sony Move and the Microsoft Kinect will definitely inject revenue to game sales in general. 

The Kinect is a USB peripheral.  is a actually 2 video cameras in a box with microphones in the box.  The software constructs a 3D image of your body

Image Source: Gamespot.http://www.gamespot.com/special_feature/konnecting-kinect/image-feature/index.html?image=1

The EETimes did a teardown of the Kinect. 

The 2 PCB boards inside the Kinect included at least 2 USB 2.0 chips

1) an NEC USB 2.0 Hub. 

2) a TI USB Peripheral chip.

The Hub indicates that there must be at least 1 other USB peripheral in the chip.

For a listing of the major parts found by UBM TechInsights within Kinect go to the EETimes article here: http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4210649/Kinect-s-BOM-roughly–56–teardown-finds-?cid=NL_EETimesDaily

Second USB 3.0 Host Certified

The USB-IF granted Fresco Logic certification of their USB 3.0 xHCI Host Controller.  This is really, really, really important because it will put some real competition in the market for NEC’s USB 3.0 xHCI Host Chips, the first and previously only certified Host controller.  Digitimes reports that Fresco Logic already has Asustekand ASRock as customers for its Host Chip.  Digitimes also reports that prices have dropped to something like $2-$3 per chip, down from $6 initially for NEC Host Chip.

More competition, means lower prices, means more USB 3.0 everywhere.

In 3 weeks, Microsoft will ship out Kinect for the XBox 360.  Kinect is a 3D Video Camera and Software. The Camera connects to your XBox through the XBox USB port.  It allows you to play games without a controller.  The early reviews indicate that this is the most precise motion control system ever, where the system uses “1 million points” on your body for greater precision.

Microsoft demonstrated Video Conferencing using the XBox 360 at E3.  I expect that Microsoft could roll this technology out for Desktop/Laptop PCs for more than gaming. It could be used for video conferencing, and 3D video conferencing.  

According to Gamespot, PrimeSense built the PrimeSensor 3D camera, the technology at the heart of the Kinect.  MI guess the dual camera system allows for more precise measurements of body position.

Microsoft filed a patent for  the use of American Sign Language (ALS) for “voice chat” over games.   Microsoft’s patent indicates that it could be used for the Hearing Impaired to communicate with other on-line players.  The players gestures would be translated to a voice chat, actual audio to the other players.   The Patent itself has an example that says, “You’ve been Pwned”.  Translated from Gamer Smack Talk this means, “I beat you so badly at this game that you should turn off your XBox and never play again.”

More interesting to me, potentially, ASL could be used for non-keyboard input of data or chat.  Extend this technology to the desktop or your mobile phone, and you no longer need to type.  Maybe, I could convey ideas in phrases faster than I could type whole sentences.

Will people learn ALS?  Will mobile phones have user-facing cameras for input?  I can only say, that it’s an option.  If we can learn abbreviations like. “OTW” or “OTP” or “R U Crazy”, we should be able to learn dozens or hundreds of gestures which convey more meaning.

That’s my revelation for today.

Videos from Microsoft’s E3 Launch embedded below.

For more demos, go to YouTube and search on “Kinect XBox E3”