RIP Kinect: 2010-2017(ish)
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Canterrain
Ars Scholae Palatinae
This. I was just considering upgrading my xbox one to an xbox one s now that I have a 4k tv with hdr (I can't justify the price of a x currently). But I rather like having voice control. I game on my console, but less and less these days. It's what made my tv 'smart' for a long time, and I'm near dependent on the voice control to get in and out of things. Without the adapter (which is stupid hard to get now) I'll lose that.
Kill off the Kinect, fine. But give us really good microphone options then.... (not something where I need to wear a microphone)
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Put Kinect next to their early tablet efforts in the "Microsoft, you actually can have decent ideas but your timing is awful" bucket.
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This is one of several niche technologies that Microsoft needs to hand off to a smaller company or an open source outfit. Another is the Explorer trackball. None of these are sufficiently profitable for a company the size of Microsoft, but could be made by smaller outfits.
The Kinect sensor, in particular, can be used to do motion capture for pennies on the dollar compared to traditional ball suit and camera rigs (se, for example, iPi soft). The benefits for student film makers, physics and biomechanics courses should be obvious.
The Kinect sensor, in particular, can be used to do motion capture for pennies on the dollar compared to traditional ball suit and camera rigs (se, for example, iPi soft). The benefits for student film makers, physics and biomechanics courses should be obvious.
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I'm one of the few that loves the Kinect. My wife also really like to work out to the Zumba game as well. I'm kicking myself for not getting an adapter, because now I have an XboxOneX and no way for the wife to Zumba on the good TV.
Maybe motion games aren't fun for most, but the Kinect is a better idea than it was given credit for.
Maybe motion games aren't fun for most, but the Kinect is a better idea than it was given credit for.
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I'm going to be incredibly rational about this whole thing and simply say, fuck you Microsoft.
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Was Microsoft just never able to address some of the problems/limitations mentioned in the article? This seems like something they should have been able to continue R&D on and get to be a fantastic piece of hardware, beyond just a gaming peripheral.
I remember thinking that the Kinect could eventually give us something like Minority Report hand control of things. That clearly never happened, but I struggle to understand the limiting factors that prevented that.
I remember thinking that the Kinect could eventually give us something like Minority Report hand control of things. That clearly never happened, but I struggle to understand the limiting factors that prevented that.
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Kinect was a cool piece of hardware they never found a good use for. I've played some of the games and they were terrible, I think the main issue is that as a gaming controller it's nearly worthless.
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If you want to develop stuff for kinect and access the raw data, there's still structure.io, who'll sell you an add-on scanner for iOS devices (with a really solid SDK) for $300ish. Uses the same chip as the original Kinect, I think.
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The Kinect is STILL used today by Microsoft. Watch one of the HoloLens demos where they have the external camera that allows viewers to see what the HoloLens wearer is seeing and there is a Kinect firmly attached to that assembly.
See this video. Pause at 1:39. There is a Kinect mounted just below the main camera.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=ho ... ORM=VRDGAR
EDIT: I get down voted by pointing out a fact? Tough crowd.
EDIT EDIT: That video was from 2015. I watched one from 2016 and I didn't see the Kinect. So maybe they've figured out another way to do what the Kinect was doing.
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Perhaps it's the paranoid wonk in me, but I've always had issues with the idea of always-on, always-listening devices.
Is it that I read 1984? Or, growing up near the end of the Cold War with its stereotypical paranoia with "Oh God, THEY'RE [inserting any governmental agency here, Soviet or US] LISTENING IN!"? I don't know, but the fine line between convenience and surveillance can easily be crossed at any time at this point (and according to those more security conscious and/or paranoid than I, is already happening/has happened).
So, good riddance. Good in some concepts (full-body gaming, verbal commands), but terrible in others (constantly on, and the initial [did the problem persist?] problems with identifying darker skin tones initially popped into my head.
Is it that I read 1984? Or, growing up near the end of the Cold War with its stereotypical paranoia with "Oh God, THEY'RE [inserting any governmental agency here, Soviet or US] LISTENING IN!"? I don't know, but the fine line between convenience and surveillance can easily be crossed at any time at this point (and according to those more security conscious and/or paranoid than I, is already happening/has happened).
So, good riddance. Good in some concepts (full-body gaming, verbal commands), but terrible in others (constantly on, and the initial [did the problem persist?] problems with identifying darker skin tones initially popped into my head.
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Early on, John Carmack criticized it for essentially being a laggy, 0-button mouse. There are some interesting uses, but its not ideal for playing videogames.
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The resolution and lag were definitely improved in the Xbox One version of Kinect, but not to the point where they were able to, say, reliably detect fingers without noticeable latency.
Subsequent technology, like the FaceID sensor on the iPhone X, has improved things much further, and I think a v3 of Kinect released today could be technically quite impressive at a reasonable cost. But I think Microsoft is once bitten twice shy at this point, and sees that consumers and developers are kind of burned out on living room TV applications for this kind of thing at the moment.
I wouldn't be shocked if we see a resurgent attempt at controller-free camera controls for consoles in a decade or so, when the stigma has worn off and the technology has become mature.
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Too bad. It was an odd choice to make it about gaming. It had a lot of potential, with the right accessories, to be used for some neat things, like virtual meeting rooms, virtual party rooms, virtual tourism (I Can't Believe It's Not Graceland), virtual "personal stress relief"...there was so much potential.
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Sad to hear. I really liked using the Kinect on my XB1 for turning on/off, muting and navigation to apps that supported it. It was also great for Skyping with family and friends. Unfortunately mine stopped working a few months ago.
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Microsoft sold the company that made the Kinetic to Apple. They made it smaller and put it on the new iPhone X. That's what they're using for facial recognition. So, with the tech being used by another company, of course Microsoft would discontinue manufacturing, etc.
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I wish they had upgraded the Kinect sensor and developed it into a quick easy Home/Echo competitor.
I want to be able to use the Xbox for my home entertainment uses via voice control but Cortana doesn't respond well and now that the One S and X need separate adapters for power injection, I wonder if they plan to kill Cortana via negligence too.
I want to be able to use the Xbox for my home entertainment uses via voice control but Cortana doesn't respond well and now that the One S and X need separate adapters for power injection, I wonder if they plan to kill Cortana via negligence too.
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It was garbage from Day One.
Honestly, I thought it was dead several years ago because I haven't heard it mentioned in quite a while.
Honestly, I thought it was dead several years ago because I haven't heard it mentioned in quite a while.
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Completely agree. I still use my Kinect daily, mostly for voice interaction with the One X, but also for Skype calls with the whole family. It's not perfect, but it's good enough. It could have been incredible by now had Microsoft kept with it.
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I'm actually in the camp that they will ultimately kill Cortana as a brand and simply make it a background task. Hence the somewhat recent announcement of a complete Cortana redesign and moving some common things to the system tray. I think the tech will remain, it's how they are gathering info on users, but the Cortana brand will die because Microsoft has no idea how to market to consumers.
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It was a rushed product conceived and brought to market when the Wii was outselling every other console combined. Cash-grab central right there.
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Science museums and planetariums love their MS Kinect powered displays. I wonder what they’ll use now.
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Classic MSFT. Sick of the introductions of tech and getting everyone onboard just to let it languish and then be taken out back and shot (I'm looking at you Windows Phone, the I'm not dead yet Surface line, InfoPath, etc, etc).
Hit refresh indeed.
Hit refresh indeed.
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Alex Kipman himself has admitted the Kinect was a necessary laboratory stepping stone to the HoloLens. It helped commoditize the cost of IR depth cameras to point that we could see them relatively cheaply added to phones (both Apple's FaceID sensor and Windows' predecessor Hello sensor). If nothing else, the Kinect was an amazing bootstrapping decision to push what at the time was almost a $10,000+ Human-Computer Interface lab into a $150 bar you could buy in any Wal-Mart. It has done a lot for HCI lab work already. It has left its mark on the future just in all the research it has touched.
It reminds me of the LIDAR bootstrap article recently about commoditizing the LIDAR. The article focused on how self-driving cars might the drive to bootstrap things, but the Kinect is a reminder that even a "toy" can be a useful bootstrap. It's also a reminder that LIDAR, too, has some debt it owes to the Kinect for making some experiments easier to run in the lab; some LIDAR startups certainly used Kinects for mock ups and lab testing/comparisons. I know too many hobbyists that used Kinects for cheap LIDAR work to assume otherwise. They definitely benefitted from the commoditization of high resolution IR sensors.
It reminds me of the LIDAR bootstrap article recently about commoditizing the LIDAR. The article focused on how self-driving cars might the drive to bootstrap things, but the Kinect is a reminder that even a "toy" can be a useful bootstrap. It's also a reminder that LIDAR, too, has some debt it owes to the Kinect for making some experiments easier to run in the lab; some LIDAR startups certainly used Kinects for mock ups and lab testing/comparisons. I know too many hobbyists that used Kinects for cheap LIDAR work to assume otherwise. They definitely benefitted from the commoditization of high resolution IR sensors.
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RE: Zune, Windows Phone, Windows Media Center, Surface, basically anything that isn't Office or a consumer Windows OS.
I fully expect them to give in on even Bing and Azure at some point because they just keep burning money on tech they can't seem to expand on. I've been on too many of Microsoft's "us too!" rides to give them the benefit of the doubt anymore.
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I think where Microsoft really screwed up Kinect was with regards to Cortana and smart speaker/assistant integration.
Literally years before Amazon Echo and Alexa ruled the landscape and defined a market, Microsoft had a computer (Xbox One) with a powerful microphone array (Kinect) in people's homes that could be used with their own personal assistant service.
Instead they completely botched what was a potentially groundbreaking piece of technology, which in the 2010s now, is par for Microsoft.
Literally years before Amazon Echo and Alexa ruled the landscape and defined a market, Microsoft had a computer (Xbox One) with a powerful microphone array (Kinect) in people's homes that could be used with their own personal assistant service.
Instead they completely botched what was a potentially groundbreaking piece of technology, which in the 2010s now, is par for Microsoft.
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My daughter is just learning how to properly say "Xbox On" and "Xbox watch Netflix" and so ironically as much as we use it I may have to disable voice controls soon.
XB1 as a media center solution is great with voice control.
We also regularly use Skype on the Xbox to chat with grandparents and such, and the tracking and high quality of the Kinect is great for that as well. Nothing else feels like Back to the Future II than watching TV and getting a video call on our wall screen.
XB1 as a media center solution is great with voice control.
We also regularly use Skype on the Xbox to chat with grandparents and such, and the tracking and high quality of the Kinect is great for that as well. Nothing else feels like Back to the Future II than watching TV and getting a video call on our wall screen.
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I visited M$ HQ once in 2009 if memory serves (bought my Xbox360 Elite there with Knect) and one thing that struck me as my friend (and employee) showed me around is how they have plenty of ideas circulating even if they do look 'old' from the outside. I think there are 3 problems (and I emphasize it's my *opinion*):
1- They stretch their R&D budget too thin
2- They are very bad at marketing
3- They don't quite get market timing overall (which is partially due to 1)
For all my $ on their name and my general fun poking at M$ I'd stick my money on the company even with those problems. Eventually they will squeeze something awesome.
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I agree 100%. I teach high school science and we used the kinect a few years ago to do a low-level version of some of the biomechanics work that normally would have cost us upwards of $5000. While the issues with lag and resolution were there, it still was a useful project that we couldn't have accomplished without the Kinect, even if we have moved on to other technologies and projects since then.
It's just one of those things about progress: It eventually makes the first few generations of devices obsolete. However, the lessons we can pull from those first few generations give us the information we need to improve the next.
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I imagine we'll see this again; coupled with an XBox flavored VR headset. Sure, their mixed reality headsets already have inside-out tracking that work mostly as desired, but a room mounted camera will boost visibility of objects that are out of view of the headgear cameras.
(Just don't put microphones on it. No need. Those should exist on their own; maybe on the console itself and/or each controller.)
(Just don't put microphones on it. No need. Those should exist on their own; maybe on the console itself and/or each controller.)
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Azure is not going anywhere. Everything except Windows is also available on top of Azure now. I think Azure costs are essentially free, as they pay for them by charging the other divisions for running their software on Azure (Office, Exchange, CRM, SQL, whatever). It inflates revenues and costs for all the divisions making the top line look nice.
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The problem with this analysis is that Microsoft is one of the top R&D spenders in the world. They are the #1 spender in internet/software, more than Google and Apple.
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Worst part is that they neutered the OneGuide voice controls in the last update to the point that it’s virtually useless now, for no particular reason at all.
I rarely game nowadays but used to control my STB with Kinect voice commands every day. Now it only controls power and volume. You can tune to a specific channel, but it misheard the likes of CBS, TBS, and PBS half the time. That functionality is still present, though. But the cool voice-navigated TV guide is outright gone.
After they did that, I vowed to never buy another Xbox or Xbox game again. Microsoft deliberately broke working functionality that I paid good money for on launch day for no reason. I want my money back.
I rarely game nowadays but used to control my STB with Kinect voice commands every day. Now it only controls power and volume. You can tune to a specific channel, but it misheard the likes of CBS, TBS, and PBS half the time. That functionality is still present, though. But the cool voice-navigated TV guide is outright gone.
After they did that, I vowed to never buy another Xbox or Xbox game again. Microsoft deliberately broke working functionality that I paid good money for on launch day for no reason. I want my money back.
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