XBOX Kinect

Kinect is an attachment to Xbox 360 for motion gaming. It is basically a bar like structure with cameras, microphones, sensors etc that makes 3D capture possible.

The Depth sensor:

Parts:

Infrared laser projector

Monochrome CMOS sensor(image sensor)

Working:

The depth sensor can capture data in 3 dimensions and can also adjust the depth. The software in kinect automatically calibrates the depth sensor according to the game, player and the environment. It also considers if there is any obstacles in the environment like a chair or a bed.

Power/Limitations of Kinect:

·        Gesture recognition

·        Voice and facial recognition

·        Can track up to max of 6 people

·        Only two active players

·        20 joints/different movements per player

·        Output video frame rate of 30Hz

·        VGA resolution

·        Range 1.2 to 3.5 m

·        Range/field of view: 57 deg horizontal and 43 deg vertical

·        Four microphone capsules

·        16 bit audio at sampling rate of 16KHz a sampling rate of 16 kHz.[39]

Kinect revolutionized the gaming industry. After the Nintendo wii where you have to hold the sensor and other stuff to play the game Microsoft with its kinect attachment allowed motion gaming naturally. You don’t have to attach the sensors. Just play it naturally.

One more feature that fascinates me is the array of microphones. Usually the microphones fail in a lot of noise, but due to the arrangement of these four microphones in the kinect, it works well even in noisy environment.

The graphics still need to be worked upon as the games you get till now on kinect are cartooning and far away from reality like other xbox games. On the whole I rate kinect as the best motion gamin device.

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