How the New Kinect Works
Microsoft shocked the video gaming world at the E3 conference in the summer of 2009 when they announced their newest offering to the video gaming world, an accessory for the Xbox 360 now called Kinect. Kinect is a system that will allow you to be able to control video games with your entire body motions. It is definitely going to revolutionize how video games are played, taking it a step further than the Nintendo Wii did with it’s motion-control of video games when it was released. The main question that people have when they see the Kinect games in action, is wondering how Kinect works.
Kinect uses two different kinds of cameras and combines them with special software that can translate what the two cameras see into actions on the video games. The first camera that it has is an RGB camera that is similar to pretty much any video camera that you would see on the market. It is able to see you, in full color, and see all of your hand movements and gestures, as well as take any pictures of you. The second camera is an infrared camera that can see different depths and so it can sense when you are moving towards and away from the camera, as well as detect minor movements in your hands other parts of your body.
In addition to the cameras, it has a multi-array microphone that can pick up on different voices and recognize those voices. It also is able to differentiate between background noises, and actual vocal commands that are being spoken to the game. Different developers are using the voice recognition technology in different ways. One company is creating a game where you’ll be able to interact with a character on the screen, and the character will be able to recognize different voice inflections, and other vocal cues and use that in the interaction.
This Kinect technology definitely has the possibility of revolutionizing the video game market. I am excited for all of the possibilities there are for this technology and what new sorts of games they will come up with to utilize Kinect.
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