ArnoldRimmer said:
The ASL patent is just a patent, and that patent was filed 1 1/2 years ago. The fact that we haven't heard anything from Microsoft about Kinect understanding ASL makes me believe that it was like this: After Microsoft had decided to release a depth camera for the Xbox 360 - which was probably about 2 years ago - they sat together and thought what this device could be used for on the Xbox 360 apart from games. Somebody came up with the idea that such a camera could be used to read sign language, and everyone in the room said thought it was a very good application. They checked and realized nobody had filed a patent for reading ASL with a depth camera yet, so they simply filed a patent themselves like every company would do. Maybe in the meantime they realized that the actual Kinect hardware shipped to the customer will have technical limitations (for example limited depth resolution) so they decided not to actually implement such a feature with Kinect. Having a patent for this idea is still good. Just think of all the gaming related patents Sony filed but didn't really use yet.
But anyway, I really agree that Kinect is an interesting piece of hardware that may be used in some interesting ways. But I don't even see how your arguments conflict with what I've written in my posting.
And I'm still sceptical if the new possibilities that a depth camera offers prove to be really useful for many games. Reading sign language is a nice idea, but the 99% of gamers that are not deaf will not really benefit from it. Having a 4 array mic may be nice as well, but it's not that much of an improvement over having 1 or 2 microphones, and it doesn't have anything to do with the expensive depth sensor. And some people are even buying three 150$ devices mainly for video chat while three 5$ webcams would deliver exactly the same experience since video chat doesn't use depth sensors either. What make Kinect stand out is the expensive depth sensor, and I just don't quite see how it will be useful for many games. I can clearly see its advantage in dance and fitness games, but that was obvious from the very start. At E3 2009 everybody was enthusiastic about Kinect, saying in what great and innovative ways such a device might be used in games. At E3 2010 we were shown the release date line-up. We were shown the great and innovative games thousands of developers had thought of in 365 days. And it was just disappointing! The only games I really found remarkable was a dance and a fitness game, exactly the kind of games I had expected to be great for Kinect. (Well, I had also expected a few great Eye-Toy-like minigame collections, because that's where I also expected Kinect to be really great for - but either there wasn't even one or I don't even remember it...) I suppose the developers actually had a few interesting ideas on their mind, but when they made prototypes they discovered that most of those ideas simply didn't work out really well. |
Regardless, It appears people are having fun playing it's games. I didnt realsie 4 array mics etc were needed for my daughter to enjoy Kinectimals?
