"Embarassing" Kinect Interview

[Alby_da_Wolf]

Reasonable said:

Part of the challenge with Kinect is that if taken at face value - i.e. no controller whatsoever - then all input has to come from your movements.  For most developers that clearly leans them towards 'on rails' type stuff as it's just easier to do.

I see no reason Kinect couldn't support 'off rails' but it'll need some developers to really think about how to implement a gesture based way of moving around in some fashion.

The Wii and Move offer a controller to allow for traditional movement, so its much easier for developers to consider how to get 'off rails' for those consoles... but Kinect represents a different challenge and one that is going to take some people to get their lateral thinking caps on to solve.

BTW I have no idea why anyone who wants to play a driving game would use Kinect (or Move or even the Wiimote on its own) as the input.  That's just nuts and so wrong for that activity.

I agree, even very strongly about driving games, but about gestures, yes, I thought too about some gestures based solution, but having to use at least one limb for navigation control would mean partially sacrificing the full body 1:1 motion tracking that is, together with the controller free feature, one of the two biggest Kinect's strong points. Giving up 1:1 motion control of one or more limbs to emulate with gestures what was done with buttons partially defeats the controller-free experience, a not natural, and not corresponding 1:1 to avatar's on screen motion, control scheme must be learned, and what's sometimes worse, the gestures that replace buttons, mouse and sticks, don't have the tactile feedback their classic competitors have. In most cases the games will allow some simplification of body tracking and simulation, some won't require both arms, some won't use legs for anything else than moving around, so a playable and enjoyable control scheme will be devisable, but it won't be full 1:1 body motion tracking.