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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - Kinect downgraded to 320x240

Reasonable on 12 August 2010
JaggedSac said:
Rainbird said:

I don't know why everyone is crying foul over the resolution being reduced to a quarter, when play.com themselves say that. It's not the image feed itself that has been reduced though, it's the depth map, which is exactly what DF have said all along.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-kinect-spec-blog-entry

The issue is that Play.com is the ONLY retailer that says that.

And DF is basing their information only on Play.com's specs.

"Here's Play.com's data in full."

 

Amazon, Microsoft's Store, Toys R Us, Walmart, etc, all have 640 x 480 for depth.  Just seems odd that every retailer but one has the specs one way.

It's funny, I'm almost sure that Amazon's specs have fluctuated a few times (UK store) from having both cameras the same to sometimes different and then back to both the same.  I could have been drinking though...

It's an odd one and a great example of how stuff flies around the net like wildfire.



Try to be reasonable... its easier than you think...

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Tyrannical on 13 August 2010


Yet, today, America's leaders are reenacting every folly that brought these great powers [Russia, Germany, and Japan] to ruin -- from arrogance and hubris, to assertions of global hegemony, to imperial overstretch, to trumpeting new 'crusades,' to handing out war guarantees to regions and countries where Americans have never fought before. We are piling up the kind of commitments that produced the greatest disasters of the twentieth century.
 — Pat Buchanan – A Republic, Not an Empire

JaggedSac on 08 November 2010

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-kinect-pc-blog-entry

Looks like it really wasn't downgraded to 320 x 240.  Should I start taking credit for being right about this, or should I wait for a more certain confirmation :)



Rainbird on 08 November 2010
JaggedSac said:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-kinect-pc-blog-entry

Looks like it really wasn't downgraded to 320 x 240.  Should I start taking credit for being right about this, or should I wait for a more certain confirmation :)

Why wait? You were right after all.



gekkokamen on 08 November 2010

this is not new, it's been like that since they tookthat proccessor out from the unit....



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drkohler on 08 November 2010
JaggedSac said:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-kinect-pc-blog-entry

Looks like it really wasn't downgraded to 320 x 240.  Should I start taking credit for being right about this, or should I wait for a more certain confirmation :)

You see variable specs because 99.99% of the people who write about it do not have the slightest idea of how the depth camera operates.

Kinect has two 640*480 CCD chips (one RGB and one for depth resolution) and an infrared random speckle projector. Due to the physics and math behind the depth finding principle, the minimum speckle size is 2 by 2 pixels. The depth camera therefore gives a 2D resolution of 320*240 to the XBox.



JaggedSac on 08 November 2010
drkohler said:

You see variable specs because 99.99% of the people who write about it do not have the slightest idea of how the depth camera operates.

Kinect has two 640*480 CCD chips (one RGB and one for depth resolution) and an infrared random speckle projector. Due to the physics and math behind the depth finding principle, the minimum speckle size is 2 by 2 pixels. The depth camera therefore gives a 2D resolution of 320*240 to the XBox.

Here is a patent filed by PrimeSense(the creator of the depth sensing tech in Kinect) that a technique for creating a 3D map, and is most likely being used in Kinect. 

 

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20100118123.pdf

It uses a transparency comprised of a fixed pattern that is illuminated onto the play space by a projector.  The processor then takes the captured image of the illuminated play space, and creates a 3D map.  The 3D map is created by calculating offsets from the captured image and a reference image.

 

EDIT:  That is most certainly what they are using:



Mr.Metralha on 08 November 2010

Noob question:

 

the more resolution the camera is, the more precise it tracks the movements?

 

that's why Kinect is laggy, because it works at 320*240?



drkohler on 08 November 2010
Mr.Metralha said:

Noob question:

the more resolution the camera is, the more precise it tracks the movements?

that's why Kinect is laggy, because it works at 320*240?

The lag is basically a sum of data acquisition, depth processing, data transfer, data interpretation, reaction of the display. In theory, there is no theoretical upper limit to the resolution (keeping lag the same). However, the component price, and the processing power taken away from the Xbox GPU processor, would make the price so forbiddingly high that no consumer would buy it.