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Forums - Microsoft - Microsoft: “No Reviews of Kinect!”

geddesmond2 said:
slowmo said:
geddesmond2 said:
slowmo said:
geddesmond2 said:

I put my bias aside and looked at kinect from a consumer standpoint. As in I looked at kinect from a standpoint of a consumer(someone interested in buying it) and not somebody just knocking it because its a MS product. Do you understand know?

Secondly. Again I did not say I was putting my bias aside for this post. I said I put my bias aside to look at kinect to see if it would interest me. Thats just you twisting words. If I was shit stirring it would be very far fetched. I'm just stating things thats going on and why I think its happened.

Thirdly. Oh please do educate me about it.

Fourthly my point is your saying MS has exclusives and I'm say thats true but the next exclusive is Fall 2011 and the others could be years away because there unannounced or are still in early developments. You say your happy with the way MS is conducting buisness. I'm saying if that was Sony I'd be pissed. I don't have the patience to wait a year for another exclusive game. I'm a gamer mate. Knowing what games are coming is what keeps me gaming

And lastly I'm not getting emotional but it annoys me when people take what you say way out of context or twist your words to make themselfs look better which is what you've been doing


I've answered your other points twice I don't see much point in discussing them further.  Businesses have marketing budgets to be used.  Not all marketing money will be out of the Microsoft coffers.  I doubt the figure of 500 million is 10 fold their usual budget for a year especially when you consider how much they've spent on superbowl advertisements and branding none gaming items for sale in the past.

As for the bolded, there is at least two people in here that took your words and understood the meaning to be different to what you claim you intended.  In my opinion that makes you as the writer to blame not the reader.  I don't see what else there is to discuss as my opinion hasn't changed really and obviously yours neither. 

Well its funny how Shadowblind who was the first person to reply to the message knew exactly what I was saying. If I meant something differant like what yous said I meant then I'd be having this conversation with Shadowblind and not yous.


No he didn't "know exactly what" you was saying, it seems you have reading comprehension issues as well as writing problems.  Try reading his post again.  Saying you having a opinion of your own is fine does not translate to what you wrote being remotely balanced or unbiased.  Keep digging, I've given you the easy way out but you want to keep shooting yourself in the foot.

Ah I couldn't give a shit what you think. Have fun playing kinect thats all I can say LMAO. At least I know what kind of gamer you are. Oh and by the way., Kinectimals is so good, such a manly game, pet tigers for the win and Milo, greatest game ever. I can't wait for that game to come out I'll finally have a real friend to play with LMAO. Now thats talking from a bias standpoint. Mybe you'll understand a bit better now.

WTF?



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Snesboy said:
Seece said:
Snesboy said:
Jadedx said:
Snesboy said:
kibebr said:

I think Microsoft is RIGHT!!!!

Take a look at the past:  Introduced a marketing video about Knectic 3 years before it launch, just to get attention of the market and keep some momentum...

Knectic got everybody attentions, and deserve it, it´s really innovative.

What´s happening now: people start to think and put things together, understand Knectic limitations, etc..etc.. so the hype must be secure at least until cristhmas...

I believe knectic 1.0 is very limited to some type of movements, so, you will handle many games with same gestures, LOL..

go Microsft, keep rich and growing, you brought LIVE and gamers got better online services, now you bring Knectic and make toher companies MOVE. :)

MS is doing great job innovating on gamming, I respect a lot that!


I felt like I was reading MS PR when I read this post...


Except that he keeps spelling Kinect wrong, and he says that Kinect is very limited. I bet you think anything positive about Kinect is PR.


No, not really. But honestly, why should I be impressed by technology that was on PS2 years ago?

You shouldn't, just as well it isn't. Do your research before making claims like that, the technology is very different, 3D depth camera being the main reason.

You're right Seece. I just didn't feel like doing research. Too damn lazy.


kinect is to the eyetoy as move is to the first wii-mote or an htc desire is to a pocket calculator. They are all considerably more advanced versions of early basic ideas. calling kinect a glorified webcam is showing complete lack of understanding of the vast amount of tech and innovation behind it.



bobbert said:
Smidlee said:
bobbert said:
Smidlee said:

Well for one thing , kinect doesn't see things in 3-D no more than another other web cam. The claim Kinect "sees" in 3D is a little misleading as most people think 3D as like how they see. Kinect cam sees a completely flat image.  There are ways to try tracking something 3d on a flat image . For example Move uses the size of the ball on the image to determine where the move controller is in Z-axis. The more pixels the ball image uses the closer the ball is relative to the camera.  Kinect tracking the Z axis how the strength of IR light bouncing off an object.

 I can think of two major disadvantages of Kinect tracking you sitting vs standing up.

 1)  You are closer to surrounding objects including what you can sitting on. (standing puts distance between you and other objects)  While our brain can do this with ease even with one eye close yet it's a lot tougher for and  computer to do this.

 2) Your images itself takes up less pixels on the camera which means  Kinect is recieving  less information.

So while Kinect may work sitting down I doubt it will be able to track as well as standing up. This is good reason Microsoft wanted developers to develop games at least at launch standing up.


really? so any camera can see 3D as well as kinect's RGB camera near-IR emitter & IR sensor? Both cameras are working at all times. You might want to actually look at the kinect compenent list before acting like you know how that Z-axis tracking works. Your hypotheses might be more believable

I watch the video of how Kinect works and they make it clear this is  how it works. The problem with using RGB camera when it comes to depth  is most homes has multiply light sources makes is extremely difficult to track Z axis. Our brain can do this with ease with just one eye even though you don't see  true 3D with one eye. The brain uses lines, lighting, shapes, etc.  Even super computers have trouble take two images and make a true 3D image with any kind of speed  like our brain does.

 Kinect software is the tough part as it takes all those pixels and guesses the position of the player's body.


You obviously have no idea what you're talking about. All of the videos are very generic descriptions, and I have seen some that are so WAAAAAAAY off of what is happening that it's funny.

First, we have the primesensor-like unit:

And unless you know how to do fourier transforms, I can't even begin to describe to you how it works for detecting 3D. Also, more details about the chip:

Notice the optional RGB, that is because it is using a standard RGB camera like a standard webcam. Instead of just using depth, MS is using the RGB camera to get depth and color, taking advantage of that optional output. From what I read, there is discrepancy on whether they use IR light or light that is considered not IR, but outside the visible spectrum of 99.999% of humans.

Now, does that seem like your normal webcam? Well wait, there's more. There's a camera that detects IR, with a filter blocks out visible light (probably including the near-IR light emitted from the primesense setup). This is to determine whether the object in front of you is human or not, where different body parts are, etc.

Also, random lights in different parts of the room are not going to effect detection. The way you described it made me laugh so hard. The bright lighting has more to do with the noise of the detector. I'm sure it's a very high SNR detector, and that's why it's a low megapixel rating. There's a reason why you can get a point-and-shoot camera with a 16MP rating, yet it is difficult to find a professional camera with more than a 10MP rating. As the light detected by the detector goes up, the blips of noise become large hunks of noise. The problem with your lamp idea is that the lens will focus all of that light to a small portion of the detector and have a little effect on the noise of the rest of the image. It's when you flood the entire room with light that you will have an issue.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and clarifying your BS. Now please stop talking out of your ass. Also don't tell someone that they're wrong when you obviously have no freaking clue yourself.

They have stated that Kinect works in the dark and low light thus it does not track you with the RGB cam.  (Your brain can easily see depth with just one eye so it is possible to detect depth with RGB range.) It's just more simple if you track with only one color ... thus IR light.  Notice the RGB cam is right beside the IR cam; as close as possible so the images are same. RGB cam is to put your image (other images) on screen while IR cam does the tracking.

 This still doesn't show Kinect sees  3D no more that a RGB cam. Thus it misleading to claim Kinect sees 3D as there is difference between detecting depth (one eye)  which Move and TrackIR does with a different method and seeing 3D (two eyes).



Does the technolgy being "more advanced" translate into the product being "better"?

From what I have seen from Playstation Move, Kinect and Wii Motion Plus the answer is no; and the reason for this is that the hardware was never what was limiting the quality of games using the standard Wiimote. If the same third rate development teams produce games using the same third-rate ideas you will get the same results; regardless of how advanced the technology is



Nomad Blue said:
Slimebeast said:

With commas? Can you show how exactly?

I use the plus sign when serching Gogle. Like this:

(plus)first (plus)kinect (plus)review

Well VGC doesn't support the plus sign so that didn't look like I meant.


Inverted commas (upside down commas), aka quotation marks. These --> "

If you only want search results for where a specific phrase is used, then you should use inverted commas around the phrase/sentence.

Thank you. I didn't know those were called inverted commas.



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Smidlee said:
bobbert said:
Smidlee said:
bobbert said:
Smidlee said:

Well for one thing , kinect doesn't see things in 3-D no more than another other web cam. The claim Kinect "sees" in 3D is a little misleading as most people think 3D as like how they see. Kinect cam sees a completely flat image.  There are ways to try tracking something 3d on a flat image . For example Move uses the size of the ball on the image to determine where the move controller is in Z-axis. The more pixels the ball image uses the closer the ball is relative to the camera.  Kinect tracking the Z axis how the strength of IR light bouncing off an object.

 I can think of two major disadvantages of Kinect tracking you sitting vs standing up.

 1)  You are closer to surrounding objects including what you can sitting on. (standing puts distance between you and other objects)  While our brain can do this with ease even with one eye close yet it's a lot tougher for and  computer to do this.

 2) Your images itself takes up less pixels on the camera which means  Kinect is recieving  less information.

So while Kinect may work sitting down I doubt it will be able to track as well as standing up. This is good reason Microsoft wanted developers to develop games at least at launch standing up.


really? so any camera can see 3D as well as kinect's RGB camera near-IR emitter & IR sensor? Both cameras are working at all times. You might want to actually look at the kinect compenent list before acting like you know how that Z-axis tracking works. Your hypotheses might be more believable

I watch the video of how Kinect works and they make it clear this is  how it works. The problem with using RGB camera when it comes to depth  is most homes has multiply light sources makes is extremely difficult to track Z axis. Our brain can do this with ease with just one eye even though you don't see  true 3D with one eye. The brain uses lines, lighting, shapes, etc.  Even super computers have trouble take two images and make a true 3D image with any kind of speed  like our brain does.

 Kinect software is the tough part as it takes all those pixels and guesses the position of the player's body.


You obviously have no idea what you're talking about. All of the videos are very generic descriptions, and I have seen some that are so WAAAAAAAY off of what is happening that it's funny.

First, we have the primesensor-like unit:

And unless you know how to do fourier transforms, I can't even begin to describe to you how it works for detecting 3D. Also, more details about the chip:

Notice the optional RGB, that is because it is using a standard RGB camera like a standard webcam. Instead of just using depth, MS is using the RGB camera to get depth and color, taking advantage of that optional output. From what I read, there is discrepancy on whether they use IR light or light that is considered not IR, but outside the visible spectrum of 99.999% of humans.

Now, does that seem like your normal webcam? Well wait, there's more. There's a camera that detects IR, with a filter blocks out visible light (probably including the near-IR light emitted from the primesense setup). This is to determine whether the object in front of you is human or not, where different body parts are, etc.

Also, random lights in different parts of the room are not going to effect detection. The way you described it made me laugh so hard. The bright lighting has more to do with the noise of the detector. I'm sure it's a very high SNR detector, and that's why it's a low megapixel rating. There's a reason why you can get a point-and-shoot camera with a 16MP rating, yet it is difficult to find a professional camera with more than a 10MP rating. As the light detected by the detector goes up, the blips of noise become large hunks of noise. The problem with your lamp idea is that the lens will focus all of that light to a small portion of the detector and have a little effect on the noise of the rest of the image. It's when you flood the entire room with light that you will have an issue.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and clarifying your BS. Now please stop talking out of your ass. Also don't tell someone that they're wrong when you obviously have no freaking clue yourself.

They have stated that Kinect works in the dark and low light thus it does not track you with the RGB cam.  (Your brain can easily see depth with just one eye so it is possible to detect depth with RGB range.) It's just more simple if you track with only one color ... thus IR light.  Notice the RGB cam is right beside the IR cam; as close as possible so the images are same. RGB cam is to put your image (other images) on screen while IR cam does the tracking.

 This still doesn't show Kinect sees  3D no more that a RGB cam. Thus it misleading to claim Kinect sees 3D as there is difference between detecting depth (one eye)  which Move and TrackIR does with a different method and seeing 3D (two eyes).


This is simply wrong.

It's not tracking "colour" at all.  It's tracking DEPTH.  It's working more like sonar, the Kinect IR transmitter is bathing the room with IR light,  that light is bouncing back to the depth sensor.  The closer something is to the camera, the brigher it appears.  Look at the IR image again, as stuff moves away from the camera it gets darker.  It's clearly evident that the brightest thing in the image is the pillow or whatever on the bottom right and the darkest thing is the far wall.

If you were to light the scene with a bright light on the wall behind the people, an RGB camera would see them as darker than the background and according to you it would think the wall was closer than they are.  The IR camera would still see the scene with the correct depth as it's not seeing visible light at all, it's ignoring all those wavelengths.

The ability to read the depth of the scene is what allows it generate a 3D map of the scene.



daroamer said:
Smidlee said:
bobbert said:
Smidlee said:
bobbert said:
Smidlee said:

Well for one thing , kinect doesn't see things in 3-D no more than another other web cam. The claim Kinect "sees" in 3D is a little misleading as most people think 3D as like how they see. Kinect cam sees a completely flat image.  There are ways to try tracking something 3d on a flat image . For example Move uses the size of the ball on the image to determine where the move controller is in Z-axis. The more pixels the ball image uses the closer the ball is relative to the camera.  Kinect tracking the Z axis how the strength of IR light bouncing off an object.

 I can think of two major disadvantages of Kinect tracking you sitting vs standing up.

 1)  You are closer to surrounding objects including what you can sitting on. (standing puts distance between you and other objects)  While our brain can do this with ease even with one eye close yet it's a lot tougher for and  computer to do this.

 2) Your images itself takes up less pixels on the camera which means  Kinect is recieving  less information.

So while Kinect may work sitting down I doubt it will be able to track as well as standing up. This is good reason Microsoft wanted developers to develop games at least at launch standing up.


really? so any camera can see 3D as well as kinect's RGB camera near-IR emitter & IR sensor? Both cameras are working at all times. You might want to actually look at the kinect compenent list before acting like you know how that Z-axis tracking works. Your hypotheses might be more believable

I watch the video of how Kinect works and they make it clear this is  how it works. The problem with using RGB camera when it comes to depth  is most homes has multiply light sources makes is extremely difficult to track Z axis. Our brain can do this with ease with just one eye even though you don't see  true 3D with one eye. The brain uses lines, lighting, shapes, etc.  Even super computers have trouble take two images and make a true 3D image with any kind of speed  like our brain does.

 Kinect software is the tough part as it takes all those pixels and guesses the position of the player's body.


You obviously have no idea what you're talking about. All of the videos are very generic descriptions, and I have seen some that are so WAAAAAAAY off of what is happening that it's funny.

First, we have the primesensor-like unit:

And unless you know how to do fourier transforms, I can't even begin to describe to you how it works for detecting 3D. Also, more details about the chip:

Notice the optional RGB, that is because it is using a standard RGB camera like a standard webcam. Instead of just using depth, MS is using the RGB camera to get depth and color, taking advantage of that optional output. From what I read, there is discrepancy on whether they use IR light or light that is considered not IR, but outside the visible spectrum of 99.999% of humans.

Now, does that seem like your normal webcam? Well wait, there's more. There's a camera that detects IR, with a filter blocks out visible light (probably including the near-IR light emitted from the primesense setup). This is to determine whether the object in front of you is human or not, where different body parts are, etc.

Also, random lights in different parts of the room are not going to effect detection. The way you described it made me laugh so hard. The bright lighting has more to do with the noise of the detector. I'm sure it's a very high SNR detector, and that's why it's a low megapixel rating. There's a reason why you can get a point-and-shoot camera with a 16MP rating, yet it is difficult to find a professional camera with more than a 10MP rating. As the light detected by the detector goes up, the blips of noise become large hunks of noise. The problem with your lamp idea is that the lens will focus all of that light to a small portion of the detector and have a little effect on the noise of the rest of the image. It's when you flood the entire room with light that you will have an issue.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and clarifying your BS. Now please stop talking out of your ass. Also don't tell someone that they're wrong when you obviously have no freaking clue yourself.

They have stated that Kinect works in the dark and low light thus it does not track you with the RGB cam.  (Your brain can easily see depth with just one eye so it is possible to detect depth with RGB range.) It's just more simple if you track with only one color ... thus IR light.  Notice the RGB cam is right beside the IR cam; as close as possible so the images are same. RGB cam is to put your image (other images) on screen while IR cam does the tracking.

 This still doesn't show Kinect sees  3D no more that a RGB cam. Thus it misleading to claim Kinect sees 3D as there is difference between detecting depth (one eye)  which Move and TrackIR does with a different method and seeing 3D (two eyes).


This is simply wrong.

It's not tracking "colour" at all.  It's tracking DEPTH.  It's working more like sonar, the Kinect IR transmitter is bathing the room with IR light,  that light is bouncing back to the depth sensor.  The closer something is to the camera, the brigher it appears.  Look at the IR image again, as stuff moves away from the camera it gets darker.  It's clearly evident that the brightest thing in the image is the pillow or whatever on the bottom right and the darkest thing is the far wall.

If you were to light the scene with a bright light on the wall behind the people, an RGB camera would see them as darker than the background and according to you it would think the wall was closer than they are.  The IR camera would still see the scene with the correct depth as it's not seeing visible light at all, it's ignoring all those wavelengths.

The ability to read the depth of the scene is what allows it generate a 3D map of the scene.

IR is a color just not one your eyes sees which is the point of uses IR over normal light. There are animals that can see IR though.  IR works the same way as red.    I have seen a video a few months ago where I could see a table in the distance showed up as bright as the players in front of Kinect. They said the software is programed to ignore the table since it looking for players figures which again points out  why standing up is ideal.   IR light also bouncing off objects differently (I have  IR reflectors) including people. They had trouble tracking dark skin people at first because the fact IR bounces off darker skin different.



daroamer said:
Smidlee said:


This is simply wrong.

It's not tracking "colour" at all.  It's tracking DEPTH.  It's working more like sonar, the Kinect IR transmitter is bathing the room with IR light,  that light is bouncing back to the depth sensor.  The closer something is to the camera, the brigher it appears.  Look at the IR image again, as stuff moves away from the camera it gets darker.  It's clearly evident that the brightest thing in the image is the pillow or whatever on the bottom right and the darkest thing is the far wall.

If you were to light the scene with a bright light on the wall behind the people, an RGB camera would see them as darker than the background and according to you it would think the wall was closer than they are.  The IR camera would still see the scene with the correct depth as it's not seeing visible light at all, it's ignoring all those wavelengths.

The ability to read the depth of the scene is what allows it generate a 3D map of the scene.


Like I said, you obviously have no idea what you're talking about. That yellow image is a computer generated image of the distance to each object. The IR emitter is more like a projector that emits patterns. The patterns get reflected off of each object differently and get detected by the camera. The chip then performs a mathematical analysis on the resulting distorted pattern to determine distances to different points in the room.

It's clearly evident from the color scale of the computer generated image, that the chip can properly decode the pattern and produce accurate results of the distances to each object.

It's not like sonar because sonar uses time-of-flight. Time of flight for light requires very expensive hardware and could not use a standard webcam. It is this technology which conquers a huge mathematical challenge, and does so in a very short amount of time with inexpensive hardware that made the Kinect feasable.



bobbert said:
daroamer said:
Smidlee said:
bobbert said:
Smidlee said:
bobbert said:
Smidlee said:

Well for one thing , kinect doesn't see things in 3-D no more than another other web cam. The claim Kinect "sees" in 3D is a little misleading as most people think 3D as like how they see. Kinect cam sees a completely flat image.  There are ways to try tracking something 3d on a flat image . For example Move uses the size of the ball on the image to determine where the move controller is in Z-axis. The more pixels the ball image uses the closer the ball is relative to the camera.  Kinect tracking the Z axis how the strength of IR light bouncing off an object.

 I can think of two major disadvantages of Kinect tracking you sitting vs standing up.

 1)  You are closer to surrounding objects including what you can sitting on. (standing puts distance between you and other objects)  While our brain can do this with ease even with one eye close yet it's a lot tougher for and  computer to do this.

 2) Your images itself takes up less pixels on the camera which means  Kinect is recieving  less information.

So while Kinect may work sitting down I doubt it will be able to track as well as standing up. This is good reason Microsoft wanted developers to develop games at least at launch standing up.


really? so any camera can see 3D as well as kinect's RGB camera near-IR emitter & IR sensor? Both cameras are working at all times. You might want to actually look at the kinect compenent list before acting like you know how that Z-axis tracking works. Your hypotheses might be more believable

I watch the video of how Kinect works and they make it clear this is  how it works. The problem with using RGB camera when it comes to depth  is most homes has multiply light sources makes is extremely difficult to track Z axis. Our brain can do this with ease with just one eye even though you don't see  true 3D with one eye. The brain uses lines, lighting, shapes, etc.  Even super computers have trouble take two images and make a true 3D image with any kind of speed  like our brain does.

 Kinect software is the tough part as it takes all those pixels and guesses the position of the player's body.


You obviously have no idea what you're talking about. All of the videos are very generic descriptions, and I have seen some that are so WAAAAAAAY off of what is happening that it's funny.

First, we have the primesensor-like unit:

And unless you know how to do fourier transforms, I can't even begin to describe to you how it works for detecting 3D. Also, more details about the chip:

Notice the optional RGB, that is because it is using a standard RGB camera like a standard webcam. Instead of just using depth, MS is using the RGB camera to get depth and color, taking advantage of that optional output. From what I read, there is discrepancy on whether they use IR light or light that is considered not IR, but outside the visible spectrum of 99.999% of humans.

Now, does that seem like your normal webcam? Well wait, there's more. There's a camera that detects IR, with a filter blocks out visible light (probably including the near-IR light emitted from the primesense setup). This is to determine whether the object in front of you is human or not, where different body parts are, etc.

Also, random lights in different parts of the room are not going to effect detection. The way you described it made me laugh so hard. The bright lighting has more to do with the noise of the detector. I'm sure it's a very high SNR detector, and that's why it's a low megapixel rating. There's a reason why you can get a point-and-shoot camera with a 16MP rating, yet it is difficult to find a professional camera with more than a 10MP rating. As the light detected by the detector goes up, the blips of noise become large hunks of noise. The problem with your lamp idea is that the lens will focus all of that light to a small portion of the detector and have a little effect on the noise of the rest of the image. It's when you flood the entire room with light that you will have an issue.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and clarifying your BS. Now please stop talking out of your ass. Also don't tell someone that they're wrong when you obviously have no freaking clue yourself.

They have stated that Kinect works in the dark and low light thus it does not track you with the RGB cam.  (Your brain can easily see depth with just one eye so it is possible to detect depth with RGB range.) It's just more simple if you track with only one color ... thus IR light.  Notice the RGB cam is right beside the IR cam; as close as possible so the images are same. RGB cam is to put your image (other images) on screen while IR cam does the tracking.

 This still doesn't show Kinect sees  3D no more that a RGB cam. Thus it misleading to claim Kinect sees 3D as there is difference between detecting depth (one eye)  which Move and TrackIR does with a different method and seeing 3D (two eyes).


This is simply wrong.

It's not tracking "colour" at all.  It's tracking DEPTH.  It's working more like sonar, the Kinect IR transmitter is bathing the room with IR light,  that light is bouncing back to the depth sensor.  The closer something is to the camera, the brigher it appears.  Look at the IR image again, as stuff moves away from the camera it gets darker.  It's clearly evident that the brightest thing in the image is the pillow or whatever on the bottom right and the darkest thing is the far wall.

If you were to light the scene with a bright light on the wall behind the people, an RGB camera would see them as darker than the background and according to you it would think the wall was closer than they are.  The IR camera would still see the scene with the correct depth as it's not seeing visible light at all, it's ignoring all those wavelengths.

The ability to read the depth of the scene is what allows it generate a 3D map of the scene.


Like I said, you obviously have no idea what you're talking about. That yellow image is a computer generated image of the distance to each object. The IR emitter is more like a projector that emits patterns. The patterns get reflected off of each object differently and get detected by the camera. The chip then performs a mathematical analysis on the resulting distorted pattern to determine distances to different points in the room.

It's clearly evident from the color scale of the computer generated image, that the chip can properly decode the pattern and produce accurate results of the distances to each object.

It's not like sonar because sonar uses time-of-flight. Time of flight for light requires very expensive hardware and could not use a standard webcam. It is this technology which conquers a huge mathematical challenge, and does so in a very short amount of time with inexpensive hardware that made the Kinect feasable.

TrackIR 5 has IR emitter and IR cam.  you seem to point out as I  the software does the works  as with Move, TrackIR, and wii-mote. Obviously there are limits to Kinect as of now or we would have launch titles with players sitting down.



Smidlee said:
daroamer said:
Smidlee said:
bobbert said:
Smidlee said:
bobbert said:
Smidlee said:

Well for one thing , kinect doesn't see things in 3-D no more than another other web cam. The claim Kinect "sees" in 3D is a little misleading as most people think 3D as like how they see. Kinect cam sees a completely flat image.  There are ways to try tracking something 3d on a flat image . For example Move uses the size of the ball on the image to determine where the move controller is in Z-axis. The more pixels the ball image uses the closer the ball is relative to the camera.  Kinect tracking the Z axis how the strength of IR light bouncing off an object.

 I can think of two major disadvantages of Kinect tracking you sitting vs standing up.

 1)  You are closer to surrounding objects including what you can sitting on. (standing puts distance between you and other objects)  While our brain can do this with ease even with one eye close yet it's a lot tougher for and  computer to do this.

 2) Your images itself takes up less pixels on the camera which means  Kinect is recieving  less information.

So while Kinect may work sitting down I doubt it will be able to track as well as standing up. This is good reason Microsoft wanted developers to develop games at least at launch standing up.


really? so any camera can see 3D as well as kinect's RGB camera near-IR emitter & IR sensor? Both cameras are working at all times. You might want to actually look at the kinect compenent list before acting like you know how that Z-axis tracking works. Your hypotheses might be more believable

I watch the video of how Kinect works and they make it clear this is  how it works. The problem with using RGB camera when it comes to depth  is most homes has multiply light sources makes is extremely difficult to track Z axis. Our brain can do this with ease with just one eye even though you don't see  true 3D with one eye. The brain uses lines, lighting, shapes, etc.  Even super computers have trouble take two images and make a true 3D image with any kind of speed  like our brain does.

 Kinect software is the tough part as it takes all those pixels and guesses the position of the player's body.


You obviously have no idea what you're talking about. All of the videos are very generic descriptions, and I have seen some that are so WAAAAAAAY off of what is happening that it's funny.

First, we have the primesensor-like unit:

And unless you know how to do fourier transforms, I can't even begin to describe to you how it works for detecting 3D. Also, more details about the chip:

Notice the optional RGB, that is because it is using a standard RGB camera like a standard webcam. Instead of just using depth, MS is using the RGB camera to get depth and color, taking advantage of that optional output. From what I read, there is discrepancy on whether they use IR light or light that is considered not IR, but outside the visible spectrum of 99.999% of humans.

Now, does that seem like your normal webcam? Well wait, there's more. There's a camera that detects IR, with a filter blocks out visible light (probably including the near-IR light emitted from the primesense setup). This is to determine whether the object in front of you is human or not, where different body parts are, etc.

Also, random lights in different parts of the room are not going to effect detection. The way you described it made me laugh so hard. The bright lighting has more to do with the noise of the detector. I'm sure it's a very high SNR detector, and that's why it's a low megapixel rating. There's a reason why you can get a point-and-shoot camera with a 16MP rating, yet it is difficult to find a professional camera with more than a 10MP rating. As the light detected by the detector goes up, the blips of noise become large hunks of noise. The problem with your lamp idea is that the lens will focus all of that light to a small portion of the detector and have a little effect on the noise of the rest of the image. It's when you flood the entire room with light that you will have an issue.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and clarifying your BS. Now please stop talking out of your ass. Also don't tell someone that they're wrong when you obviously have no freaking clue yourself.

They have stated that Kinect works in the dark and low light thus it does not track you with the RGB cam.  (Your brain can easily see depth with just one eye so it is possible to detect depth with RGB range.) It's just more simple if you track with only one color ... thus IR light.  Notice the RGB cam is right beside the IR cam; as close as possible so the images are same. RGB cam is to put your image (other images) on screen while IR cam does the tracking.

 This still doesn't show Kinect sees  3D no more that a RGB cam. Thus it misleading to claim Kinect sees 3D as there is difference between detecting depth (one eye)  which Move and TrackIR does with a different method and seeing 3D (two eyes).


This is simply wrong.

It's not tracking "colour" at all.  It's tracking DEPTH.  It's working more like sonar, the Kinect IR transmitter is bathing the room with IR light,  that light is bouncing back to the depth sensor.  The closer something is to the camera, the brigher it appears.  Look at the IR image again, as stuff moves away from the camera it gets darker.  It's clearly evident that the brightest thing in the image is the pillow or whatever on the bottom right and the darkest thing is the far wall.

If you were to light the scene with a bright light on the wall behind the people, an RGB camera would see them as darker than the background and according to you it would think the wall was closer than they are.  The IR camera would still see the scene with the correct depth as it's not seeing visible light at all, it's ignoring all those wavelengths.

The ability to read the depth of the scene is what allows it generate a 3D map of the scene.

IR is a color just not one your eyes sees which is the point of uses IR over normal light. There are animals that can see IR though.  IR works the same way as red.    I have seen a video a few months ago where I could see a table in the distance showed up as bright as the players in front of Kinect. They said the software is programed to ignore the table since it looking for players figures which again points out  why standing up is ideal.   IR light also bouncing off objects differently (I have  IR reflectors) including people. They had trouble tracking dark skin people at first because the fact IR bounces off darker skin different.

No, IR is light, but it's is not colour.  Colour is classified as the visual (to us) part of the spectrum.  Animals that "see" in IR are seeing heat.

Your response does not refute any of what I said.   You can clearly see the depth of the scene above is not related in any way to the RGB image, as you claim.  Close objects are light, far objects are dark.

You said it's possible to detect depth with an RGB camera and that it's really no different than what IR is doing.  This is incorrect or at the least extremely misleading.  For any kind of real world application trying to read depth for an entire scene with an RGB camera would be completely useless, especially in this case, so the point is completely moot.  Move is doing something similar to this but it requires fully lit coloured balls for accurate tracking and it's only tracking that 1 point. 

This is completely different to what Kinect is doing.  IR is used because it most objects don't react to it in the same way that they do with visible light, almost all the light is being reflected back.  The depth sensor, in combination with the IR emitter, is able to create an accurate depth map of the room by using the inverse square law to determine how far away something is depending on the reflected light it is picking up.  You're right that it's not seeing in 3D but I don't see where Microsoft ever claimed it was a 3D camera, simply that it was depth camera that used that depth map to create a 3D map of the player, which is completely accurate.

Kinect is not the only depth sensing camera out there and there is a reason they are called DEPTH SENSORS. 

"Depth cameras (such as those from PrimeSense1, 3DV [28], and Canesta2) are able to directly sense range to the nearest physical surface at each pixel location. They are unique in that they enable inexpensive real time 3D modeling of surface geometry, making some traditionally difficult computer vision problems easier. For example, with a depth camera it is trivial to composite a false background in a video conferencing application. Microsoft’s Kinect device3 builds on PrimeSense technology and computes a skeletal model of a player for motion-driven gaming. While such cameras are now rare, the release of Kinect is likely to make depth cameras inexpensive and widely available."