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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - Sony: Kinect is a bunch of tech problems

Rainbird said:
Hyruken said:

Thanks for posting the full article.

Doesn't surprise me to see Destructoid only pick out the juicy bits. However he did say those things in the Destructoid article. I don't think they were taken out of context and it does seem a bit odd with some of the things he says. Like can Kinect really not see Denim?

I don't know if denim specifically is true, but he's right. Kinect uses infra red light as a way to detect depth, and the only difference between infra red light and "normal" light is that it operates at another wave length where the human eye can't see it. And like with normal light, there are "black" items, meaning things that don't reflect infra red light back. When something you see is black, it's because it doesn't reflect light back, it just absorbs it.

When there is something that is infra red black, Kinect can't see it. It's like in a normal picture, if something is black then that part of the picture is "empty" in a way. You can see the shape of this thing, but it has no details. It's just black. That's a bit of a crude way to put it, but I hope it gets the point across. 

The same goes for Kinect. It can only see the shape of this "black" thing, but it can't sense depth with it, because it doesn't reflect any light back that Kinect can measure distance with. You can try to make algorithms that take all this into account and try to calculate where you are anyway, and Microsoft seems to have done well here, but it's still a problem with the tech.

Unless I'm severely mistaken, but outside of glass and water I didn't think there are many materials that absorb infrared light at any substantial rate.  I know this guy has got to be pretty smart man, but it almost seems like he's mistaking IR with UV.  Denim and leather are very UV absorbent.

I even did a quick test with a TV remote and three pairs of denim: dark blackish, dark blue and normal lightish blue.  I pointed the remote at the denim pants and the IR beam seemed to reflect perfectly off the denim pants and turned the TV on and off.  Perhaps someone can do more tests with Kryelos's software.  Maybe that's something I'll try out.

That isn't to say there aren't several problems, and I would expect him to overstate them.  There are "holes" in the IR depth perception, but I think those are more algorithmic.



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noslodecoy said:

Unless I'm severely mistaken, but outside of glass and water I didn't think there are many materials that absorb infrared light at any substantial rate.  I know this guy has got to be pretty smart man, but it almost seems like he's mistaking IR with UV.  Denim and leather are very UV absorbent.

I even did a quick test with a TV remote and three pairs of denim: dark blackish, dark blue and normal lightish blue.  I pointed the remote at the denim pants and the IR beam seemed to reflect perfectly off the denim pants and turned the TV on and off.  Perhaps someone can do more tests with Kryelos's software.  Maybe that's something I'll try out.

That isn't to say there aren't several problems, and I would expect him to overstate them.  There are "holes" in the IR depth perception, but I think those are more algorithmic.

Infrared allows a quite big range of wavelengths, and just like different colors of the visible spectrum are reflected in extremely variable amounts by different materials, so do the different infrared wavelengths.

I seem to remember that Kinect's laser works in the near IR, somewhere around the 900nm wavelenght. At that w.l., for example, water actually absobs practically the same as red visible light, certainly nothing like the difference between its absobtion of blue and red extremes of the visible spectrum.

As for denim, since this IR is very near to visible red, it could be that some dark dyes (that is, dark across the visible spctrum) are also very dark in the near IR. You could not have found one of those dyes in your test, and remember that a TV remote is something like a big pulsated flash of light on a quite wide IR spectrum. Also, IR sensors in TVs and other appliances are generally not picky: they read a big window of frequencies and lock in on the modulation of the signal AFIAK.

Kinect is more problematic as it projects a dot pattern in a small window of frequencies (it uses a laser, after all) and each dot is hopefully readable by the IR sensor, which has not a great resolution/framerate to start with.

Anyway, there's plenty of hackers playing with Kinect's hardware atm, so it won't take long before we are flooded with clips of people trying weird clothes and showing the 3d sensor output, so we'll know for certain if some materials are really problematic.



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Jadedx said:

LOL!!! What a bunch of crap, good old sony, when something big comes out that's not from your camp you make up crap to try to defame it. Sony did this crap with Sega and the dreamcast, they did it with Wii calling it a "novelty" and now this.


Which parts exactly are made up crap?



_mevildan said:
Jadedx said:

LOL!!! What a bunch of crap, good old sony, when something big comes out that's not from your camp you make up crap to try to defame it. Sony did this crap with Sega and the dreamcast, they did it with Wii calling it a "novelty" and now this.


Which parts exactly are made up crap?


Kinect cant see shiny jeans. 320x240 camera he did not make up but hakers have confirmed that both cameras are 640x480



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kitler53 said:

kitler53 said:
Hyruken said:
...

He also believes the frame-rate is too low and that certain materials, like denim, is proving difficult for Kinect to recognize. 

...

Something tells me he thinks the PS3 has a better motion controller. 

 

to the top part...what?  i don't get what he means by the frame-rate being to low to detect denim.  that doesn't compute even a little.

to the bottom part...he works for Sony, obviously he's going to praise sony and point out flaws in competitors.



there is a comma there for a reason, its two different points. It has a lower framerate. It has a hard time detecting different materials.



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WereKitten said:
noslodecoy said:

Unless I'm severely mistaken, but outside of glass and water I didn't think there are many materials that absorb infrared light at any substantial rate.  I know this guy has got to be pretty smart man, but it almost seems like he's mistaking IR with UV.  Denim and leather are very UV absorbent.

I even did a quick test with a TV remote and three pairs of denim: dark blackish, dark blue and normal lightish blue.  I pointed the remote at the denim pants and the IR beam seemed to reflect perfectly off the denim pants and turned the TV on and off.  Perhaps someone can do more tests with Kryelos's software.  Maybe that's something I'll try out.

That isn't to say there aren't several problems, and I would expect him to overstate them.  There are "holes" in the IR depth perception, but I think those are more algorithmic.

Infrared allows a quite big range of wavelengths, and just like different colors of the visible spectrum are reflected in extremely variable amounts by different materials, so do the different infrared wavelengths.

I seem to remember that Kinect's laser works in the near IR, somewhere around the 900nm wavelenght. At that w.l., for example, water actually absobs practically the same as red visible light, certainly nothing like the difference between its absobtion of blue and red extremes of the visible spectrum.

As for denim, since this IR is very near to visible red, it could be that some dark dyes (that is, dark across the visible spctrum) are also very dark in the near IR. You could not have found one of those dyes in your test, and remember that a TV remote is something like a big pulsated flash of light on a quite wide IR spectrum. Also, IR sensors in TVs and other appliances are generally not picky: they read a big window of frequencies and lock in on the modulation of the signal AFIAK.

Kinect is more problematic as it projects a dot pattern in a small window of frequencies (it uses a laser, after all) and each dot is hopefully readable by the IR sensor, which has not a great resolution/framerate to start with.

Anyway, there's plenty of hackers playing with Kinect's hardware atm, so it won't take long before we are flooded with clips of people trying weird clothes and showing the 3d sensor output, so we'll know for certain if some materials are really problematic.

Wouldn't most consumer infrared fall in the near-infrared spectrum?  This is why we can "see" it with night vision, at least the cheap consumer night vision which blasts NIR light like a flashlight and then uses a sensor, much like Kinect's sensor, to pick up an image.

Also, the IR in a remote just modulates at a frequency, so it just flashes on and off and should operate at a similar wavelength and "appear" as any other infrared light in it's spectrum around 900nm, right?

If you are in the dark, with a flashlight, and you shine it on a black t-shirt, you would still see the light reflecting off the shirt.

You are certainly right about the hackers and that is one of the reasons I think this guy has it wrong.  With everything I've seen, I would think this would have been out by now, especially with such a common material.



kitler53 said:
Hyruken said:
...

He also believes the frame-rate is too low and that certain materials, like denim, is proving difficult for Kinect to recognize. 

...

Something tells me he thinks the PS3 has a better motion controller. 

 

to the top part...what?  i don't get what he means by the frame-rate being to low to detect denim.  that doesn't compute even a little.

to the bottom part...he works for Sony, obviously he's going to praise sony and point out flaws in competitors.

He didn't say that BECAUSE the framerate is too low, it can't detect denim (that makes absolutely no sense). He said the framerate is too low AND materials like denim are hard to track



Jadedx said:
_mevildan said:
Jadedx said:

LOL!!! What a bunch of crap, good old sony, when something big comes out that's not from your camp you make up crap to try to defame it. Sony did this crap with Sega and the dreamcast, they did it with Wii calling it a "novelty" and now this.


Which parts exactly are made up crap?


Kinect cant see shiny jeans. 320x240 camera he did not make up but hakers have confirmed that both cameras are 640x480

Sorry. I am not gunning for you, but... he said (edited):
"You get these things called infra-red black objects..."
"...and some denim jeans are infra-red black. I think those really shiny ones?"

Hardly seems worth a "LOL!!!" to me. He is saying shiny objects can interfere with infra-red sensors. This includes shiny jeans. If this is his attempt to defame something... then he needs to go back to mudslinger school.

You'll have to forgive Anton if he hasn't kept up with what the haxors are digging up.



kitler53 said:
Hyruken said:
...

He also believes the frame-rate is too low and that certain materials, like denim, is proving difficult for Kinect to recognize. 

...

Something tells me he thinks the PS3 has a better motion controller. 

 

to the top part...what?  i don't get what he means by the frame-rate being to low to detect denim.  that doesn't compute even a little.

There's a little 3 letter word you must have skipped over when reading it, so I did the hard part and pointed it out for you. Now read it, it'll compute perfectly.