Neowin

Rumors of Microsoft's plans for the next Xbox console have also included rumors about "Kinect 2.0", the next major revision of the company's motion capture technology. Today, Microsoft Research has posted up a new video that shows an advance version of Kinect that can track hands more accurately than the current hardware.

The video, posted on YouTube, shows researcher Cem Keskin demoing the new technology on one of those massive Perceptive Pixel-made touchscreen PCs running Windows 8. First, he shows the current Kinect hardware and software, which can only read the hand as one point on a skeleton. The new version is shown later, where the Kinect camera can see an open hand in one state and a closed hand in yet another state.

Because the hardware can recognize two different states in a person's hand, the software can be used to simulate touch events. This is used by Keskin in the video to interact with Windows 8 apps such as drawing in Fresh Paint and manipulating the Bing Maps app.

While this demo was used with Windows 8 apps, it's not a stretch to speculate that this kind of method could show up for use in the next version of Microsoft's Xbox console, which could include Kinect out of the box rather than an add-on device.

Source: Microsoft Research on YouTube

That article should read, the problem with the original Kinect is that it turns out it's infrared... . Based on released patents, Microsoft already has a solution to resolving that IR problem.

Well the original article not even talking about Xbox(360/720),so we still know nothing about 720 and Kinect2

But i wonder can they make Kinect2's size smaller

i'm so glad Microsoft still invests in Kinect technology

This is where I always said it should exist. Not in a game console. It does nothing for games.

But for user experience in a ton of other applications, it has merit. Especially as its refined and improved.

Microsoft must really be banking on kinect being the "next big thing." Very skeptical at this point.

We'll see after the next xbox release. Obviously kinect is going to be center stage lol. I doubt any gamers will be swayed. Who knows if casual people will care... But clearly microsoft is HOPING casual people CARE about motion sensing on the next xbox and future microsoft tech.

Microsoft cant take another generation of zero profit for their xbox business, oh I mean their "entertainment" division. Since they changed the name and included more devices to mask the sinking "xbox division." But it's not called that anymore! lol....