Home Gaming Hey, Kinect CAN Track Fingers!

Hey, Kinect CAN Track Fingers!

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freddy

Since release, Kinect’s had quite an incredible uptake amongst tech hobbyists, not just gamers. There’s some rather impressive hardware in Kinect, even though that hardware’s hardly being used for compelling gaming at the moment. That may change though, because the Robot Locomotion Group and Learning Intelligent Systems teams at MIT have demonstrated that Kinect is far more capable than we imagined.

While some “hackers” have been trying to produce a “minority report” styled interface using the depth sensing doohickey, they’ve approached the task cautiously. MIT have jumped in head first – and have shown that despite initial post-launch reports to the contrary, Kinect is indeed capable of tracking individual fingers.

Sure, the implementation isn’t exactly practical, but its certainly paves the way for intricate use of Kinect, and demonstrates how fine Kinect’s tracking could potentially be. why isn’t Kinect utilised like this in Xbox 360 games? Maybe there’s just not enough processing power to go about to do such intricate tracking in conjunction with the graphical prowess expected of this gen? Who knows, but it does make me excited for the future; and does re-ignite my hope that the new Kinect Steel Battalion game will feature a useable, on-screen control panel. Fingers crossed (and tracked!)

Last Updated: December 9, 2010

7 Comments

  1. NiteFenix

    December 9, 2010 at 12:04

    OMG Awegasm!

    Reply

  2. Bobby Kotick for Dummies

    December 9, 2010 at 13:51

    In typical Microsoft fashion, instead of being a leader in innovation, it’s waiting for others to innovate and create for it. It takes “hackers” and reverse engineering to produce something from a Microsoft product, that Microsoft seems to be unable to do for themselves.

    They’re really a worthless company, always followers, never leaders, and ALWAYS taking credit for other people’s work.

    The epitome of asshole.

    Reply

  3. Dan

    December 9, 2010 at 16:06

    I suspect no fingers on release was due to 2 aspects, one was the fact that kinect uses usb 2 which limits the amount of data it can send through quickly. And secondly, processing power, 20 joints gets rapidly multiplied when you include wrist+fingers. It was clear from the night vision demo that kinect could pick up fingers to a reasonable degree. This hack probably removes all body control, so it can focus on finger tracking.

    Next gen console, with next gen kinect (or pc kinect) will be able to do all of this, probably with less lag than this incarnation.

    Reply

  4. Fox1

    December 9, 2010 at 17:45

    Like Apple and Sony and and and….

    Reply

  5. M@GE

    December 9, 2010 at 20:45

    The Rise And Fall Of Bobby The 1st

    Short snippet from book:

    Born 19 July 2001, honorable Fanboy enthusiast, gifted in the arts of professional Fanboyism, proud fan extremist, and most of all, great man……I mean boy…. He will be remembered by many, R.I.P.

    Buy the new book now! R29,95 at selected CNA outlets! While stocks last! 😉

    Reply

  6. Steve Hofmeyr

    December 10, 2010 at 16:21

    Oh FFS Bobby. You’re like lans with a dictionary. Same retarded logic but with pretty words.

    Reply

  7. Luna

    December 10, 2010 at 19:07

    Yeah, it’s a terrible idea to let the world give ideas that one company (Microsoft or not) may never think of, or have the time to do. We all know every company’s resources are unlimited, so why should the brightest minds out there actually help innovate?

    Yes, a terrible thing indeed.

    “In case you didn’t notice, I was being sarcastic.” – Homer J Simpson
    🙂

    Reply

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