After more than a year spent waiting I finally got to try Microsoft’s new motion control system, which was given the official name Kinect at last week’s E3 video game conference in Los Angeles. Microsoft brought the device—a sleek, motorized black bar consisting of infrared and RGB cameras as well as a microphone—to Toronto to let local journalists get…well, not hands-on time since one doesn’t actually touch it, but perhaps face time.
First impression: This technology works, and it works well.
The infrared camera found and recognized my body almost instantly, and it was difficult to trick it into losing track of me. I was told it looks for objects that look like people and then assigns them a wireframe with joints at hips, knees, ankles, shoulders, elbows, and wrists (you don’t see a wireframe in-game—I was shown it as part of a demonstration explaining the technology). The only significant recognition error I saw Kinect make was when it briefly interpreted a swinging jacket on the back of a chair as a torso, but that’s less a slight and more a testament to its acute sensitivity.
And sensitivity is just what players want.
My movements were translated to game inputs with a high level of accuracy. I shuffled my avatar around on a raft to tip it left and right as I steered it down a raging river. I ducked, sidestepped, and jumped to make my avatar avoid obstacles in a gauntlet. I pretended my hands were holding a steering wheel to maneuver a car around a small racing track, making subtle movements to correct direction. I reached out and stroked a virtual baby cheetah’s head, ear, and chin with my hand.
I did all of these things intuitively and without frustration. The camera rarely missed a movement, and the delay between my actions and those of my avatar was so slight that I’d guess most casual players wouldn’t even notice it.
So Kinect works—and better than I’d have thought.
Still, I foresee some challenges, the first being the space required to play some of Kinect's more active games.
Most of the activities I tried demanded plenty of movement—much more than any Wii game I’ve played. The key differentiator is that the player’s feet are now involved, which means we no longer stand in one spot and just move our arms; we actually move around the room.
I’d estimate that I was moving left and right at least three metres while I was steering the raft and a couple of metres forward and backward in the handball game. And that doesn’t include the two metres between my movement zone and the television—space necessary in order for the camera to get a full picture of your body and the area in which it moves—or my flailing limbs.
This is just a guess, but I reckon some of the games I tried require up to 150 square feet of clear space in order to take full advantage of the sort of movement they promote. I can’t imagine regularly manufacturing that kind of space in my smallish living room. I’d have to move all of the furniture into the dining area.
Microsoft’s reps pointed out that sometimes you can get away with just a lean, which takes up less space than a shuffle, but try doing that in, say, the gauntlet game, and your body will still hit obstacles.
Check out this Parade Magazine video, which made the rounds just before E3, to get a clearer idea of the sort of space some Kinect games demand. You’ll note the room is almost completely cleared of furniture.
