chubigans said:All credit to Jibber Hack for bringing up the article in the MS conference thread:
Standing Room Only said:Right now, Kinect only works when you stand. This includes menu navigation. All the cool options to grab a slider and advance through frames of a movie you are watching only work when you are on your feet. Kinect, we've been told, has problems handling your skeletal frame while sitting. The voice commands still work, but every game we've seen and even simple menu navigation have to be done with you out of your seat. That's not exactly how I want to watch my movies. If the focus for Kinect is creating games like Dance Central that naturally would require you to be off your couch, that's great. But I have to say, no one thinks "I am driving a car!" while standing up in their living room.
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/109/1099085p1.html
No word on if that's temporary or not. They've got four-five months to fix this. I mean, seriously?
Edit: gofreak says:
gofreak said:Edge reported devs' concerns on this exact problem - parsing out the player from furniture - a couple of issues ago. It seems entirely believable when you take a moment to think about the challenges involved vs dealing with people standing 'free'.
Again though, said article said that MS was working to fix this.
But Aaron Greenberg twitters...
Yes you can sit or stand with Kinect, depends on the game or experience.
Okay, let's try this again. Keep the discussion on topic, and avoid trolling or derailing or you will be banned.
Edit: IGN has since updated their article with this:
Standing Room Only
According to Microsoft, you can play some Kinect games sitting down. It "varies" by experience. However, several developers giving us demos have said the exact opposite. Sometimes the contradiction comes from the same person--one day telling us you have to be standing and then the next saying everything can be done while sitting.
Which is true? We don't know for certain, as we have not had the opportunity to play anything seated. Suffice to say, if you have to stand for every game (or for menu navigation), that's a big problem. This remains a concern until we ourselves can test out Kinect from our rear.
Edit: UPDATE!
jgwhiteus said:They responded to the Kotaku article and basically admitted that currently, body tracking / gesture control does not work while sitting for media control functions, but that they were hoping to fix it for those specific functions before launch.
They did not respond as to whether it will ever work for games. But if they were actually telling developers not to use sitting in games, as reported by Totilo, it doesn't really matter - again, if it's not ready by now, a few months before launch, there won't be enough time for developers to create any new, meaningful games that use the body tracking functions while you're sitting. I don't think it's the sort of thing developers can just flip a switch for in the middle of multi-year game development. EDIT: That is, developers have to assume for now that Kinect games will require players to stand, and they're going to base their design decisions on that - can't be an hours-long experience, has to happen in short bursts that people can tolerate.
http://kotaku.com/5565777/xbox-kinect-does-not-play-well-with-couch-potatoes
Kotaku said:UPDATE: A Microsoft spokesperson told me after the publication of this article that the company is certain that Kinect gesture control will work for movies, ESPN and other "entertainment" features before the sensor is launched. As I originally reported, that is not an implemented feature yet. The spokesperson was not able to provide any update on the Kinect's tolerance of a person who sits while playing games.