Everytime i read one of those "kinectless" sku rumors i ask myself that question. Xbone seemed to be built around the idea of the kinect, In my humble opinion that was a HUGE mistake. What was MS thinking? A device aimed to get the casual crowd, but at the same time increasing the initial pricepoint to 500$... Thoughts?
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With VR coming soon/soonish... Was MS investment on Kinect worth it?
- Thread starter Miroslav
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RyanPierre
Member
Well, even with all the optimism about VR, we don't actually know if the investment in VR will be worth it either yet. But in terms of VR, Kinect could have been a perfect companion to future VR, but the latency with the hardware makes it useless for that purpose from what I understand.
But every VR device uses some sort of camera? And the Xbox has that already then when a VR releases.
I believe the issue is the low latency (Is that the word that was being used? Latency or Refresh rate) rate is absolutely necessary for VR to work effectively, especially with the head-tracking function, and the Kinect is still really high for that purpose. PS Camera was built with VR in mind, hence it is a very low rate.
Kinect compliments and completes the VR experience. Without it you are, essentially, wearing a head-tiltable 3D headset. Nothing more.
A Move like device perfects the VR trifecta by allowing for a trackable device that simulates a handheld object (sword, shield, gun, knife, staff, phone etc). Finally, for movement, a treadmill like the Omni ties it all in a nice bow.
A Move like device perfects the VR trifecta by allowing for a trackable device that simulates a handheld object (sword, shield, gun, knife, staff, phone etc). Finally, for movement, a treadmill like the Omni ties it all in a nice bow.
It has a camera yeah, it's using IR tracking for positional tracking, Sony are just using the preexisting Move tracking.
Salvor.Hardin
Banned
Kinect had shipped 23 million units by February 2013. I imagine MS is ecstatic with their investment in Kinect. If Rift or Morpheus sell even 10 million after 2 years, I'll be surprised.
As for its place on the XBO, I think they know they would have been better off had they simply sold the device separately. It would certainly be a more profitable venture.
As for its place on the XBO, I think they know they would have been better off had they simply sold the device separately. It would certainly be a more profitable venture.
Nightengale
Member
DK2/CC comes with an IR camera for positional tracking.
It's the missing piece of the puzzle to solve positional tracking. Unfortunately, non-camera solutions seem to be not viable at this point.
I dont think the addition of the hdmi in had much to do with the higher pricepoint of the X1. I feel like the investment on the tv thingy can not be compared with that on the Kinect. Also MS marketed the X1 and kinect as a unique thing. I see the tv stuff as something... optional.
FritoBandito
Banned
Tell me more about your tales as a developer/engineer working with VR.
TheRealTalker
Banned
whats the refesh rate of the Kinect vs the PS EYE
BulletTheory
Neo Member
People saying the Kinect camera isnt good enough - I thought it was powerful enough to read your heartbeat and all that crap? Surely its good enough to do similar positional tracking that Sonys Morpheus does using the Move camera?
Script_Flipper
Member
I would think anything the Playstation Camera could do, the Kinect could do better. I know the Kinect runs at 1080/30. Is it not possible for them to lower the resolution and increase the framerate like the Playstation Camera? Also Kinect 2.0 has 20 ms latency. And IR tracking.
Someone set me straight pls, thx.
Someone set me straight pls, thx.
Freeman
Banned
360 got a big boost from it, Xbox One was hindered by it. Its something that is hard to know for sure, we don't know where all this money could otherwise have gone and if it would have been enough for the 360 to sell 80m units.
MS big mistake, was not allowing it to easily work on PC or other devices, so that indie developers, students and enthusiasts could come up with good uses for it.
MS big mistake, was not allowing it to easily work on PC or other devices, so that indie developers, students and enthusiasts could come up with good uses for it.
On the positional tracking thing...why don't conventional inertial navigation systems work? Or do they, but the expense is too great/hardware too bulky to use in a consumer-level headset? Or not accurate enough?
I mean this is stuff that's used to guide ICBMs and marine vessels when they don't have access to GPS and it's well understood tech...
I mean this is stuff that's used to guide ICBMs and marine vessels when they don't have access to GPS and it's well understood tech...
I think it's been mentioned by Marks or Mikhailov at some point in some interview (or maybe the QA after the reveal?).
I don't think you need to be to know a device with a 60ms input can't produce a motion to photon global latency of 25ms or less. I don't like to boast, but I didn't even need a calculator.
There is a little wiggle room actually, because positional tracking could be used just for reference, and you could use predictive movement from the sensors on the device to build a movement tracking model, but it would be massively more prone to failure states, and just including a high speed camera is a much better option.
FritoBandito
Banned
A better option is different than saying it's unlikely.
Its advanced tech in its own right, but its not fast enough for VR.
Hopefully we see some Kinect-like device in the future that is fast enough, cuz it would be perfect for full body tracking theoretically.
And I didn't say it was impossible, I said it's not good enough, and it's not.
Can the Kinect assist with VR? Yes, you don't need a camera at all for VR, but for good, well calibrated movement tracking, it's not good enough.
Its essentially unusable. High latency means sickness in VR. Cant have that.
Canis lupus
Member
Narpas Sword0
Member
I like how the OP defaults to the same rote arguments instead of addressing the question in his own title.
Okay?
Is the kinect 1080p only or can it drop resolution to get lower latency?
I'm a developer working with VR and Kinect. Kinect's 30fps refresh rate and extreme jitter of joints makes it impossible to have a good VR experience if you're using it to track your head like other VR solutions do.
Can you provide a link for the 60ms spec? Based on Tom's Hardware review, the original Kinect is 65ms, but the Xbone Kinect is 14ms. That seems responsive enough relative to other current/near future offerings.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/microsoft-xbox-one-console-review,3681-6.html
That article is weird, it says motion blur is reduced to 14ms, which isn't really a meaningful technical term. Kinect 2's refresh rate for depth images is 30fps. The RGB image refreshes at a faster rate iirc, but that's meaningless.
Edit: 30fps not 30ms
FritoBandito
Banned
So it's the low frame rate. People were saying its the low latency, then there's a question of whether that's even true.
It's just a pet peeve of mine when hobbyists/fans speak as experts and bad information can get disseminated. Glad you can clear things up.
Mind you, it's not terrible if you use it to track your body and give yourself a virtual body in VR, but it's extremely disorienting if you use Kinect for head tracking.
That doesn't say that at all, it says a global shutter reduces motion blur, he's not talking about latency at all. And you can google Kinect specs, it's not a secret or anything.
Is motion blur the same as input lag? Doesn't sound the same to me at all.
The 60 ms originated from the leaks here, which have been right for all other parts I think: http://www.vgleaks.com/durango-next-generation-kinect-sensor/
I've heard the 90 ms part for the original Kinect many times as well and not the 65 ms which Tom's Hardware refers to, so I think that isn't the right number to compare.
Then again, the question is how much of the lag is coming from the camera and how much is added by software. And whether the camera's own lag can be reduced.
It's referring to latency versus frame rate. I haven't developed for Kinect/VR, so I'm not sure how much impact these have at certain values, but some folks are referring to latency being the issue and some frame rate. My guess is it is frame rate, as latency seems "good enough".
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