Microsoft Kinect: The AnandTech Review
by Brian Klug on December 9, 2010 3:20 PM ESTKinect Adventures
The title that ships with Kinect really has to be awesome, and luckily Kinect Adventures is pretty much exactly what I’d expect it to be. It’s sort of a bundle of simple games that lend themselves to full body control, and the whole collection is packaged up almost like a tour of various minigames.
Most of the minigames have already been shown off, but there are a bunch more to talk about. Blocking and bouncing kickballs in a virtual tunnel of sorts, an obstacle course with full body movements, water rafting, and another which involves plugging leaks in a virtual aquarium. They’re bundled together either in an adventure mode or through free play, and can have single player or two-player support.
If Kinect Adventures is analogous to Wii Sports, (in that it ships with the platform and establishes the baseline level of expectations for immersion), then the bar is set pretty high. Adventures leverages the depth sensor and full body tracking quite well, and all of the minigames require a lot of movement.
Adventures also leverages the color camera and takes pictures of you while you’re playing. Most of the time the photo events are marked with a camera coming up on screen and are carefully placed to coincide with some jump or large movement, and the results are generally pretty hilarious. Again here the color camera seems a bit noisier and lower resolution than what I’d consider ideal, and if you’re playing in low light you can turn into a smear if Kinect tries to take a photo of you while jumping. Provide lots of ambient light, however, and the results are pretty good. I’m a bit puzzled by why they seem to be smashed into the wrong aspect ratio when played back at the end of the game (sure, they’re supposed to look like Polaroid photos, but aspect-incorrect scaling is annoying), but the photos themselves are fine. You can then upload these to kinectshare.com and from there download directly or post to Facebook if you want to embarrass yourself. There isn’t any auto-upload functionality (thankfully) so you don’t have to really worry about photos of yourself playing in nothing but underwear uploading automatically.
In fact, basically all the media that’s recorded on Kinect (there are also videos recorded in several other applications, and videos encoded from motion capture) is cleared through kinectshare.com. I guess while we’re on the subject of motion-capture and media that’s uploaded we can talk about Kinect Adventures’ trophy concept.
Complete enough adventures, and you’ll get to record a trophy. This is essentially full body motion capture and audio, which some avatar is then set to. There’s a hamster looking creature for single player, and a shark for 2 player - I’m sure there are more beyond there that I haven’t gotten to as well. The concept and result are actually remarkably polished. You can then upload the resulting video to Kinect Share where it remains (like all media) for 14 days for you to download.
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tipoo - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
The fan is pretty tiny so you probably wouldn't hear it over your TV and 360 anyways, but I'm curious if its audible?Brian Klug - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
It's definitely not audible. I tried forever to detect airflow, much less it being on, and couldn't ever hear anything. It's possible I wasn't getting Kinect warm enough, but I did try on two pretty toasty LCDs and an even warmer plasma. ;)-Brian
mentatstrategy - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
I read that it doesn't pick up dark skinned folks very well..tipoo - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
AFAIK dark skinned people's infrared signatures are no different from light skinned. If it used a standard camera for detection I would believe you as that's happened to laptops, but in this case the camera is just for video and the infrared sensor does all the detecting.racerx_is_alive - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
rarson is right that it's just the facial recognition, and even that problem goes away if you have enough lights on, I thought.Mumrik - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
I was hoping for an article primarily about the hardware and its possibilities on the PC. I know there's a lot of homebrewing going on and I'm honestly more fascinated by what this might do on PC than what it'll be used for in its natural environment on the 360.This all seems well written and so on, but I doubt many of us come here for the console coverage (though I do know that there tends to be hardware coverage at the point of launch).
tipoo - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
Interesting, thanks. I doubt the chips inside it need cooling, its probably for the Infrared sensor as that is sensitive to temperature. Maybe it only turns on if the ambient temperature is very high to start with, and Microsoft just decided to take no chances after that huge hoopla with the RRODs.Noriaki - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
Bottom of page 1: "new Xbox 350 S console"Brian Klug - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
Microsoft actually refers to the new Xbox as the Xbox 360 S in a few places, and I was being very pedantic in that sentence about which console I was referring to (Xbox 360 Pro versus S), so I used that nomenclature. ;)-Brian
Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
... with the latest dashboard update that brought UI changes and Kinect support (seriously)"And yet you did not plaster the word "FAIL" in big bold letters across the top of every page in this review. Oh it's a great product. It really rains on thw Wii's parade. And it only costs $150 + $300 for a new consoel because the old one is a piece of junk. That's cool though, perfectly normal. Is there no limit to the gullibility and/or stupidity? Does anyone have half a brain not to be so willing to be scammed? Every Xbox I ever see happens to be sitting on top of a dead one. What kind of stupid dumbed down abject morons are you people who feel the need to waste your money on such scams?