I Connect with Kinect

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Published on Wednesday, 18 August 2010 20:40

Written by Rob McCaulley

{sidebar id=1}My niece and I went to Seattle last week to a public demo of Kinect that was intended to be as hands-free as Kinect is with 3-months left until launch.

Before all else, I need to make mention of how knowledgeable and personable the staff working the event was. This can be best noted by our first encounter - we arrived at the zoo, where the demo was being held, and upon our first encounter with staff I asked, “So, do we get to see Kinectimals?” Her answer was along the lines of “no, but we can put it in for you, if you like.”

The staff just got better from there.

The setup was two trailers side by side. Each trailer sported a ramp to the entrance and a few steps down to exit, a terminal for leaving feedback along the rear, and another terminal in-between where they were giving out unique-to-you lanyards that you could get swiped before playing either game so you could later go to a website and watch yourself play Kinect.

The first game we saw was Dance Central, and that’s when the reality of Kinect hit me. Kinect, much like other motion controllers aren’t necessarily intended for people with visual impairments that force them to play closer to the screen than about 6-feet. This caused me to pass the lanyard to Grace.

While Grace was getting setup to play the game, I stood and talked to one of the other staffers who was holding court on the ramp. We were talking about whether people in wheelchairs will be able to use Kinect, the answer I got was a little unexpected - “there’s a ramp, isn’t there?” That made the ramp an undesirable place to be, so the wheelchair Q&A got postponed.

Old people say the darnd’est things.

Kenect and a wheelchair

Later, we returned to the staff member who was originally talking about it with us. She had heard that wheelchairs were a “go” for Kinect. When asked what’s going to be the go-to game for those in wheelchairs, the answer was Kinect Sports, tennis, handball, and the more upper-body relative sports were all suggested to likely be wheelchair friendly.

She also hinted that Dance Central will be a possibility to play in a wheelchair, though players will obviously take a hit for a lack of lower-body motion.

My being unable to play got the ball rolling on a more personal demo of Kinect, which was a lot more than I thought we’d ever get.

During our more personal demo, we got to see inside the Kinect’s settings menu and play with the camera and see how it sees us. I want to say this was to calibrate it, but don’t quite remember.

Looking at the world as Kinect sees it is interesting. Players 1 and 2 are represented by the colors red and green - which I did make mention that they might want to change. Kinect sees entire bodies - including clothes, so nobody needs to worry about it seeing you as a naked mannequin (had that conversation waiting in line). From there, Kinect breaks your body down into 15-points of movement, mostly major joints.

While we were looking at ourselves from Kinect’s perspective, we tried a few things. I had Grace squat down a few times, then test her range of motion in the shoulders and neck. Kinect was able to track each movement really close to 1:1.

I also tested the range of Kinect while we were there - just to see how close I could get and it still see me. The bad news is that to capture an entire body, Kinect starts losing track of your person around 4 or 5 feet. Fortunately, I have hope that since the area Kinect would need to track while the player was seated would be reasonably smaller, thus allowing the Kinect to track a closer player.

This led us to a couple things that the person who took us through a more intimate look at the Kinect wanted us to see, demonstrating where the Kinect is at right now. The first of those things was in Kinect Sports. She wanted to show us the “crowd control” feature within, which is exactly what it sounds like - a game of monkey see, monkey do, and what better place to do it than a zoo!

This was actually a bit cooler than that, she asked Grace to put her right arm behind her back where Kinect couldn’t necessarily see it. The crowd’s response was to put their right arm behind their backs.

The second thing that she wanted to show us was Your Shape, but unfortunately this wouldn’t load. Though during the time waiting, she told us that it’s able to track exercises from various body positions and best shows off Kinect’s ability to track the body in various positions. It would have been nice to see it in action, but the theme continues - there’s still a bit of time between now and launch.

Satisfied with what Kinect can do right now, we moved on to the Kinect Adventures trailer. The game they were showing off wasn’t the most mobility friendly game we saw. There was a lot of ducking and a lot of jumping. I’m skeptical of the reception Kinect will get based on it being bundled with Kinect Adventures.

This is where things got interesting. Earlier when we first arrived, I asked how mobile a player needs to be to play Kinect and the answer I got was “you won’t be able to just phone it in”. As we were waiting on the platform to get in to play Kinect Adventures, there were 2 rather large people playing the game, neither were ducking or jumping but phoning it in as best they could, and it just so happened that Kinect tracked them doing so according to another on-looker.

We were stopped before we left to go see the half-ancient carousel and were asked what we thought about all the questions we’d asked and gotten answers to. My thoughts were that I’m hopeful Kinect gets to where it needs to be before it launches. The ramps leading to each trailer made me optimistic. The range of motion that the Kinect could track using only 15-points of the body made me think of the potential. The shortcomings made me want to explore how I could make it work for me because it is that cool. Watching all the able-bodies playing Kinect made me a bit jealous. Finally, it made me want to play a Power Rangers game.

I’m not kidding. I want to be the original Green Power Ranger.

[Editors note: Tommy was cool but better as the White Ranger with the Tigerzoid!]

Update: I’d like to clear up a possible misunderstanding. The person on the ramp that made the off-color comment about Kinect being accessible to wheelchair users was not an employee of Microsoft, XBOX, Kinect, or Woodland Park Zoo. It was made by an elderly person who was presumably unhappy about accompanying their grandkids to the zoo to see a video game add-on. I’d like to apologize for my vagueness and any misrepresentation it may have caused.

About the Author

Author: Rob McCaulley

I'm Rob McCaulley, one of the staff writers here on AbleGamers. (Thank you for the oppertunity.)