Hacked kinect Brings Futuristic User Interface | Hacker News Reader

Hacked kinect Brings Futuristic User Interface

digitizor.com

54 pointsdkd90335 comments

As far as Microsoft is concerned, 3rd party drivers and applications are the best thing to happen to the Kinect. Remember the original iPhone pre-app store? Jailbroken apps paved the way for what is now the billion dollar iOS app industry.

I don't think Microsoft is planning on running their own app store (at least not with the Kinect), but like with the iPhone, users "voiding the warranty" so to speak may usher in a wave of innovation in terms of accessibility and user interaction beyond the Xbox. Microsoft should know that watching what people do with the Kinect outside of the (artificial) design limits is one of the best (and least expensive) form of product-market research.

Here's an idea for use that Microsoft could create and profit from: Kinect as a remote control for a media center PC. No more losing the remote or replacing batteries. That one's free, Microsoft.

Hopefully they see this as a business opportunity, and start selling official drivers for use with PCs. But given their track record and internal politics, somehow I doubt it. (Even if they do, you know it's going to be Windows-only).

It will certainly be Windows only. I don't even know if Microsoft will open it up to 3rd party developers, but internally they could reposition and expand the Kinect and develop in-house products. I'm hopeful for the media center remote control applications.

Best thing? Microsoft isn't making money on selling Kinect (or Xbox, for that matter), they are making money on selling games for Xbox.

How can making Kinect work without Xbox (and even without Microsoft's OS) can be a good thing for them? If this would let to increase in Xbox sales then sure, but the thing works without Xbox now, so I don't see why anyone at Microsoft should be happy about it.

Source?

Last I heard, someone estimated the cost of the parts in a Kinect at $56, which is quite a bit less than the $150 they sell for. Even with all the related costs, they're making pretty good money off every Kinect they sell.

Simple Google search will reveal various sources quoting costs at either $56 (parts only) or $150 (manufacturing). Even if it would be indeed "only" $56 for parts, then you need to account for R&D, assembly, testing, packaging, worldwide delivery, marketing, not-so-small retailer's margin, import duty and VAT (where applies) and I'm pretty sure it would sum-up nicely to sub-$150.

Also, this is something that I consider "common knowledge" and I cannot point you to any sources, but for years console makers (Microsoft, Sony & Nintendo) has been selling consoles for (or even below) the manufacturing costs to allow for wider adoption.

From what I recall, Microsoft in the beginning was breaking-even after they sold at least 3 games for given console. That's why piracy is so big problem in the console world, not only is the console maker not making money, but they are actually losing money on pirates that only buy console.

The Wii is not a loss leader. Only the original xbox, ps3, and 360 are loss leaders. It's entirely possible for the kinect to be break even, or just barely loss, in which case I think Microsoft is willing to take the hit for more mindshare/market share.

Maybe their PHB and marketing drones won't get that, but I think their real managers and marketing people (they have to have exist for the xbox division to get where they are) are going to see how valuable this is. I mean, MS threw an entire hardware generation as a loss-leader, I think they'll happily take a break-even to make Sony look silly.

Yes, I completely agree with you... However, my point was that people who only buy Kinect (at break-even or some loss) without any intention of buying games or even console, cannot be the best thing (or even a good thing) for Microsoft, like dkokelley said.

Reread my original post. I said that the Kinect could bring innovation in other areas (beyond the Xbox), which in turn could sell more media center PCs, for example. I imagine that without the drivers, the Kinect would have remained a game controller novelty at best. I didn't intend to imply that the drivers would sell more Kinects or Xboxes.

Agree with your point, but just wanted to clarify that Nintendo do not make a loss on the Wii.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Wii#cite_ref-wiisalesp...

I don't mean that the Kinect will sell more of its own units, or even more Xbox units. My point is that by applying the technology from the Kinect, along with the creativeness of unsupported developers, Microsoft can reposition the device to sell many other things, like media center PCs - a market they aren't quite established in, given the competition from the PS3, Apple TV, or the myriad of other devices that are competing in that market.

I guess they can sell lots of Windows 8 with the "Kinect Ready" tagline.

"Minority Report" interfaces look really cool when demoed, but I have yet to see a solution to gorilla arm syndrome. No matter how good the technology gets, nobody is going to want to wave their arms around in front of them for anything even close to "an extended amount of time".

This technology has a lot of potential, but this particular application is a dead end.

Another commenter called out a use I hadn't thought of: operating media center PCs without a mouse or remote. Since you only need brief interactions, the fatigue wouldn't a big deal.

Of course, in order not to change the channel, you'll have to stand very still...

I'm not sure if you are joking here or not -- but, if you've played with the Kinect on a 360, you'd note that it can recognize your hands, and only when you hold your hands out for a set period of time (2-3 seconds, cannot recall exactly) the Kinect wakes up and begins to allow you to input controls.

I was joking. I failed to locate the correct reference to the Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy, but I am sure there is a joke on gesture recognition somewhere in there.

Personally, I'd rather tell my media centre PC to change channel with a voice command than wave my hand at it. Seems more natural to me. I'm sure flicking through channels would be easy enough with some kind of motion commands, but navigating to specific channels, how would you do that? I guess you could have a specific gesture for each individual channel, but even then, it would me much easier to just say the name of a chennel. Another idea would be a specific gesture to go to the list of channels, which you could then scroll through and select, but this is still more work then voice commands. I'm not saying this technology sucks, I think it's fantastic, but it doesn't solve every UI problem.

Ive read a commenter here in HN remark on how the Voice recognition of the Kinect is something that is seriously being slept on/not paid enough attention too.

That's because it's just 4 microphones. You STILL have to do the speech recognition yourself, and that's tough.

The new part of the Kinect is the 3D stuff, so that's what people are playing with.

That's odd, the XBox SDK had a speech recognition library build in to it. I presumed that shipped as part of the XBox 360 SDK?

It's only a dead end if you're assuming a situation where people would be doing this for long periods of time. If you're just switching viewports, changing the view of a CAD drawing or performing other infrequent tasks then this sort of user interface would be ok, and quite intuitive.

This is only a problem when we use it for a 2d display. Use it with AR glasses and voila, you have freedom.

No need to wave in a direct direction to do unrelated motions, when you can do what you want in front of you, the "usual" way.

I haven't tried it but I think I'd appriciate the exercise. Anything is better than sitting a desk staring at a screen. I wish computing could involve walking around a room too.

But you can use it from a desk! Imagine sitting at a smallish desk with a keyboard and a projector/large screen a few feet away. Gestures whenever you want them (if you wrote the software right, you could even do most of them with your elbows on the desk), typing whenever you need, voice commands the rest.

I don't know what the near point on the kinect is, but if they could drop it down ~foot, then you could use it at your desk right now. It'll be nice for some image/CAD stuff. Shame it's not really sensitive enough to pick out wrist/finger movement. Then you could use your entire desk as your touchpad! Magic-pad eat my dust.

If Microsoft is losing money on every sale, the simplest solution to this is to stop selling it separate from an Xbox (feasible as soon as the original Kinect uptake approaches 100% of active game-purchasing consoles) or build it into a next-generation console.

OTOH, Microsoft could just as well keep selling it. I bet the fraction of purchases that will end up in Linux boxes is tiny when compared to the part that goes to Xboxes and generate game sales.

Sorry but that is not a futuristic interface.

That is a current interface in need of a futuristic application.

What really pains me is that Microsofts response to all this innovation and geek love is to threaten people working on the drivers to make this possible with jail.

I understand that they want to protect their investment. Especially if the are selling the hardware at a loss (I don't know whether they are), but a bit more open mindedness could be so helpful in getting geeks excited (and maybe selling more consoles in the long run)

Look at the Wiimote. Did nintendo lose anything as the community began doing crazy stuff with it? I know of at least one case where the Wiimotes hacker-friendliness sold a console.

Isn't the obvious solution for Microsoft in the case of the Kinect to just up the price so they aren't selling it at a loss (assuming they are)? Hobbyists will still buy them and do innovative things with the device, especially if there appears to be less risk of C&Ds down the line.

They may also have had plans to do some of these things themselves and the projects people are publishing could count as prior art, preventing them from patenting various things.

This is pure speculation and I have no information to support it, though. It's kind of sad that they appear to be hostile to the notion of people hacking this nifty device into something even greater.

I don't think they're selling it at a loss, but who knows? Apparently, they've been shoveling profits around to hide weakness in the Windows division, or at least InformationWeek thinks so.

Source: http://www.informationweek.com/news/storage/reviews/showArti...

According to the teardown I read today the parts cost of a kinect is $56, so it is safe ta assume they're not losing money on it.

Can you provide examples that mention jail?

Not the word jail but the threat is in plain sight

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20021836-52.html

"Microsoft does not condone the modification of its products," a company spokesperson told CNET. "With Kinect, Microsoft built in numerous hardware and software safeguards designed to reduce the chances of product tampering. Microsoft will continue to make advances in these types of safeguards and work closely with law enforcement and product safety groups to keep Kinect tamper-resistant."

In part Microsoft HAS to release a statement saying don't do. So that later it can claim it is not responsible for something and it did everything in it's power to stop these activities.

You can imagine someone somehow coming to harm and Microsoft getting sued because it a massive cash cow.

Of course this is being generous to MS and given past form I'm sure they will not hesitate to protect themselves from positive publicity and the possibility that people may consider the company to be cool and innovative ;)

AFAIK you can't weasel your way out of product liability like that.

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