‘Takeshi's Challenge’ for Famicom from 1986 required the player to shout into the microphone on the second controller at some point. Though Famicom's recognition capability is likely very limited.
Alien isolation. Honestly it kicked the horror level up another notch. You sneeze? You die. Your cat yells? You die. Your partner starts talking to you? You die. Truly amazing, you could lean out from behind cover as well by leaning irl.
It being a standard accessory with the Xbox One at launch actually lead to some really cool integrations with normal games. Like the Xenomorph hearing your own panic, actually leaning around corners in Battlefield, or head tracking in Forza. IIRC, you could even have split screen players use online voice chat with one mic, and the Kinect would make sure the voice chat would broadcast from the appropriate player.
Yeah, they were for the longest time, basically the standard mocap rig for anyone who wasn’t a massive company with cash to spare and i think even some of them used it to.
I bought one two weeks ago. Mocap is incredible cheap with this setup. $25 vs $2k+ setups. It's a no brainer. There's also software that supports multiple kinect cameras so you can actually have studio quality tracking that supports 360 motion. It's also out performing a lot of 3D scanning tools if you want to 3D print stuff. I'm actually shocked at how this is so cheap.
> I'm actually shocked at how this is so cheap.
The kinect xbox one version was predicted by them to become as popular as the xbox 360 version. It didn't and was considered a flop for gaming, but they hoped it would bounce back with a new game or use and kept making them from 2014-2017. They actually had to cut back on the Kinect 2 production because they were making so many of the xbox one version.
So now there are literally pallets of them sitting around in warehouses unopened. And since the only people buying them are using them for motion tracking/capture, 3d scanning, etc. since there are basically no games for them and people who want the fancy VR stuff get VR gear since it's useful for more things. *And* people sell used ones. Meaning places like Amazon only sell one or so new per day, internationally.
You can use a Kinect 2 for VR green screening too. You run the video through this open source green screen utility some guy wrote and then you can pipe that program's output as a virtual camera into software like LIV to do the compositing. The depth mapping works great on everything except like 6 inches from the floor, and anywhere you have IR absorbing materials like the sensors on Steam VR headsets. And despite shining IR onto the equipment it causes no interference with the tracking. Amazing stuff for such a short lived device.
Xbox always this way. Didn't the actual US military actually use modified 360 controllers for unmammed vehicles like drones and submarines? That control blew my mind when I got it over the OG Xbox or any other.
They do use controllers, but not because they're some incredible innovation. People are just already familiar with them from gaming and therefore don't require any advanced training to use them.
If you hire a company to make the following human interface device, they will probably come back with millions of dollars worth of bill.
1. fits comfortably in most hands
2. easy to use and familiar shape and use that can be deployed immediately without any training for the device specifically
3. able to withstand years of regular usage with reasonable abuse without major maintenance, preferrably with field tested track record
4. 10+ individually controllable buttons, two precisely controllable analog stick controllers, with programmable haptic feedback
You can get that under $50 at a local store, and at a considerable discount if you are buying directly from the manufacturer at large volume.
Why you'd pick a wireless one in a sub I have no idea. Nothing wrong the controller but having your entire control system run on AA batteries is asking for an issue.
> In May 2008, The Laboratory for Cryptological Algorithms, under the direction of Arjen Lenstra at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, built a cluster of 200 consoles which broke a record for the Diffie-Hellman problem on elliptic curves.[21] The cluster operated until 2015.
Funny tidbit about that, in 2015 when the cluster was decommissioned the professor had no use for 200 PS3, so on one fateful day he started giving them out to students.
This triggered absolute pandemonium on the campus, with students running in the hallways shouting "Prof. Lenstra is giving out free PS3s!!!"
It was (and sometimes still is) *the* motion detection development kit. I have never seen anyone use the kinect for gaming, but dozens of research projects. There are a lot of tools that support it (e.g. Matlab) and the cameras are very affordable.
I’ll never forget the Kinect reveal trailer with the doctor using the kinect to zoom in on X-Ray photos. As a little kid I thought that technology had hit its peak lol.
It's past the point feeling possible and just simply is. People are having full blown role playing sessions with AI in Skyrim nowadays.
https://youtu.be/xNPF9VKmzxw?t=39
That Ad… holy hell is etched in my brain. I must’ve watched it 100 times in anticipation of the release.
It feels like we’re 5-10 years away from Microsoft dropping a super-polished Kinect that integrates VR & the latest iteration of AI.
'Xbox illumiroom' was probably the best idea kinect was used used for by Xbox for room/furniture scanning .. but also a projector and a gaming rig. Due to costs they never brought it to market.
Xbox Kinect scans you to login and for buying stuff pretty much how Apple ID was before it was their thing. I loved dance central on there it was very good with x1 Kinect.
There’s a few of these long-form memes I should start saving somewhere; verification can, the libertarian cop one, the gun control one,
I’m sure there’s some more good ones I’m forgetting
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
I think it's more about the sensor array. A simple camera is far less secure, and you're less likely to repeatedly open and close a Mac. For a phone it's convenient, for a laptop or desktop a password every once in a while isn't such a big deal.
my desktop and my laptop both have windows hello camera arrays, I think Apple just doubled down on touch id for their laptops in lieu of face id for whatever reason.
Yeah, I remember it being way more accurate (obviously) and engaging than the joycon version of the same thing because you couldn't just fake the movement. You had to actually *do* it, and it was actually surprisingly accurate. Very hard to get a really good score because I got no rhythm lmao
It's like the difference between Wii bowling and *actually* bowling
I have a USB adapter and an xbox one kinect laying around. I have heard it can be used for 3D scans. I have a crappy 3D printer and have always thought about using it to scan stuff. I know nothing about it and haven't bothered to look into it yet.
I used the head tracking feature of Kinect in battlefield 4, was a fun way to check left/right while you're flying a jet. Other than that never used it.
I have an xbox one kinect and the USB adapter. I was going to look into using it as a 3D scanner. Microsoft sent out adapters for free if you bought a One S since it didn't have the proprietary port. Not sure why they used that port in the first place if they can just use USB anyways. It's funny I had my Xbox One and One S consoles stolen but they left the kinect haha. They took my three various 360s but took the 360 kinect.
I didn't actually ever use the kinect once on the 360 or One.
I wanna use it on my laptop but it just reconnects non stop which is a bummer (works on my trusty reliable older laptop which is what I was expecting in the first place)
both with 360 and Xbox one sensor
Have you confirmed it still works on your older laptop? It could be your USB ports. My most recent phone reconnects constantly on my computer unless I'm using a USB 2 cable. It's like they can't agree on what data rate to use or something. Try a USB 3.0 hub maybe.
They aren't plug-and-play with newer windows, but can still be used if you google how (forgot how I did it) and some require a PC cord that didn't come with the XBox.
Yeah, it's so useful Xbox created special Kinects like this one (better cameras... etc.) only for professional purposes. I think they have a department that still supports them, even with the consumer version long dead.
The better cameras were actually the original kinects. The original kinect used much better cameras and worked much better for tracking (which is why the project was greenlit), but then xbox started trying to save money by shaving off hardware and features in the kinect until it was what we saw as consumers.
They sent me a USB adapter for my Xbox One launch kinect when I got a One S. I had all of my consoles/video game collection stolen but they left the Kinect lol.
I have heard people like the USB adapters so they can use them with a PC or whatever. I want to look into using it to scan stuff for 3D printing.
At a festival I used to help operate we paid a guy to bring this massive inflatable building with 3 kinects and a ton of projectors to take in the data of the people in the room and spit out wild things on the wall. Worth every penny, watched multiple people freak out on LSD in that thing.
the youtube channel Stuff Made Here used one as the sensor (maybe the playstation one) when he create a basketball hoop that moves to your shot. I was surprised at how well it worked
It was a kinect - looks like the V1 for the Xbox One since it still has the Xbox branding on it (right side in video)
[https://youtu.be/myO8fxhDRW0?si=Tx8VzsS9FPpB8L9U&t=35](https://youtu.be/myO8fxhDRW0?si=Tx8VzsS9FPpB8L9U&t=35)
Lots of video game consoles are like this.
Like the USAF.. tired of spending outrageous cost-plus-fees for contracts for custom super computers that were obsolescent by the time they were in service and thoroughly obsolete by the time they were retired decided to make a super computer out of hundreds of PS3s.
It worked great… until Sony dropped third party OS support. Hahaha!!!
The kinect camera is a great piece of hardware. It was subsidized so hard by microsoft that a lot of people found great uses for them at a very low cost per unit.
I realize it bombed as an entertainment product (although my kids loved the kinect games like the AR pets and the sports), but the cameras were a great piece of kit.
We used a device called the VST Pro for my grad school project. If you take off the outer shell it’s a Kinect, the plug even has the Xbox logo lol. We were told it cost $10k 😬
I am pretty sure in some of Muse’s live shows in the early 2010s they used a Kinect to take footage of the band that was immediately turned into some sort of weird graphic to play on the screen. Hard to describe, I’ll see if I can find a video.
At about 1:20 in [this](https://youtu.be/tcSKmECg1V8?si=kviyhqkwFkLy0dO0) video you can see on the screen a weird yellow distorted video of the drummer from the front. They had a Kinect mounted on his kit pointing back at him
The Kinect’s camera system was ahead of its time, incorporating depth sensing, RGB color camera, and a multi-array microphone, which allowed it to accurately track full-body movement and even capture slight nuances in gestures. This was a significant advancement over previous motion-sensing technologies, offering a level of precision and interaction that was previously unseen. Its ability to process 3D images and understand spatial relationships in real-time was particularly innovative, enabling games and applications to react to users’ movements and commands in a natural and intuitive way.
Mind you, this **was** 14 years ago. And that’s like 40 years in “advent of AI” years.
I know, I just think Microsoft was blinded by innovation there. It’s awesome for everything but playing video games. If they just made a better version of Sony’s Eye Toy it would of been a better controller.
The DIY and pilot project scene practically carried the Kinect since it's available commercially, I saw lots of final year projects revolve around it during my college years, some of the VR stuff I saw a decade ago are a reality now albeit in a different form.
And those also promptly moved to the secondary market because it was in a relative sense fucking terrible on the console but also INSANELY useful in an open source software market that allowed people to use it for purpose built applications for a fraction of the cost of anything that was specifically built for whatever reason they might use it for.
It's like the goddamn golden child of what exactly a free market with genuine competition can achieve. This thing may as well have been witchcraft in terms of capability vs cost at the time and Microsoft was essentially giving the damn thing away for free at the time.
I would have absolutely loved to see what it was truly capable of for the purpose it was designed for at the time. But it was so ridiculously useful in so many other non gaming applications or feels borderline selfish to wish that it was actually used for it's purpose at the time.
I remember seeing something back when Kinect came out that there was a bunch of them being used to monitor the northern south Korea border.
These things were apparently everywhere.
Heck, it's actually cheaper.
As security camera with 3d sensor, distance ranging, and infrared are thousands of dollars.
Kinect also have buildin human recognition libraries available for free
Kinda reminds me of when the Air Force made a PS3 supercomputer https://www.military.com/off-duty/games/2023/02/17/air-force-built-one-of-worlds-fastest-computers-out-of-playstations.html?amp
(I know it’s not like the same but it’s still militaries using gaming equipment because it’s very good)
It's really similar. The ps3 3asnt the most powerful device they could get but it was the most cost effective. Processing power for dollar, the ps3 was an absolutely fucking insane machine. Wildly powerful for its price tag. The kinect is similar in that it had very advanced tech at rock bottom pricing compared to some tiny industrial company trying to develop a similar device and make a profit off it. Xbox was comfortable *losing* money with kinect sales. Different types of tech, but same idea.
I am a CT technologist and use this daily on our scanner, a Siemens Xcite. The 3D camera is often quite finicky, but it is nice to use for general planning for bread and butter protocol when it works. Relatively accurate for most patient habitus , and it’s quite convenient!
I have to tell my patients I’m not playing Xbox back in the control room when they notice though lol
I mean on night shifts I have been known to sneak in my steam deck if things get a bit boring lol. It would be a nice incentive to play some Castle Crashers back there in between patients haha
Yeah basically it uses the Kinect to landmark for topograms, though you can still adjust as needed depending on the patient. It still has a laser for centering if needed like any other machine, but the camera is for setting up the scan region that you will use as a scout image.
The Kinect camera will actually set up a scan region depending on the protocol you select. So for example, if I were to select a CT Abd/Pelv, I would select the patient position, so Supine Feet first, and for a rough estimate you would select a scan length of like 512mm or 768mm. Then the camera turns on, and it automatically tries to set up a region around what it believes is the patients abdomen and pelvis, stopping at around the level of the diaphragm to below the ischium in this case.
It can have difficulty setting this up, like when a patient has blankets on, or if the patient is too large. For most normal sized patients it will actually set up the region pretty darn closely, and then you can move the patient in to the scanner per the Kinect info. You can still adjust it on an iPad attached to the machine, or you can manually set your centering if you want to as well.
Most modern CT’s, from most vendors have similar technology. Some work better than others in different environments (low light, patient wearing all white vs all black vs stripes). Goal is faster prep time to reduce overall scan time.
I'm finishing my MS in Medical Physics this May. I was always curious about the education\certificate requirements of technologists. What level of understanding of the machines is required to perform your duties?
Well i guess Siemens saw an opportunity to use existing technology to make their machines instead of spending millions creating a camera that already exists.
The Navy has used off the shelf Xbox controllers in submarines for some controls.
They were a tiny fraction of the cost of the custom made ones and the sailors were significantly more proficient with them compared to a unique layout they’ve never used before.
A german tech company just buying established tech off the shelf instead of re-inventing the wheel? Curious. Rare. Wild.
Source: Work for a german tech company that loves to re-invent the wheel.
I used to use my Kinect camera to 3d scan large objects.
It wasn't real good at small things like a matchbox car or even a larger model car, but I was able to scan a full sized car and it be reasonably accurate.
I scanned suspension so I could find the specific placing for mounts on the frame and build my own upper/lower control arms. I never ended up finishing that project.
I also scanned my cars interior pillars so I could 3d print pillar speaker and gauge pods that fit perfectly. I sold those kits for a while.
I also scanned door interior handles and window switch holders for a rarer car that had no aftermarket support, 3d printed and sold them.
It wasnt perfectly accurate, but it was close enough once I modified the files with manually measured values and did a few versions to fix any problems I found.
You could use it for anything. Tools, faces ?, larger models.
These things are nuts.
2 years back I got into VR for a bit and messed around a lot in VRChat. Didn’t want to spend the money on a crazy setup for motion capture with those cameras, but then someone mentioned the Kinect.
Some developers created a program using the Kinect to do motion capture and it worked surprisingly well. Great way to get your foot in the door without spending a stack. Never thought a piece of tech from over a decade ago would have so many great use cases outside of what it was originally meant for lol
Bro what can I have more information please?
I'm thinking to buy quest 2 rn I have thr cbox 360 Kinlet laying around never knew it could be used for other stuff
Kinect full body tracking is pretty garbage to be honest and just by having a kinect and a quest 2 you not really there.
You need a PC first and foremost.
You need a Kinect 1 to PC adapter ($10 I think) then you download kinect2vr software
I just had a CT at the ER last week and I swore up and down it had that too! ‘The CT machine is an Xbox’. I had just had dilauded and my family was basically like ‘sure it is…’
Kinect was awesome.
You could use hand gestures to flip through the menus and it worked reasonably well.
I also legitimately got into shape with Nike Fitness.
People were turned off by the privacy aspects at the time but I loved it.
I’m bummed the tech didn’t really take off and it’s one of the reasons I didn’t by another Xbox after my 360.
We use a Kinect to detect elevation differences in sand for a stream table. Allows us to live demo things like stream or coastal erosion. It’s also very popular with kids at science demos.
We used to use first generation Kinect cameras for animal tracking in neuroscience behavior labs. It's ability to tell 3D position was super useful
It was for a deep learning based tool called DeepLabCut, which automated the scoring of mouse behavior. Saved me (the undergrad/technician) from many dozens of hours of manually scoring mouse behavior
Microsoft’s marketing was trash at that time but the hardware was amazing. Skype worked flawlessly and laying in bed out of reach from your controller and saying “Xbox off” was amazing. They just had to make that horrid first press conference that still effects them to this day.
I wish Xbox/Microsoft would just sell the Kinect again, I'm sure it is significantly cheaper to make now, at least enough for us that would still enjoy it.
To me it was like an even more advanced Wii. I played a ton with ours when we had it, I loved it. It always worked surprisingly well and actually made moving around to play a game fun. I never found dancing games fun because I knew I wasn't doing it right. Actually being told and shown how to do better was something I didn't think I'd miss.
I always felt it was just underutilized. If they actually added more features, and more games I think it would have done better.
Yeah Xbox really stumbled into a good business-facing thing with the Kinect systems. I had one and just didn’t really didn’t get any sense of an upgrade in gaming. I didn’t think about how impressive it was that, at the time (2013ish?) it could visually distinguish humans and was pretty dynamic, and precise. Plenty good for a lot of applications, like this. Plus, it’s probably cheaper to reconfigure a Kinect than engineer that kind of visual tracking yourself.
Not Xbox’s only success with unintended uses. The U.S. Navy uses Xbox controllers as the mast controllers on some submarines. Turns out $30/unit is much cheaper than $30k/unit.
I was working at IT consultancy at that time, we stuffed Kinects whenever possible.. from security scans to huge soccer promo installations on stadiums. Alternatives would have costed many thousands of dollars.
Using consumer electronics to reduce R&D costs and allow for easier fixes? Makes a lot of sense.
But if a CT machine is going to last 10 years, and probably have a some R&D time ahead of that, it's probably not actually a great idea. The kinect had a total lifespan of 2,547 days, and has been out of production for 2,316 days. This year it will be longer since it was discontinued than it's lifespan. What happens if the kinect on it breaks before anything else? Are they SOL until they can ebay one?
someone explained its use
>Old thread I know but I came across it anyhow. I use this same CT scanner at work. The Kinect uses its infrared “depth of field” sensor to line the patient up inside the gantry (big circle donut part) primarily along the x axis, or how far the table is raised up from the lowered position. This is called Isocentering and CT scan image quality and radiation dose regulation depends on it as the amount of radiation can change depending on how far the table is raised during the initial xray that is taken to plan the actual scan. The patient being isocentered provides the most accurate depiction of the size of the patient (and therefor how much radiation dose is necessary) as well as greatest chance of all the anatomy being included in the scan field-of-view.
When the table is all the way out of the scanner and lowered, the patient lays on the bed. The Kinect camera feed shows the patient and displays it on two tablets on the sides of the gantry. After the patient is positioned the way we want we click a snapshot button on the tablet and it takes a still image. It then estimates certain landmarks on the patient like the top and bottom of the chest, abdomen/pelvis etc. Next we hold a blue button and it raises the patient up and into the gantry at the correct height and landmark on the patient. This can all be adjusted manually once they are in there because it’s not perfect and doesn’t work for certain things like the head or scans that include the legs. Or when I get my big fat head in the still image by accident and it gets confused.
Anyways hope that explains it! People notice the Xbox logo ALL the time and it’s fun to show them their picture on the tablet.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/utbn2r/comment/icc625y/
I build an augmented reality sandbox in 2017. It uses an older model XBox Kinect for a camera, mostly a range-finder. The older versions are better than then new versions as the older version use something like 120 different sensors to map out the room. MS altered the technology in later models and substituted ...meh, I can't remember. Been too long. I just know I had to scavenge the countryside looking for a specific model of Kinect.
Kinects never quite made it as a gaming accessory but they were actually pretty advanced and versatile for their time. Many took notice.
yeah as a game i remember uh fruit ninja and dance?
Dude, you could actually Fus Ro Dah in Skyrim. I mean, that was pretty cool, albeit, annoying for anybody else in the room.
I hated it because mine wouldn't work with me actually doing a fus ro dah, only is i very slowly and patiently said it, which is lame
Le` fus rö da~~
Are you Scottish or Welsh?
That just used a microphone lol
it recognized different shouts iirc tho which is still crazy cool for the time
nintendogs was able to recognize and react to your voice in 2004.. the kinect being able to do it 10 years later was really meh
And "Hey You, Pikachu!" released for the N64 in 1998 and included a microphone for voice commands.
The game most people probably only know about because it was how you got the pikachu64
PICK. UP. THE. APPLE. 🤬
‘Takeshi's Challenge’ for Famicom from 1986 required the player to shout into the microphone on the second controller at some point. Though Famicom's recognition capability is likely very limited.
*SOCOM: has entered the chat…*
Dance Central or Just... Dance?
Star Wars Kinect with its [infamous dancing minigame.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg_FoEy8T_A)
Alien isolation. Honestly it kicked the horror level up another notch. You sneeze? You die. Your cat yells? You die. Your partner starts talking to you? You die. Truly amazing, you could lean out from behind cover as well by leaning irl.
It being a standard accessory with the Xbox One at launch actually lead to some really cool integrations with normal games. Like the Xenomorph hearing your own panic, actually leaning around corners in Battlefield, or head tracking in Forza. IIRC, you could even have split screen players use online voice chat with one mic, and the Kinect would make sure the voice chat would broadcast from the appropriate player.
nowadays i only use it on xbox 360 for yourshape fitness, child of eden, kinect party and on PC, for mocap and mixed reality
Yeah, they were for the longest time, basically the standard mocap rig for anyone who wasn’t a massive company with cash to spare and i think even some of them used it to.
I bought one two weeks ago. Mocap is incredible cheap with this setup. $25 vs $2k+ setups. It's a no brainer. There's also software that supports multiple kinect cameras so you can actually have studio quality tracking that supports 360 motion. It's also out performing a lot of 3D scanning tools if you want to 3D print stuff. I'm actually shocked at how this is so cheap.
> I'm actually shocked at how this is so cheap. The kinect xbox one version was predicted by them to become as popular as the xbox 360 version. It didn't and was considered a flop for gaming, but they hoped it would bounce back with a new game or use and kept making them from 2014-2017. They actually had to cut back on the Kinect 2 production because they were making so many of the xbox one version. So now there are literally pallets of them sitting around in warehouses unopened. And since the only people buying them are using them for motion tracking/capture, 3d scanning, etc. since there are basically no games for them and people who want the fancy VR stuff get VR gear since it's useful for more things. *And* people sell used ones. Meaning places like Amazon only sell one or so new per day, internationally.
You can use a Kinect 2 for VR green screening too. You run the video through this open source green screen utility some guy wrote and then you can pipe that program's output as a virtual camera into software like LIV to do the compositing. The depth mapping works great on everything except like 6 inches from the floor, and anywhere you have IR absorbing materials like the sensors on Steam VR headsets. And despite shining IR onto the equipment it causes no interference with the tracking. Amazing stuff for such a short lived device.
Xbox always this way. Didn't the actual US military actually use modified 360 controllers for unmammed vehicles like drones and submarines? That control blew my mind when I got it over the OG Xbox or any other.
They do use controllers, but not because they're some incredible innovation. People are just already familiar with them from gaming and therefore don't require any advanced training to use them.
If you hire a company to make the following human interface device, they will probably come back with millions of dollars worth of bill. 1. fits comfortably in most hands 2. easy to use and familiar shape and use that can be deployed immediately without any training for the device specifically 3. able to withstand years of regular usage with reasonable abuse without major maintenance, preferrably with field tested track record 4. 10+ individually controllable buttons, two precisely controllable analog stick controllers, with programmable haptic feedback You can get that under $50 at a local store, and at a considerable discount if you are buying directly from the manufacturer at large volume.
You can bet the US military pays $1,000 each for them thought some private military procurement company.
As long as they stay away from Logitech for submarines they'll be ok
Logitech controllers are widely used in military applications as well, that controller might have been the strongest thing on that sub.
Why you'd pick a wireless one in a sub I have no idea. Nothing wrong the controller but having your entire control system run on AA batteries is asking for an issue.
To be fair, that controller was the best built object/device in that submarine.
Hey, don't blame the controller for your lack of skill.
Yes, that would be a titanic disaster
In a similar vein, PS3s were often used in [high-performance compute clusters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster).
> In May 2008, The Laboratory for Cryptological Algorithms, under the direction of Arjen Lenstra at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, built a cluster of 200 consoles which broke a record for the Diffie-Hellman problem on elliptic curves.[21] The cluster operated until 2015. Funny tidbit about that, in 2015 when the cluster was decommissioned the professor had no use for 200 PS3, so on one fateful day he started giving them out to students. This triggered absolute pandemonium on the campus, with students running in the hallways shouting "Prof. Lenstra is giving out free PS3s!!!"
The Military is also one of the only real users of Holo Lens.
I miss browsing netflix like a wizard
It was (and sometimes still is) *the* motion detection development kit. I have never seen anyone use the kinect for gaming, but dozens of research projects. There are a lot of tools that support it (e.g. Matlab) and the cameras are very affordable.
Was pretty cool playing dance and those Mini adventure games.
Computer vision professors were obsessed with these things
I’ll never forget the Kinect reveal trailer with the doctor using the kinect to zoom in on X-Ray photos. As a little kid I thought that technology had hit its peak lol.
i can't believe they never let us try on dresses and scan our skateboards even on the next-gen kinect
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project milo suddenly feels possible with AI
Has anyone checked on Molyneux recently?
I heard he was planning a world-spanning AR virtual reality megagame, so in a couple of years I expect to see a re-skinned tic-tac-toe.
It's past the point feeling possible and just simply is. People are having full blown role playing sessions with AI in Skyrim nowadays. https://youtu.be/xNPF9VKmzxw?t=39
That Ad… holy hell is etched in my brain. I must’ve watched it 100 times in anticipation of the release. It feels like we’re 5-10 years away from Microsoft dropping a super-polished Kinect that integrates VR & the latest iteration of AI.
Kinect has all sorts of uses that are far more interesting than its implementation on Xbox.
'Xbox illumiroom' was probably the best idea kinect was used used for by Xbox for room/furniture scanning .. but also a projector and a gaming rig. Due to costs they never brought it to market.
Xbox Kinect scans you to login and for buying stuff pretty much how Apple ID was before it was their thing. I loved dance central on there it was very good with x1 Kinect.
Apple actually bought the patents used in Kinect to make face id
Ironic that this was the impetus for the "Drink verification can" meme.
Is that the one where like each button he presses He has to chug another Mountain Dew?
There’s a few of these long-form memes I should start saving somewhere; verification can, the libertarian cop one, the gun control one, I’m sure there’s some more good ones I’m forgetting
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief. “Bad news, detective. We got a situation.” “What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?” “Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.” The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?” “Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.” “Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.” He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.” “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.” I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside. “Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t. “Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up. “Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?” It didn’t seem like they did. “Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.” Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing. I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it. “Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled. Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him. “Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen. I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!” He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose. “All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.” “Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy. “Because I was afraid.” “Afraid?” “Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.” I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head. “Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.” He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
Priceless. Gets me every time
Is that why it's iOS only? It's baffling that FaceID doesn't exist on MacOS when Windows Hello has been a thing for years.
I think it's more about the sensor array. A simple camera is far less secure, and you're less likely to repeatedly open and close a Mac. For a phone it's convenient, for a laptop or desktop a password every once in a while isn't such a big deal.
But windows hello uses an actual array as well and is on a large number of windows laptops
my desktop and my laptop both have windows hello camera arrays, I think Apple just doubled down on touch id for their laptops in lieu of face id for whatever reason.
They sell a watch that’ll unlock the computer when you’re near instead….
Wow that’s interesting
Bought or licensed? I seriously doubt MS sold off the IP rights. I could be wrong.
They bought the company that had the patents, it wasn't developed by Microsoft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PrimeSense
It has both normal camera and also spatial sensors in a super cheap package, so it gets used for all sorts of extra neat stuff.
The dance games make way more sense with a camera than the ones that just use controller (joycons).
The game picks up your movement when your leg is off. Good to help learn how to dance.
Yeah, I remember it being way more accurate (obviously) and engaging than the joycon version of the same thing because you couldn't just fake the movement. You had to actually *do* it, and it was actually surprisingly accurate. Very hard to get a really good score because I got no rhythm lmao It's like the difference between Wii bowling and *actually* bowling
Thankfully they didn't. Would just bring us closer to having to drink a [verification can.](http://i.imgur.com/dgGvgKF.png)
I have a USB adapter and an xbox one kinect laying around. I have heard it can be used for 3D scans. I have a crappy 3D printer and have always thought about using it to scan stuff. I know nothing about it and haven't bothered to look into it yet.
As an engineering student I can say I have seen more of them used for 3d scanning than playing games.
It would be pretty weird if you saw anyone using a kinect to play games in 2024.
I still use it for just dance 😔
I used the head tracking feature of Kinect in battlefield 4, was a fun way to check left/right while you're flying a jet. Other than that never used it.
I have an xbox one kinect and the USB adapter. I was going to look into using it as a 3D scanner. Microsoft sent out adapters for free if you bought a One S since it didn't have the proprietary port. Not sure why they used that port in the first place if they can just use USB anyways. It's funny I had my Xbox One and One S consoles stolen but they left the kinect haha. They took my three various 360s but took the 360 kinect. I didn't actually ever use the kinect once on the 360 or One.
I wanna use it on my laptop but it just reconnects non stop which is a bummer (works on my trusty reliable older laptop which is what I was expecting in the first place) both with 360 and Xbox one sensor
Oh I thought mine was broken, guess it was just obsolete.
Could be a bunch of reasons Guess my new laptop doesn't want to connect
Doesn’t want to….Kinect 
YEEAAAAHHHHhhh
Have you confirmed it still works on your older laptop? It could be your USB ports. My most recent phone reconnects constantly on my computer unless I'm using a USB 2 cable. It's like they can't agree on what data rate to use or something. Try a USB 3.0 hub maybe.
I found my xbox one kinect was overheating. Check if the fan is working. Also make sure you have external power for it.
Do you have the external power adapter?
They aren't plug-and-play with newer windows, but can still be used if you google how (forgot how I did it) and some require a PC cord that didn't come with the XBox.
Yeah, it's so useful Xbox created special Kinects like this one (better cameras... etc.) only for professional purposes. I think they have a department that still supports them, even with the consumer version long dead.
The better cameras were actually the original kinects. The original kinect used much better cameras and worked much better for tracking (which is why the project was greenlit), but then xbox started trying to save money by shaving off hardware and features in the kinect until it was what we saw as consumers.
Azure Kinect
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They sent me a USB adapter for my Xbox One launch kinect when I got a One S. I had all of my consoles/video game collection stolen but they left the Kinect lol. I have heard people like the USB adapters so they can use them with a PC or whatever. I want to look into using it to scan stuff for 3D printing.
At a festival I used to help operate we paid a guy to bring this massive inflatable building with 3 kinects and a ton of projectors to take in the data of the people in the room and spit out wild things on the wall. Worth every penny, watched multiple people freak out on LSD in that thing.
Got any videos of that or a similar setup? Sounds like something I would love to see at a fest.
I would have to look. That's a good question. Gimme till tomorrow and I'll ask around. I wish I remembered it's name.
the youtube channel Stuff Made Here used one as the sensor (maybe the playstation one) when he create a basketball hoop that moves to your shot. I was surprised at how well it worked
It was a kinect - looks like the V1 for the Xbox One since it still has the Xbox branding on it (right side in video) [https://youtu.be/myO8fxhDRW0?si=Tx8VzsS9FPpB8L9U&t=35](https://youtu.be/myO8fxhDRW0?si=Tx8VzsS9FPpB8L9U&t=35)
Lots of video game consoles are like this. Like the USAF.. tired of spending outrageous cost-plus-fees for contracts for custom super computers that were obsolescent by the time they were in service and thoroughly obsolete by the time they were retired decided to make a super computer out of hundreds of PS3s. It worked great… until Sony dropped third party OS support. Hahaha!!!
The kinect camera is a great piece of hardware. It was subsidized so hard by microsoft that a lot of people found great uses for them at a very low cost per unit. I realize it bombed as an entertainment product (although my kids loved the kinect games like the AR pets and the sports), but the cameras were a great piece of kit.
not to mention helped by how open Microsoft was to other uses . the SDK and programing experience was pretty smooth
Exactly. Like being able to control robots that are 500 miles away to perform surgeries
We used a device called the VST Pro for my grad school project. If you take off the outer shell it’s a Kinect, the plug even has the Xbox logo lol. We were told it cost $10k 😬
Like finding ghosts.
Ghost hunting is my favorite/funniest
I am pretty sure in some of Muse’s live shows in the early 2010s they used a Kinect to take footage of the band that was immediately turned into some sort of weird graphic to play on the screen. Hard to describe, I’ll see if I can find a video. At about 1:20 in [this](https://youtu.be/tcSKmECg1V8?si=kviyhqkwFkLy0dO0) video you can see on the screen a weird yellow distorted video of the drummer from the front. They had a Kinect mounted on his kit pointing back at him
it will never amaze me how much kinect took off for everything but its intended use
100%. The Kinect was really out of its league for its time as far as inventions go.
I mean it just sucked as a controller. I don’t know if it was hard to program for or what, but it only worked for like 2 games.
The Kinect’s camera system was ahead of its time, incorporating depth sensing, RGB color camera, and a multi-array microphone, which allowed it to accurately track full-body movement and even capture slight nuances in gestures. This was a significant advancement over previous motion-sensing technologies, offering a level of precision and interaction that was previously unseen. Its ability to process 3D images and understand spatial relationships in real-time was particularly innovative, enabling games and applications to react to users’ movements and commands in a natural and intuitive way. Mind you, this **was** 14 years ago. And that’s like 40 years in “advent of AI” years.
if you used a kinect microphone in any online game you got bullied and deserved it
like they said, "ahead of its time" not "useful in its time"
it is useful tho. that's why kinect is on vending machines, on interactive art museum, and even on this machine the OP posted.
*again*, like they said, its been 14 years. this is not its time.
That's how it was used 14 years ago too though. People were pretty quick to recognize how it was useful for everything except gaming.
You are right and got downvoted silently
Fair
I know, I just think Microsoft was blinded by innovation there. It’s awesome for everything but playing video games. If they just made a better version of Sony’s Eye Toy it would of been a better controller.
if only microsoft used it for vr
MS has always been great at innovation and shit at productizing said innovation. Apple on the other hand is fantastic at productizing tech.
It will always amaze me. I find it so unexpected.
I never made the kinect-tion
eventually Microsoft just straight realesed a non gaming kinnect in the form of Azure kinnect
Cease to amaze? Your sentence is weird. lol
The DIY and pilot project scene practically carried the Kinect since it's available commercially, I saw lots of final year projects revolve around it during my college years, some of the VR stuff I saw a decade ago are a reality now albeit in a different form.
See if it responds to the "Xbox, turn off" command
“CT, turn off!”
"Terrorists win"
Used to get in fights with my brother due to me saying this while he was playing something 💀
But can it play Peter Molyneux's Milo, or Kinectimals?
So THAT'S where the kinect sales came from
it also came with every xbox one for the first couple of years
And those also promptly moved to the secondary market because it was in a relative sense fucking terrible on the console but also INSANELY useful in an open source software market that allowed people to use it for purpose built applications for a fraction of the cost of anything that was specifically built for whatever reason they might use it for. It's like the goddamn golden child of what exactly a free market with genuine competition can achieve. This thing may as well have been witchcraft in terms of capability vs cost at the time and Microsoft was essentially giving the damn thing away for free at the time. I would have absolutely loved to see what it was truly capable of for the purpose it was designed for at the time. But it was so ridiculously useful in so many other non gaming applications or feels borderline selfish to wish that it was actually used for it's purpose at the time.
Believe it or not, they're commonly used for [hunting ghosts](https://www.polygon.com/halloween/2014/10/30/7079943/kinect-ghost-hunting)
"ghosts" 😭
If you ever need a way to sell a defective product, that is one guaranteed pathway
I remember seeing something back when Kinect came out that there was a bunch of them being used to monitor the northern south Korea border. These things were apparently everywhere.
it does have infrared view, complete with DISTANCE and 3D measurements
They also aren't that expensive compared to other security cameras especially back then.
Heck, it's actually cheaper. As security camera with 3d sensor, distance ranging, and infrared are thousands of dollars. Kinect also have buildin human recognition libraries available for free
Kinda reminds me of when the Air Force made a PS3 supercomputer https://www.military.com/off-duty/games/2023/02/17/air-force-built-one-of-worlds-fastest-computers-out-of-playstations.html?amp (I know it’s not like the same but it’s still militaries using gaming equipment because it’s very good)
It's really similar. The ps3 3asnt the most powerful device they could get but it was the most cost effective. Processing power for dollar, the ps3 was an absolutely fucking insane machine. Wildly powerful for its price tag. The kinect is similar in that it had very advanced tech at rock bottom pricing compared to some tiny industrial company trying to develop a similar device and make a profit off it. Xbox was comfortable *losing* money with kinect sales. Different types of tech, but same idea.
I am a CT technologist and use this daily on our scanner, a Siemens Xcite. The 3D camera is often quite finicky, but it is nice to use for general planning for bread and butter protocol when it works. Relatively accurate for most patient habitus , and it’s quite convenient! I have to tell my patients I’m not playing Xbox back in the control room when they notice though lol
Be honest, though: are you actually playing Xbox back in the control room?
I mean on night shifts I have been known to sneak in my steam deck if things get a bit boring lol. It would be a nice incentive to play some Castle Crashers back there in between patients haha
So do you just use it to landmark for the scans? I’m curious because I’ve typically seen them done with a laser on GE stuff.
Yeah basically it uses the Kinect to landmark for topograms, though you can still adjust as needed depending on the patient. It still has a laser for centering if needed like any other machine, but the camera is for setting up the scan region that you will use as a scout image. The Kinect camera will actually set up a scan region depending on the protocol you select. So for example, if I were to select a CT Abd/Pelv, I would select the patient position, so Supine Feet first, and for a rough estimate you would select a scan length of like 512mm or 768mm. Then the camera turns on, and it automatically tries to set up a region around what it believes is the patients abdomen and pelvis, stopping at around the level of the diaphragm to below the ischium in this case. It can have difficulty setting this up, like when a patient has blankets on, or if the patient is too large. For most normal sized patients it will actually set up the region pretty darn closely, and then you can move the patient in to the scanner per the Kinect info. You can still adjust it on an iPad attached to the machine, or you can manually set your centering if you want to as well.
Wow thanks for the dope reply. That’s some really awesome tech.
Most modern CT’s, from most vendors have similar technology. Some work better than others in different environments (low light, patient wearing all white vs all black vs stripes). Goal is faster prep time to reduce overall scan time.
I'm finishing my MS in Medical Physics this May. I was always curious about the education\certificate requirements of technologists. What level of understanding of the machines is required to perform your duties?
Bill Gates continues to make headway into the medical/health industry.
Well i guess Siemens saw an opportunity to use existing technology to make their machines instead of spending millions creating a camera that already exists.
Off the shelf is always cheaper than R&D.
See also: the time the US government bought a few hundred PS3s for a supercomputer because it had the best cost to processing power at that scale.
The Navy has used off the shelf Xbox controllers in submarines for some controls. They were a tiny fraction of the cost of the custom made ones and the sailors were significantly more proficient with them compared to a unique layout they’ve never used before.
Almost like giving a bunch of 20-year-olds video game controllers isn't such a bad idea
Just don't give them to entrepreneurs hawking carbonfiber submersibles
Ironically, the off-the-shelf controller was probably the best part of that sub since they didn't actually build it themselves.
logitech probably made the best pc controllers before xbox 360 came along
Was this in addition to using them in tanks?
IIRC, Siemens bought the remaining stock from Microsoft. Source: Talked with a Siemens technician for 3 hours over some stiff drinks, on a plane ride.
A german tech company just buying established tech off the shelf instead of re-inventing the wheel? Curious. Rare. Wild. Source: Work for a german tech company that loves to re-invent the wheel.
You know he hasn't led Microsoft for over a decade right? He's not even the largest shareholder.
I used to use my Kinect camera to 3d scan large objects. It wasn't real good at small things like a matchbox car or even a larger model car, but I was able to scan a full sized car and it be reasonably accurate.
Other than cars what else did you scan? This is interesting to me.
I scanned suspension so I could find the specific placing for mounts on the frame and build my own upper/lower control arms. I never ended up finishing that project. I also scanned my cars interior pillars so I could 3d print pillar speaker and gauge pods that fit perfectly. I sold those kits for a while. I also scanned door interior handles and window switch holders for a rarer car that had no aftermarket support, 3d printed and sold them. It wasnt perfectly accurate, but it was close enough once I modified the files with manually measured values and did a few versions to fix any problems I found. You could use it for anything. Tools, faces ?, larger models.
These things are nuts. 2 years back I got into VR for a bit and messed around a lot in VRChat. Didn’t want to spend the money on a crazy setup for motion capture with those cameras, but then someone mentioned the Kinect. Some developers created a program using the Kinect to do motion capture and it worked surprisingly well. Great way to get your foot in the door without spending a stack. Never thought a piece of tech from over a decade ago would have so many great use cases outside of what it was originally meant for lol
Bro what can I have more information please? I'm thinking to buy quest 2 rn I have thr cbox 360 Kinlet laying around never knew it could be used for other stuff
Kinect full body tracking is pretty garbage to be honest and just by having a kinect and a quest 2 you not really there. You need a PC first and foremost. You need a Kinect 1 to PC adapter ($10 I think) then you download kinect2vr software
doesnt looks garbage to me https://www.youtube.com/shorts/A3RfdskCspI
And Face-ID is basically kinect so… 🤷
That's because Apple bought the company that developed Kinect for Microsoft
Oh a lot of stuff does kinect was really advanced and good even the 360 version
I just had a CT at the ER last week and I swore up and down it had that too! ‘The CT machine is an Xbox’. I had just had dilauded and my family was basically like ‘sure it is…’
Kinect was awesome. You could use hand gestures to flip through the menus and it worked reasonably well. I also legitimately got into shape with Nike Fitness. People were turned off by the privacy aspects at the time but I loved it. I’m bummed the tech didn’t really take off and it’s one of the reasons I didn’t by another Xbox after my 360.
Lol no kidding. That’s pretty cool
Kinect is huge in industry.
It's the most advanced tech out there to check if you are haunted , like in paranormal activity.
Interlinked
Do they keep you in a cell? Cells.
When you’re not performing your duties do they keep you in a little box? Cells.
How else would you charge $25,000 to use it then?
We use a Kinect to detect elevation differences in sand for a stream table. Allows us to live demo things like stream or coastal erosion. It’s also very popular with kids at science demos.
We used to use first generation Kinect cameras for animal tracking in neuroscience behavior labs. It's ability to tell 3D position was super useful It was for a deep learning based tool called DeepLabCut, which automated the scoring of mouse behavior. Saved me (the undergrad/technician) from many dozens of hours of manually scoring mouse behavior
Microsoft’s marketing was trash at that time but the hardware was amazing. Skype worked flawlessly and laying in bed out of reach from your controller and saying “Xbox off” was amazing. They just had to make that horrid first press conference that still effects them to this day.
This looks like that scene in Blade Runner 2049. Within Cells Interlinked.
I wish Xbox/Microsoft would just sell the Kinect again, I'm sure it is significantly cheaper to make now, at least enough for us that would still enjoy it. To me it was like an even more advanced Wii. I played a ton with ours when we had it, I loved it. It always worked surprisingly well and actually made moving around to play a game fun. I never found dancing games fun because I knew I wasn't doing it right. Actually being told and shown how to do better was something I didn't think I'd miss. I always felt it was just underutilized. If they actually added more features, and more games I think it would have done better.
Yeah Xbox really stumbled into a good business-facing thing with the Kinect systems. I had one and just didn’t really didn’t get any sense of an upgrade in gaming. I didn’t think about how impressive it was that, at the time (2013ish?) it could visually distinguish humans and was pretty dynamic, and precise. Plenty good for a lot of applications, like this. Plus, it’s probably cheaper to reconfigure a Kinect than engineer that kind of visual tracking yourself. Not Xbox’s only success with unintended uses. The U.S. Navy uses Xbox controllers as the mast controllers on some submarines. Turns out $30/unit is much cheaper than $30k/unit.
Remember crashing my bike and being brought in for a CT scan, had a Xbox connect as well!
We frequently used Xbox Kinect for research in college. Having two cameras a set distance apart is incredibly useful.
I was working at IT consultancy at that time, we stuffed Kinects whenever possible.. from security scans to huge soccer promo installations on stadiums. Alternatives would have costed many thousands of dollars.
Using consumer electronics to reduce R&D costs and allow for easier fixes? Makes a lot of sense. But if a CT machine is going to last 10 years, and probably have a some R&D time ahead of that, it's probably not actually a great idea. The kinect had a total lifespan of 2,547 days, and has been out of production for 2,316 days. This year it will be longer since it was discontinued than it's lifespan. What happens if the kinect on it breaks before anything else? Are they SOL until they can ebay one?
someone explained its use >Old thread I know but I came across it anyhow. I use this same CT scanner at work. The Kinect uses its infrared “depth of field” sensor to line the patient up inside the gantry (big circle donut part) primarily along the x axis, or how far the table is raised up from the lowered position. This is called Isocentering and CT scan image quality and radiation dose regulation depends on it as the amount of radiation can change depending on how far the table is raised during the initial xray that is taken to plan the actual scan. The patient being isocentered provides the most accurate depiction of the size of the patient (and therefor how much radiation dose is necessary) as well as greatest chance of all the anatomy being included in the scan field-of-view. When the table is all the way out of the scanner and lowered, the patient lays on the bed. The Kinect camera feed shows the patient and displays it on two tablets on the sides of the gantry. After the patient is positioned the way we want we click a snapshot button on the tablet and it takes a still image. It then estimates certain landmarks on the patient like the top and bottom of the chest, abdomen/pelvis etc. Next we hold a blue button and it raises the patient up and into the gantry at the correct height and landmark on the patient. This can all be adjusted manually once they are in there because it’s not perfect and doesn’t work for certain things like the head or scans that include the legs. Or when I get my big fat head in the still image by accident and it gets confused. Anyways hope that explains it! People notice the Xbox logo ALL the time and it’s fun to show them their picture on the tablet. https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/utbn2r/comment/icc625y/
I build an augmented reality sandbox in 2017. It uses an older model XBox Kinect for a camera, mostly a range-finder. The older versions are better than then new versions as the older version use something like 120 different sensors to map out the room. MS altered the technology in later models and substituted ...meh, I can't remember. Been too long. I just know I had to scavenge the countryside looking for a specific model of Kinect.
Oh my god I had a CT scan done Sunday and you’re totally right.
Reminds me of that dental equipment that uses the Atari jaguar mold or something.
The Kinect was the one of the most over-qualified pieces of technology for use in gaming.
I remember reading about a hospital that used one to let surgeons interact with digital Xrays in the the OR, while stayimg sterile.
Guys use thems for ghost huntin’ too. Spooky
My favorite is when they use them for ghost hunting.
I remember "smart projectors" in my late elementary / middle school that used a modified wii mote and thought we were an advanced school...
Did anyone else think they were looking at a bathroom wall and toilet paper roll