Eurogamer has been talking to sources about Microsoft's next generation Kinect device, expected to be released alongside the next generation Xbox console(s). The device, which will provide motion sensing and speech recognition to the console, is so accurate is can apparently lip-read.
It can also detect if a player becomes angry or otherwise emotional by detecting the pitch of the voice input, volume changes, facial charactistics and more. It is also reportedly much better at detecting a player's orientation relative to the console.
Eurogamer sources explained that one major problem with the current Kinect models is the USB cable. The USB controller interface supports around 35MB/s but Kinect is limited to 16MB/s to allow for other USB devices attached to the console.
For this reason, when Kinect launched it was limited to 30fps and 320x240. Kinect 2 beefs up the resolution and motion data it sends back to the Xbox significantly (though no details are given).
"It can be cabled straight through on any number of technologies that just take phenomenally high res data straight to the main processor and straight to the main RAM and ask, what do you want to do with it?" a source is quoted as saying.
Written by: James Delahunty @ 29 Nov 2011 10:01
