Wow. Kinect lag has been considerably reduced (VIDEO)

[maash]

http://au.gamespot.com/shows/now-playing/?event=now_playing_microsoft_kinect20101026

Gamespot had a 1 hour hands on with 6 launch games. I must say I am the biggest critic of kinect especially because of the lag but looking at this video it has been reduced considerably

[HawkMan]

on the other hand, I can't say I've seen any of this rumored lag people have complained about in the last 2 months or whatever. So I dunno how this is news :)

[Hedon]

IBTL.

But yes, that video is great. I saw it posted on another forum. That dude with the hat sucks at games though, lol.

[yekGLzhQ4Qju1FtAVcC4]

on the other hand, I can't say I've seen any of this rumored lag people have complained about in the last 2 months or whatever. So I dunno how this is news :)

I believe it had a lot of lag when presented on Jimmy Fallon's show: http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/blogs/2010/06/kudo-tsunoda-demos-microsoft-kinect/

However, that is back in June, it has obviously made some major improvements since then.

[spartyjohnson]

Impressive. I hope to buy one for the fam.

[Hedon]

Now that they have lag figured out let's get more hard core.

[BoneyardBrew Member]

Now that they have lag figured out let's get more hard core.

How much more hard core can you possibly get?

[Hedon]

More support for kinect in hardcore titles.

[BoneyardBrew Member]

More support for kinect in hardcore titles.

I understood that part.

I meant how much more hard core can you get with a system like this? I could see a fighter being pulled off at most, but that seems to be it.

[~Johnny]

How much more hard core can you possibly get?

Fight Night >=D

Keep in midn though, games don't have to use Kinect exclusively - they can use both Kinect & a normal controller at the same time, something I assume hardcore games will probably do. We'll see how Harry Potter turns out! :D Yeah, it's not exactly hardcore but it's certainly more of a "proper game" :p

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[spartyjohnson]

Now that they have lag figured out let's get more hard core.

Eww. I don't want to know what your wishes are with Kinect behind closed doors.

[Ambroos]

Kinect does look amazing ^^

[FlintyV]

Wasn't really impressed by the Microsoft stuff but I did like the Ubisoft fitness game and Dance Central.

[Prince Charming]

The 'latency' issue is a lot more complex that it seems. Kinect presents developers with the full and raw skeletal model it computes from its sensors. It's then up to the developers to do with that as they will. Depending on the game, and what the control paradigm is, different filtering mechanisms become appropriate. If you're having to do full-body filtering, it's going to take more time. Smoothing stuff using something like FFT requires a 'block' of data, and as such while its results would be great, it's going to take a while, and isn't practical. The Kinect-Wii-Sports thing with the running game has a hybrid model - the top of the body is handled using avateering (you can raise your arms and whoop and so on), but the bottom of the body just does leg lift and raise; your player's legs aren't linked to yours, the locomotion movement of your legs is linked to the animation. As such, latency/lag is going to depend on what game it is, how they're handling control, and really, who developed it. Rare did some incredible low-latency filtering work, but you're going to see some crappier examples.

[Unrealistic]

Now I feel comfortable in purchasing this. Thanks for the link.

[Reacon]

I just watched that entire video. Oh my god I was laughing so hard on the table tennis part.

Sorry if a bit off topic but lol!

[Argi]

When was it ever said that it had lag? Sony?

[George P Global Moderator]

When was it ever said that it had lag? Sony?

Lag was one of those things that kept coming up early on in FUD fests, along with "you can't use it sitting down, omg!!!!!" and so on. Now that those two are out of the way the moaning from those who don't like it will be along the lines of "well the games suck, not hardcore!", or god forbid they cry over the lack of buttons. :whistle:

[Supended Neo003]

Amazon is sold out already :laugh: :wacko:

[HawkMan]

The 'latency' issue is a lot more complex that it seems. Kinect presents developers with the full and raw skeletal model it computes from its sensors. It's then up to the developers to do with that as they will. Depending on the game, and what the control paradigm is, different filtering mechanisms become appropriate. If you're having to do full-body filtering, it's going to take more time. Smoothing stuff using something like FFT requires a 'block' of data, and as such while its results would be great, it's going to take a while, and isn't practical. The Kinect-Wii-Sports thing with the running game has a hybrid model - the top of the body is handled using avateering (you can raise your arms and whoop and so on), but the bottom of the body just does leg lift and raise; your player's legs aren't linked to yours, the locomotion movement of your legs is linked to the animation. As such, latency/lag is going to depend on what game it is, how they're handling control, and really, who developed it. Rare did some incredible low-latency filtering work, but you're going to see some crappier examples.

Most games today actually works just like Kinect, except they usually have more complex skeletons. Games like TFU that uses Euphoria in fact works exactly like Kinect, except they need to use a big chunk of CPU in addition to calculate the natural motion of all the euphoria skeletons.

Smoothing and filtering of the skeleton movements is done by Kinect, and something you could turn off in the viewer. Those who need to do most skeleton work and filtering themselves are in fact the ones who don't use the whole skeleton since they'll need to add a second skeleton to the Kinect one, and somehow make them work together. Either way, this is simple stuff that has been done in gaming ever since they invented proper mesh skinning that's fast enough to work in games, and ditched the whole separate mesh pieces for each body segment and pre stored mesh positions (Quake days technology) where animations where the 3D mesh version of a roll of film, and each mesh need to be saved with very frame of every animation.

Not saying that some games won't be able to screw up latency by doing crap work on top, but that's how it always is no matter what you do at the backend and whatever control method you use.

[carmatic]

im worried about the greenscreen effect they are using, you never directly see the game screen and there is one point where you could see one of the guys being half occluded by the game screen... also what worries me more is the echo in the sound, i hope that they arent messing with the video by delaying the live action to make it look like its synched up with Kinect more

but delays aside, it looks like kinect is so demanding of the players that more often than not, there is a disconnect between what the guys are trying to do and what they are actually doing

i think that it is possible to have a perfect balance of delay and precision for every gameplay context and scenario, since you naturally get less precise the faster you move... so for things like fighter games where super fast reflexes is required, the body tracking could be simplified so much that your movements are like pressing buttons... but for things like puzzles which take time to solve, kinect would also have enough time to process alot of precision....

for physics based puzzles where you need instantaneous reaction to whats happening on the screen, most untrained people can only focus on one thing at a time , so the program can ignore everything else but the parts of the body which is involved and save time that way