Tech Exploration
I have a difficult time considering the Kinect to be a gaming product, actually it reminded me of of Nick Arcade from the 90's. However, I do find it unfortunate that most people fail to realize how powerful it truly is. I have one at home and have hacked it to do many different things, it is unbelievable. The Kinect is a combination of an infrared camera, a 3D camera and a microphone. It creates point clouds in order to understand the distance of objects in a space. This is known as depth image processing. That being said, the Kinect can be used for gesture interfaces, voice controls, making generative music, generative art, motion capture, 3D scanning, scene reconstruction, it can be used for robotics, you can even combine several Kinects or use them to create interactive spaces. The 2nd iteration of Kinect was released alongside the XBOX One and was extremely powerful, having the ability to detect and track up to 14 people at once.
A Brief History
The Kinect is a product inspired by many different projects and many different people over the course of 30 years. It started sometime during the creation of the mouse with a research project called Put That There which used voice and gesture recognition as input for a computer. The Kinect is another piece of technology that was influenced by Minority Report. In 2006 Microsoft created two competing teams to come up with a Wii Killer. It was originally called Project Natal and over 70 prototypes were built before one was finally selected for launch in time for Christmas of 2010.
Post Mortem
Between privacy concerns related to the XBOX One console and Kinect unit being bundled, the creation of Depth Kit and SnapChat's A/R studio, the Kinect hardware was discontinued as of October, 2017. Regardless of gaming, the Kinect remains a great tool for Creative Technologists, hackers, and nerds alike. The Kinect technology is has evolved into Microsoft's HoloLens.