Kinect will soon be able to represent your facial expressions on screen, in a step forward that Microsoft promises is "just the beginning" of what its technology will offer in the coming years.
Microsoft's facial recognition technology Avatar Kinect will be available on Xbox 360 this spring. The company promises "a new Xbox LIVE social experience that uses the sensor's precise facial-recognition capabilities to project your face and your expressions into a virtual word".
"The work that we did was taking something that was essentially a demo and turning it into a product," said Eric Lang, a general manager for Microsoft Startup Business Group. "It's a huge amount of work."
The tech began in the Microsoft Research division as a study of the "geometry of a gaze" and was then taken on by the Startup Business Group, before Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business (Xbox) became involved.
Pete Thompson, general manager of Xbox LIVE added: "It was personally very gratifying to see the teams come together and find creative solutions. The end result is a highly-curated consumer service that is very compelling, but also has tremendous headroom for future innovation from Microsoft and its partners. This is just the beginning."
Ten million Kinect sensors have sold since the device's November 2010 launch.
Comments
8 comments so far...
TykerD3 on 17 May '11 said:
Thats great. It would be great if this could be used in games, somehow. It would be even greater if they started to release (or at least tell us about) some core/Hardcore Kinect games....
MrPirtniw on 17 May '11 said:
I want it used in ME3. I want my Commander Shepard to wear a giant cheesy grin, whilst cross eyed with his tongue poking out when chatting to Liara.
Hashbrown on 17 May '11 said:
I think its great they are putting so much effort into this sort of stuff when its just going to part of a free update. I won't use it myself, but 10 years ago I probably would of loved it lol. This could easily be put into games, think about FIFA or something, you concede a goal and you naturally frown and do what ever, it could cut to the manager almost mimicking what you did.
fps_d0minat0r on 17 May '11 said:
cool tech but microsoft seem lost in organising their resources effectively.
this will hardly add value to xbox as a games console.
MrPirtniw on 17 May '11 said:
Value shmalue, as long as it's free I'm happy for them to add all the extra stuff they want.
kreemi on 17 May '11 said:
lol.
like anybody knows 7 other people with kinect.
come on MS, innovate. you got some great tech and your wasting it. what about AR, or just some fun manipulation tools like a realtime face/body warp. the 3DS is packed with loads of little cool things right out of the box. all kinect gives me is a little gray box in the bottom of my dash. hell, even the vision cam gave me a cool water effect on the old dash.
if mates come over and are like "ah, show me what kinect can do", all i can say is "oh, ok... maybe i can stick on kinect adventures, again"
no fun, no games. I want a cool hardcore experience but you haven't even got out any crappy casual offerings!
Must. Try. Harder.
LordVonPS3 on 17 May '11 said:
Sounds absolutely rubbish... If anything I'd like Microsoft to add an off switch to completely disable avatars because I find them invasive and annoying. A streamlined, professional alternative interface - somewhat akin to the XMB would be most welcome. Magic forests? No thanks, I'm a little too old for that. How about getting those hard-working avatar teams to make some decent first party games instead.
I want more original exclusive (first or third party X360) games and less of this demo nonsense. I didn't buy a XBox 360 to faff around with avatars and facial recognition. I bought it for the exclusive X360 games and having purchased those which did appeal it is extremely disappointing to see Microsoft decide not to compete with Sony on bringing in new and exclusive titles. Microsoft has wandered off in completely the opposite direction.
Also, I don't want Microsoft taking stills of me (via Kinect) and holding them on their servers along with other personal data until the next data breach fiasco. XBox Live is fast turning into a pay-to-use Facebook. A facility to opt-out of this kind of data capture whilst still being able to enjoy the hardware and services purchased needs to be made available. You can't sell people a piece of hardware then force them to accept privacy-invading terms and conditions. It's immoral, unconstitutional and makes hackers look like liberators and freedom fighters. Beware.
timewarp1 on 17 May '11 said:
Atleast the PS3 network CAN be switched off. Have you ever seen XBOX LIVE be completely switched off? No? Exactly. And with face recognition being "just the beginning, I suspect that this could be the Skynet network foretold in the Terminator prophecies broadcast through the matrix that the machines have enclosed us in. Join the resistance. Join Sony!!