Microsoft Kinect: The AnandTech Review
by Brian Klug on December 9, 2010 3:20 PM ESTVideo Kinect
Last but not least is video Kinect. It’s awesome to see Kinect leverage the color camera for videoconferencing, if Microsoft hadn’t included something like this, they’d be missing a huge opportunity. It’s simple too, just launch the application, and you get a view of yourself which is cropped and panned to stay centered on your face, at the left are friends online. Your video stream will stay cropped around your face whenever you’re in the field of view.
At first, you’re given the option to video chat with other Xbox Live friends, but you can also sign in with a Live Messenger account and video chat that way as well. I initially set out to try video Kinect just between two Kinects. If you can find a friend online, inviting them to a kinect video chat looks just like an Xbox Live party or game invite - video Kinect presents itself just like a game you want your friend to join.
I dialed up my friend Brayden, and we were almost successful initially. The problem was that he had no voice. In the bottom of his video window, the speaker was greyed out, and it said Audio Off. This was confusing as there’s no readily apparent way to mute or unmute audio inside of the video Kinect interface. The problem - that party audio chat setting I mentioned earlier.
If you set this to off, you won’t get audio here, and you’ll inevitably spend lots of time scratching your head as to why. It’s confusing too - I don’t want to use the Kinect for party chat, I want to use my wireless headset. At the same time, I want to use Kinect for audio when video chatting.
Regardless, after we got it working the experience was pretty seamless. Video Kinect uses about 600 kilobits/s of bandwidth both ways, which isn’t a lot. There are come compression artifacts in the remote client’s video, but nothing out of the ordinary. My biggest complaint about video chat is that the color camera in Kinect really doesn’t seem impressive here.
There are really only two complaints I have - first is noise and low light sensitivity. If you don’t have lots of ambient light, the camera will expose and integrate for much longer, and tends to smear a lot more than I’ve seen on other cameras unless you have room lights cranked way up. I’d rather get noise from huge gain than become a smear when all the lights aren’t on. The other problem is that the stream itself isn’t very high resolution - it’s just VGA. While the camera sensor might be higher (as has been suggested by developers working with the platform), the Kinect will only expose a VGA stream.
The result is that video is noticeably upscaled. It’s probably the reason you can’t bring the conversation full screen. I guess that’s the other complaint I have - it’d be nice to be able to go full screen with the other party instead of have two equally sized boxes for video.
Between two Kinects, video chat works fine. You can optionally pause your video stream or turn auto zoom and crop off.
So what about between Kinect and Live Messenger clients? This was a bit more frustrating. The first time we tried logging into Live Messenger on the Xbox, we couldn’t see the other party on the desktop. After some troubleshooting and confusion, we decided to powercycle everything and login again, at which point we could finally see each other. Firing up a video chat like one normally would with a desktop worked fine.
Between a desktop and the Kinect, you can really see how the video stream isn’t of the highest quality. It’s tolerable, but a bit disappointing. I was chatting from a 720P webcam, and my friend noted my video quality was much improved on his end compared to the Kinect video.
The other interesting note is that when he paused video, I saw nothing but grey. One more pause and unpause, and I was stuck at a grey screen until we terminated chat and started over again. It works, however, minus those small glitches.
I should note also that the Kinect audio quality is actually amazing, no doubt in part to that 4-microphone array and some spatial processing. It really does a great job singling out a single person and gain was kept at a comfortable level the entire time. I have to say I’m impressed with how clear audio was - there was no feedback, echo, or strange artifacts. The one thing I didn’t test was how video chat functioned between Kinect and the older Xbox Live Vision webcam, though I hear it does work and is supported.
Video chat is becoming the rage once more, the problem is that each video chat platform is isolated to such a small sect of protocols. We’ve got FaceTime and iChat if you live in the Apple ecosystem, Qik video and a few smaller ones if you live in Android land, PS3 PlayStation Eye video chat, and now Kinect Video and Live Messenger if you live in this ecosystem. I’m reminded of how SMS used to work before carriers decided that there should be inter-carrier exchanges. I’m sure we’ll get there someday, but for video chat to be more than a quick novelty, it needs to work on a common, simple platform.
It’s hard to really complain about Kinect video chat - it’s there if you want to use it. There are better commercial alternatives that are designed specifically for this purpose, and Kinect won’t replace them, but it does make the occasional video chat possible. I find myself wanting much more resolution however, and the ability to maybe leverage video party chat with more than one other person, or even have it actually integrated into games. No doubt in time we’ll see more of that.
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Noriaki - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
Yeah, I just meant the 350 part. Referring to it as the 360 S to distinguish it from the 360 Pro makes sense to me.Noriaki - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
PS: Thanks for the in-depth coverage. This is the first time I feel like I got a good idea of what having a Kinect in my living room would mean for practical things like where my couch lives.Aikouka - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
Brian, have you tried out DanceMasters (DM)? I noticed you commented on how your girlfriend compared Dance Central (DC) to DDR where DanceMasters is actually created by Konami.I own DM and have played the DC game, and I have to say... you'd probably be disappointed in the DM menu system as it is a tad bit harder to control. Way too often I found myself skipping past the option I wanted (as all options move left or right) and you then have to raise your (right) hand to select it. The problem comes when it might see you move your hand out to the right and actually shift your choice over one right before you raise your hand.
The part where I think DM beats DC is the actual dancing. In the demo for DC, I found it awkwardly difficult to pay attention to the way the dancer was moving (left or right, etc) and the upcoming movement that was shown on the right side of the screen. When my brother and his girlfriend played, I noticed one huge trend... we *all* would miss the first dance move after they changed from one move to another.
This is kind of better in DM, because it uses arrows that signify how your hand (or hands) should move in a second or two. There are also circles that will appear on the screen and you must hit them with either your hands or feet (obvious depending on the location). The last movement is the "pose silhouettes" that appear on the left and right side and are green in color. They move to the center of the screen and when the two silhouettes combine, you are supposed to be in that pose. The only problem is that it's not terribly picky on what you do in between these three types of inputs and another problem is that it loves to put circles beneath your feet (so you keep moving), but they're hard to notice. I found this easy to combat by simply always moving your feet.
Overall, there's a huge difference in the style of music between the two as well, which influenced my decision. I've never been a "Top 40s" kinda guy and I've played DDR quite a bit, so I went with the game that had the music style I was used to ( and also considering that I've heard quite a bit of Eurobeat, which DM also has ).
The one thing that was always fun about DC was the "freestyle" section where it shows you as this sort of glowing silhouette and you just do whatever dance you want. At the end, it will play this back to you in a sort of time-lapse video (which you can then save).
To talk about a different game, I noticed some problem with jumping in Kinect... mostly in the rail-based obstacle course. Maybe I was just doing little hops and Kinect didn't register it... maybe it was a problem with the cargo pants (khaki color, so they're fairly flesh-toned) that I was wearing. It was pretty crazy though... at one point I had to duck down, so I dropped to my knees and then needed to switch sides, so I pulled out the Starfox-esque barrel roll! Kinect did actually sense that correctly.
The one thing I did notice is that it is *very* common in Kinect Adventures for it to yell at me about getting too close or too far... especially in the bubble popping mini-game.
Brian Klug - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
I haven't checked out Dance Masters, but I'm starting to think that I definitely should. I think at the time when I originally put together this list of games, that wasn't available and I overlooked it. I'll grab it and maybe update with a page or two.It's interesting how dancing games are quickly becoming something Kinect is very well suited for. I definitely agree about jumping and the clothing choice, I have a pair of cargo shorts that just don't work with most of the titles, and Kinect Adventures does yell a lot about position, agreed.
-Brian
GSJ - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
If only i could use this with my p.c.....ExarKun333 - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
I purchased the Kinect soon after the launch and I came to pretty much the same conclusions are Brian. The lag is there, but acceptable. More importantly, the games are FUN. MS did a great job with this launch. The hardware is easy to install and configure, and the games are easy to pick up on. I agreed 100% that the menus in DC are superior to the method in the Dashboard. Maybe an update at some time? :)knowom - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
267ms on a DAW would be completely unthinkable in fact most people that play or record music try to stay below 10ms.I'm just using that example as a clear easy to demonstrate reason to why 267ms is a abysmal amount of input lag you can completely rule out music based kinect games as well as any twitch/quick reflex input games or applications.
SodaAnt - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
In the comment about the laser probably being 650-700 nm, that is wrong. 650nm is the wavelength of a normal red laser pointer. Normal IR diodes lase at either 780, 808 or 980nm.Brian Klug - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
Hmm it's on the fringes of what I'd consider visible, but 780 probably is a much better choice. I'll update.-Brian
mcnabney - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
Okay, I am probably the only prig to bring this up, but the distances required seem to be a problem for some not often thought of reasons.9-12 feet of clearance appears to be required, which means the sofa will need to be 15' back (unless you move it every time you fire up the Kinnect).
I would point out that you would need to have a 55"+ HDTV to fully benefit from the 1080p image from the Kinnect playing area, For regular game playing / movie watching on the sofa (behind the playing area) you would require a 100"!!!!! screen to fully resolve the 1080p image that the Xbox360 or a BluRay player is capable of displaying.
For this thing to really work in a robust media environment (and most living rooms) it should have been able to to work perfectly with the user standing 3-5' from the screen.