Last year, a pair of German artists claimed to have “stolen” scans of a priceless bust of Queen Nefertiti—housed in Berlin’s Neues Museum—using nothing but a Kinect. Now, experts are lining up to call bullshit.
In a home filled with technological marvels of all shapes and sizes, one piece of oft-derided hardware gets more love from my family and I than any other. Kinect, tell the nice people how much I cherish you.
Microsoft really wants to blur the line between the digital and real worlds. While HoloLens can stick humans in a bizarro universe filled with holograms and Minecraft blocks, a new program could eventually help robots and self-driving cars better “see” their surroundings.
We're just faceless shapes made of dots and lines and nodes to a computer. And that's kind of awesome. This experimental project by Maria Takeuchi uses Microsoft Kinect to capture the motion data of a dancer and then rebuilds those movements into a stunning dancing body made of dots and lines and nodes.
So Microsoft's Kinect was a video gaming bust. Whatever. It's still got its uses. Like...helping police work on their "use of force options" against suspects. You know, whether to shout or shoot at a guy.
The best part of grocery shopping isn't finding some exotic new flavor of yogurt or the free samples, it's tooling around the store like a rally car driver with your shopping cart. So why have researchers developed an autonomous human-tracking cart that follows you around the store? Seems like time better spent making…
When the Lumia 1020 launched last summer with its bulbous 41-megapixel camera, it was a weird looking smartphone that found favor with the photography-inclined. It's been 15 months since the 1020 was released, and we haven't seen much physical evidence that Microsoft was planning a follow-up—until now.
It may have started out as a way to let players physically interact with their games, but the Xbox 360's Kinect sensor has since developed a life of its own. Its clever combination of cameras and sensors have been embraced by hackers and researchers who've used it in countless project, including Microsoft's own…
Video game consoles are amazing. Ever since I cracked into my first NES 20+ years ago, they continued their steady progression of awesome. Yeah, there have been a few hiccups along the way (does anyone remember 3DO Interactive Multiplayer?), but overall every iteration was an improvement.
Not long ago, Microsoft took the Kinect out of some of its Xbox One bundles, dropping the price of the console to $400 and giving devs extra power to play with. If you got one of those and want to add a Kinect later, you'll be able to in October, for $150.
With the magic of virtual reality, it's easier than ever to find out what it would be like to see out of someone else's eyes, but for the full effect you have to mirror your movements. What if you could actually control the other person though? It's actually already possible. Hello, Avatar.
Microsoft has announced that the Xbox One's Kinect sensor will be available for PCs from July 15th—and it will usher in a whole new wave of fascinating and useful hacks.
Oculus VR is now owned by Facebook, but that won't keep them from slurping up some companies of their own. And most recently, Oculus VR has agreed to snap up the Carbon Design Group, the designers behind the wonderful Xbox 360 controller and the original Kinect. Someday soon, it might not look quite so silly.
Microsoft recently said that game developers will be able to get a little more power out of the Xbox One to make their games more visually impressive if they choose to forgo some Kinect features. What's the actual trade-off?
With no shortage of ingenuity, 3D video expert Oliver Kreylos managed to transplant his entire body into a virtual reality environment using three Microsoft Kinects and an Oculus Rift. It's a little fuzzy, but it's easy to recognize what he's really done. He's created a Holodeck—or something close to it.
The Xbox One is a fine machine—great even—but it's nothing compared to what it was supposed to be. Reluctant backtrack after reluctant backtrack has left us a box that does a shadow of what it might have done. And with a new Kinect-free Xbox One bundle, Microsoft is fully burying those dreams and all but spitting on…
In addition to bringing Netflix and streaming apps out from the Xbox Live paywall, Microsoft will also be offering a new Xbox One bundle that does not include the Kinect, for just $400 starting June 9th.
What if, the next time you played a video game, the main character not only looked like you but had the same body, same clothes, same everything? How would it change the way you related to the game? How would it change the way you relate to the other characters in it? I found out.
It's always a good idea to give your pets lots of exercise and freedom. But how does that work with a fish who are reliant on a tank full of water to live? That's easy; you just strap its aquarium to an RC car and rig up a device that lets the fish steer.
Remember how frustrating those Magic Eye images were when you were a kid? It seemed like everyone but you could see the hidden message. Until you figured it out and rubbed it in everyone's face that they couldn't see it. This video by Young Rival is just like those Magic Eye pictures only it turns the whole hidden…
