It wants to chat you up
Well, maybe not "action"
Xbox Live social chat feature Avatar Kinect is on the way this Spring, promising to let you and your friends chat live in a virtual reality setting using just Kinect and your Xbox 360. It sounds good, and the first video shown off by Microsoft looked good, but how does it work in reality? The video below might answer some questions.
The technology was on display at a recent technical demonstration held at Microsoft's headquarters, showing the facial tracking, voice recognition and other features that we've come to expect from Kinect in the past, all transplanted to a real-time chat environment.
Some of the facial expressions thrown up in the video are certainly interesting – you can't see the presenter's face, but her Avatar has the most angry-looking laugh ever – and the multiple user features could generate some interesting content featuring past Presidents.
Watch the video and share your thoughts with a comment below.
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User Comments
1. lanafire7
23 Feb 2011, 20:18 GMT
least you can hear a laugh, you're right, whenever she laughs, she looks angry. I was looking, but couldn't tell if individual finger tracking was updated yet. they really should allow/update for that. it's ok, would come more in handy during netflix, having friend's avatars under the picture to see their faces during... it would add a lot of humor.
2. James Newton
24 Feb 2011, 16:36 GMT
I tried to see if the wrist-tracking was included as well but couldn't really tell. You'd assume Kinect would need an accuracy increase to pull off this level of facial recognition, but apparently not!
Really looking forward to hosting some KINECTaku video debates using this