Kinect tech spec finally revealed

By Richard Leadbetter Published 30 June, 2010

Retailer reveals details, implications.

Retailer Play.com has published new specifications for the final Kinect hardware.

While the information is unconfirmed via official channels, Play said that the details are direct from the manufacturer, while specs collected by Digital Foundry but not published to date tie in extremely closely with the new data. The smart money is on this being the real deal.

Perhaps the most interesting information we can glean from this is in how the final production Kinect camera differs from the reference technology designed by Microsoft partner PrimeSense.

The Israeli company, who we interviewed back in April, provided the basic design that Microsoft adapted to create the-then Project Natal. Its camera features much the same viewing characteristics as the final Kinect in terms of field of view, but its depth map is much more detailed: 640x480's worth of resolution up against Microsoft's 320x240.

If the depth map has been scaled back, so has definition of skeletal tracking. The new spec suggests 20 points that make up the human skeleton while our demo of Natal back at gamescom last year revealed that 48 points were used.

Having played the same game in both iterations of the hardware, it has to be said that aside from small "jumps" in the fidelity of the 1:1 skeletal tracking, the overall experience is fairly close despite the spec cut-backs.

Probably the biggest concern is the low-resolution depth map, but again, the cut-back does make sense.

In our gamescom demo, presumably using something closer to the original reference design, Kudo Tsunoda expressed reservations that hand and finger tracking would work consistently with the camera simply because human beings come in all different sorts of shapes and sizes. There would be no way to ensure accurate tracking of a child's fingers, for example.

Therefore, for the sake of reliability, the emphasis would shift to tracking the whole body and at that point the need for the VGA depth map was less apparent, although clearly tracking more subtle movements does become more challenging. The lower-resolution depth map also reduces the amount of data being beamed across USB, and decreases processing overhead too.

The other major difference in the final spec compared to the reference is the inclusion of a motorised tilt function in Kinect, which was never part of the original PrimeSense design. This is powered via a bespoke port on the new Xbox 360S, or via a bundled PSU for the older console.

The purpose of the tilt is fairly straightforward: it allows for a more flexible placement of the camera, allowing it to fit more comfortably in more environments. During gameplay it's never been observed to move dynamically, and it is understood that skeletal tracking functions within the 360 APIs are no longer active when the camera motor is in use.

Here's Play.com's data in full.

Sensor

  • Colour and depth-sensing lenses
  • Voice microphone array
  • Tilt motor for sensor adjustment

Field of View

  • Horizontal field of view: 57 degrees
  • Vertical field of view: 43 degrees
  • Physical tilt range: ± 27 degrees
  • Depth sensor range: 1.2m - 3.5m

Data Streams

  • 320x240 16-bit depth at 30FPS
  • 640x480 32-bit colour at 30FPS
  • 16-bit audio @ 16 kHz

Skeletal Tracking System

  • Tracks up to 6 people, including 2 active players
  • Tracks 20 joints per active player
  • Ability to map active players to Xbox LIVE Avatars

Audio System

  • Xbox LIVE party chat and in-game voice chat (requires Xbox LIVE Gold Membership)
  • Echo cancellation system enhances voice input
  • Speech recognition in multiple languages
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About Richard Leadbetter

Rich has been a games journalist since the days of 16-bit and specialises in technical analysis. Commonly known around Eurogamer as the Blacksmith of the Future.

Read more articles from Richard by visiting the Richard Leadbetter archive page.

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Comments (44) Latest comment 2 years ago

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  • ZuluHero #1 2 years ago

    "Kudo Tsunoda expressed reservations that hand and finger tracking would work consistently with the camera simply because human beings come in all different sorts of shapes and sizes. There would be no way to ensure accurate tracking of a child's fingers, for example.

    Therefore, for the sake of reliability, the emphasis would shift to tracking the whole body and at that point the need for the VGA depth map was less apparent, although clearly tracking more subtle movements does become more challenging..."

    That seems a bit silly, when alot of the promotional "lifestyle" videos we've seen show people navigating and controlling the thing with waves of their hands (while sitting in lovely spacious living spaces). You'd think that better and more precise hand recognition would have been an important thing for this tech?

  • DrR0b3rts #2 2 years ago

    Tracks dog running into the room
    Tracks postman walking past the window outside
    Tracks baby left unattended behind player

  • DrR0b3rts #3 2 years ago

    Tracks joke flying over the head of Mentalist

  • Masaroth #4 2 years ago

    Just noticed "Tracks up to 6 people, including 2 active players"

    If that means that theres no 4-player support then thats a bit of a killer for the party game side of things.

  • onyxbox #5 2 years ago

    I'll be amazed if this thing works in the real world. I can just see loads of people faffing about before being able to play the game.

    Even calibrating the Wii Motion + is too much of a chore for some.

  • irve77 #6 2 years ago

    I've got to agree with ZuluHero

    We were all expecting minority report type controls that involved grasping objects and pulling them towards you and pressing buttons .. now waving .. waving at buttons was the eyetoy way.

    Kinect really does seem to be a little basic

    I think MS have missed a trick here and expect that kinect 2 will be the product that people will want .. but if it works then i would guess that Wiiconect will be the product that everyone buys

  • gnrlstuart #7 2 years ago

    in short, an exiting and ambitious project has, over the course of 1 year, been reduced to something fairly underwhelming; i am not very impressed :/.

  • Cadence #8 2 years ago

    @ DrRob3rts

    It's ok dude, I found it funny. It would seem most people on here have had humour bypasses.

  • ZuluHero #9 2 years ago

    @Cadence

    Since the operation I keep mine in a jar ;)

  • gnrlstuart #10 2 years ago

    will it pick up the hoodies outside my estate? maybe they could join in? that would be a laugh. although, i doubt they would want to play kinectimals. ''weres the blood blud!''

  • phAge #11 2 years ago

    "We were all expecting minority report type controls that involved grasping objects and pulling them towards you and pressing buttons .. now waving .. waving at buttons was the eyetoy way".

    Eh? Kinect maps your arms and hands in 3D - nothing is stopping devs from using that to enable the user to push buttons and grab stuff. Just because MS isn't using that (ATM, anyway) doesn't mean it isn't possible.

  • karooo #12 2 years ago

    Doesnt the pseye do 640*480@60fps and 320 @ 120fps compared to 30fps for both of kinect?

  • phAge #13 2 years ago

    "Doesnt the pseye do 640*480@60fps and 320 @ 120fps compared to 30fps for both of kinect?"

    Sounds about right. It uses the glowing ball for depth-tracking (AFAIK) - but of course lacks the full-body depth-tracking.

  • Cronan #14 2 years ago

    If Microsoft add some API support for Kinect through XNA, this device could become the cheapest MoCap setup in the world.

  • LetsGo #15 2 years ago

    Wow, two player games only?? So much for the party game machine.....

  • Jos #16 2 years ago

    So with those field of view angles someone who can remember their trig should be able to work out how far back someone needs to stand to get their whole self visible to the camera.

    I can't remember any trig...

  • HL706 #17 2 years ago

    So, can you sit down and use it or what?

  • IronGiant #18 2 years ago

    2 player only, are they sure? Weren't some of the demos shown with 4 players.. If not then another bollock dropped and the price is comedy gold.

  • Inspirius #19 2 years ago

    Ok, assuming a fairly tall 1.8m person and the vertical field of view of 43 degrees, if you place the camera at half the height off the ground then you will need to be 2.2m from the sensor to be completely in its field of view.

    If you want to wave your hands in the air like you just don't care, or play Dance Central, then you will need to stand further back.

    edit: Of course if the field of view is the number of degrees from centre then you actually have 86 degrees visible. In which case you would only need to stand about a metre away from the sensor, or the minimum 1.2m for the depth map.
    Edited by 1 at 30/06/10 @ 10:48

  • cianchristopher #20 2 years ago

    This'll be about as successful as Home was for the PS3.

    TBH, PS Move shits all over it from a great height. At least Sony went all out for 1:1 mapping, and minimal lag.

    Kinect looks more like the Wii-mote, without the benefit of Wii Motiion Plus.

    I reckon it'll be as accurate as swinging the racquet in Wii Sports tennis, back in 2006.

  • Lukus #21 2 years ago

    This sounds more and more shit the more information we get about it. First, the price; £129 is far too much considering you need a 360 too. Then the spec getting revised downwards; that can only be a bad thing, limiting its potential even further. Then you look at the games announced so far. Almost all of them look like a big back of shit.

    Damn it Microsoft, this could have been great.

  • Jel #22 2 years ago

    @ Mentalist and Cpt McOneball - you do know windows are made of glass, which is widely known for it's transparent properties. Seems like a waste of energy having to open a window to look through it.

    Now I'd be far more concerned that Dr R0b3rts lives on the 3rd floor and has a peeping tom of a postman with stlits.

  • DrR0b3rts #23 2 years ago

    He stands on the shoulders of my giant dog and baby.

  • Jos #24 2 years ago

    Maths prize for Inspirius ! :)

  • MrNyarlathotep #25 2 years ago

    @cianchristopher;
    This'll be about as successful as Home was for the PS3.

    Errrr... Sony announced they had 14 million Home users the other day.

    I'm pretty sure Kinect is never going to get close to that figure.

  • Les #26 2 years ago

    So it ends up just being EyeToy but seven years late... Colour me surprised. But good to see that all it took was a different company logo for the video game press to embrace camera controlled mini-games. ;)

  • ChuckNorris #27 2 years ago

    This is far more concerning:
    http://ww w.joystiq.com/2010/01/07/natal-...

    How will this affect kinect implementation in non-casual party games. Or more importantly, how will this affect triple-A titles that are going to use it?

  • secombe #28 2 years ago

    So the possibility of controlling driving games* in terms of acceleration/braking with your feet is pretty much non-existent then? Considering you can already do that to a staggeringly minute level with the existing 360 pad, I'm struggling to see what Turn 10 are up to with Forza 4.


    *not that I would want to

  • OldK1ngCole #29 2 years ago

    2 Active players just doesn't sound right to me. During the Microsoft Conference at E3 this year, when that bloke was playing Dance Central, he had two other people on stage with him as backing dances, and it sure looked like Kinect was tracking them too.

    Maybe I'm wrong though.
    Edited by 3 at 30/06/10 @ 13:52

  • Widge #30 2 years ago

    I think that 10-15% processing power usage was debunked recently, at least going by the Digital Foundry articles.

  • Moz #31 2 years ago

    measured it up and i get about 2 & 1/2 feet of useable space in front of my soft, which is rubbish!!!! Was really looking forward to Dance Central too :(

  • ronuds #32 2 years ago

    Obligatory ignorant remark about Kinect's functionality compared to Move and the PS Eye, and about how it's doomed to fail.

    +1s, plox!

  • FogHeart #33 2 years ago

    When the first forumer posts the words "Kinect gathering dust" next year I will feel a savage joy of vindication.

  • TheRealBadabing #34 2 years ago

    At that price, the retailers will be complaining about dusty kinects faster than users.

  • dominalien #35 2 years ago

    Apparently shopto already has.
    Edited by 1 at 30/06/10 @ 17:09

  • orangpelupa #36 2 years ago

    so this is why Natal can track fullbody while sit on chair and use small movement of leg to accelerate (natal burnout gameplay),
    then become need to stand where it cant detect subtle movement : Kinect.....

  • Loghorn #37 2 years ago

    @FogHeart:

    Amen! Totally agree with you. I give them about a month or two before they would want to go back to playing real games with a real controller.

    Seriously, Kinect is a huge waste of investment (money) & time when they could've used those things to bring out more core 1st party titles, have their exclusive games match the PS3's exclusives in terms of graphics, & to make XBox Live even better than before. I hope that this garbage flops so that MS would look incredibly stupid for abandoning their hardcore gamers in which made them popular for this generation.

  • aphexstwin #38 2 years ago

    very true loghorn. since the new xbox dash the 360 has been very wiffy. i wouldn't have even cared about them fucking avatars only we were forced to use them, and that fucking twinkly music when finished editing said avatar had me throwing 5.1 out the window. it seems the small fortune ppl spent on gamerpics was worth the overhaul. but this 'connect/kinetic' lark (spell it properly or dont bother ffs) is, at the minute, destined to be like hd dvd, great tech but very poorly implemented.

  • CHAZBIGPOTATO #39 2 years ago

    Microsoft appear to be shooting themselves in the foot here...

    With a rocket launcher

  • mkreku #40 2 years ago

    I'm not sure I understand this correctly.. Does this mean it doesn't support four players anymore? And that it's too crude to do the Minority Report hand controls? Not much left to it then, is it?

  • Madder-Max #41 2 years ago

    so....we've got a 'new' 360 which is basically 4 year old tech and a PS3 without the blu ray and a lil eye toy add on all at stupid prices.

  • RodHull #42 2 years ago

    Is it wrong that I'm actually looking forward to having Minority Report moments in my living room. No doubt I'll be disappointed by shovelware and the rumoured silly price but what the hey, I'm up for some arm flapping.

  • Ryze #43 2 years ago

    The original promo video showed a family sat down playing a driving game together. If the damn thing doesn't work sat down, then half of its potential is out of the window.

    Dance Central still looks good, though. Not £130 + game good, mind.

  • Les #44 2 years ago

    Saw Kinect being demonstrated at Macy's today. Circumstances were probably not ideal but none of the kids could properly control the 'pointer' for navigating the in-game menus. Only the host managed to do it. To select something you had to move the pointer and keep it over the button for a few seconds.

    The game was a cartoony 'driving' game where precise controls weren't required. The hardware itself was rather big and ugly.