I don’t mean to be a downer but I’m not sure how productive this is. I applaud his wanting to jump start something but this is a huge project.
Think about it. Just because the drivers let your computer see a hand doesn’t mean your computer can recognize it is a hand. That has to be done in software and doing that will be a massive amount of work. And that's just figuring out it's a hand. Not telling the program what a hand does. Anyone who has used a Kinect on the Xbox knows the software plays a huge part in its execution.
I’d wager the configuration program alone took Microsoft far longer than the 6 allotted weeks this contest gives.
I’d much rather see a high profile person like Matt Cutts start a fund for open source development of a Kinect library for Linux and then giving people the time to accomplish something great (it's certainly a project I'd be willing to donate to)
Half of the prize money is set aside for people who make it easier to work with the Kinect, e.g. working on a Linux library. Mainly I want to get people excited about doing neat things with very cool device.
At the very least it will spark the imagination. The beauty of this is that it doesn't have to have any winner before the end of the year to be a huge success.
All Matt has to do is keep the conversation going, and get people thinking about what is possible. People will build great things, regardless of prize money, if they are inspired - that might be by Dec 31st or it could be 6 months from now...
6 weeks isn't a long amount time, but I don't think the point of the competition is replicating Kinect with open source. Surely there is more to open source than the copying of proprietary technology.
That has to be done in software and doing that will be a massive amount of work.
But it's fun and challenging work, exactly the sort of problem hackers are willing to devote lots of effort to. I expect progress to be surprisingly rapid.
I love the sense of community this is building already. Microsoft's initial 'don't hack our hardware!' statement only served to bring more attention to it.
I've even got some ideas for games for it, but of course, I don't have a license to officially program for it, and I don't think it works with the XNA. This means I have a chance to use with with the PC instead, though. If I can just find the time. ;)
Wow, that picture and video linked to the article is fantastic. I actually never heard about how the Kinect worked, but once you see that you really get it. I'm a lot more impressed now that I know about the hardware details!
I love reading Cutts and I love my Kinect and would love to see exactly what he is asking for, however if a well known MS engineer conducted a contest on discovering/emulating the software* behind Google's search appliance, do you think it would be met with embrace or venom by the HN community?
Just to clarify, I have no idea what Microsoft's Xbox software or user experience is like, and I have no interest in duplicating that specifically. I hope that people come up with entirely new ideas and apps.
Also, I should make clear that I'm doing this personally; the fact that I work for Google has nothing to do with it. If anything, I think Microsoft deserves props for bringing such cool technology to market. I hope Microsoft does really well with the Kinect and sells tons of them.
If they embrace the non 360 owning community, it doesn't sound like they will be losing money ( http://bit.ly/aEUq3p ). That being said though I don't think that as a person in the tech community that you do not have some inkling about what the UX of this device entails as MS has developed it (re "I have no idea what Microsoft's Xbox software or user experience is like"). As it has been plastered from Alpha to Oprah.
I actually am pretty in-the-dark about the UX of the Kinect and how it works with the Xbox. I don't have a Kinect myself yet, for example. I have an Xbox but haven't turned it on in several months, mainly because it's so loud (like, helicopter loud. Are newer Xboxen quieter?). I'm not much of a gamer, other than Portal and Katamari a few years ago. I've yet to watch an episode of Oprah, either. :)
I do hope that the Kinect cost of materials is low enough that MSFT doesn't lose money on each Kinect they sell. But I have to think that the tinkerer/maker community is much smaller than the mass market for video gamers. My guess is that Kinect purchases for Linux will be a barely blip on MSFT's radar.
The new XBox S (the matte black one) is much quieter than the old XBoxes. This YouTube video gives some idea of the difference, throwing in a listen with a PS3 as well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5QpoKwVcSk
The Kinect experience so far is targeted at a wider audience than the traditional gamer. My mother, for example, absolutely loves the Kinect. She particularly likes the Tai Chi and yoga trainers in the "Your Shape" game. I didn't expect it to take off with her the way it did, but it's the first video game system where she really wants to play it.
Another thing: there are several different interfaces embodied in the launch titles around the same basic Kinect capabilities and interactions. If you want to develop new user experiences, now is a good time to check out what people are doing before everything settles into place. So it's worth at least visiting a friend who has one.
(Disclosure: I work at Microsoft. Speaking only for myself here, of course.)
Most of Google's competitors (in search) are already trying to discover/emulate Google's algorithms. There is no need for a contest. Any one who is capable of doing that can build a great search engine instead and earn a lot more money.
But a person/team making it easy to write programs that use the Kinect on Linux may not be able to sell the software. So a contest makes sense.
Is the valuable information in the emulating of the device, or the algo's used to process it's images? It seems like MS's bread and butter is the processing (and speed of) - more akin to your example of G's search algo, in effect isn't that what he is asking for? Is that not something that someone could sell (to the detriment of MS' research investment). Honestly I think it is great he is holding a contest for this, was just trying to draw a comparison that if this were the other way around (High profile MS employee asking for the breakdown of a Google device) the MS employee would be tar and feather'd. Maybe that is just the hole MS dug for themselves (that Google might now be digging?)
On a side note, I think that the vocal capabilities of the device are far over looked. The voice recog is amazing.
Matt poses the idea of using two or more Kinects at the same time to reconstruct a true 3D-view of the room. But when I watch the video and see how a Kinect determines depth -by projecting infrared light dots- I have my doubt wether this will work. I suspect the the two Kinects will interfere with eachother.
You'd have to pose them to be non-overlapping. You could probably have a bash at trying to unravelling overlapping projections but I doubt you'd have much luck. Although with two of them you could maybe do a first pass active stereo - but I don't think you can get access to the low level IR camera output anyway.
I wonder if Kinect (or several of them) can be used to create a do-it-yourself motion capture kit. Being able to do mocap for your own hobby on a hobbyist budget would be very cool!
I understand that money is ultimately the answer to my question... however...
Why haven't Microsoft or Sony, or better yet some video game maker we've never heard of, realized that building a platform to encourage "hacking" would make a lot of money. If Apple's App store has thought us anything it's that people want to be engaged on a deep level with devices such as video game consoles.
Why haven't Microsoft ... realized that building a platform to encourage "hacking" would make a lot of money.
Because while it would make some money (perhaps 'a lot'), forcing people to buy their locked-in $60 games (and often more like $80 in UK and Europe) will make them even more.
I'm a total open-advocate so the above saddens me but that's why consoles are locked to license holders who buy access to build games for them.
Keep in mind that even at $150, the Kinnect is probably being sold at cost/loss at the moment so essentially they are subserdising the hardware to make money on the software.
My guess is that if "Open Kinnect" becomes a trend with a lot of applications, you can be sure someone like Logitech/etc will bring out an 'open' bundle of the same technology stack that can utilize the foundation of apps. But it will probably cost more as it won't be subsidized like MS are with Kinnect.
Perhaps they feel it's going to open up competition to their console offering. If people start building cool PC games with the Kinect sensor, it might hurt Xbox sales. Just a theory.
Jesus, it was reverse-engineered, not "hacked". Did Linux engineers "hack" into every single piece of hardware they wrote drivers for? The overuse of this term in headlines drives me nuts. It's not like people can drive by your house and break into your XBox by waving their arms. And that's the colloquial meaning, which has sadly displaced the original, more positive meaning.
> Jesus, it was reverse-engineered, not "hacked". Did Linux engineers "hack" into every single piece of hardware they wrote drivers for?
I think reverse-engineering definitely falls under the "hacking" umbrella. I would go so far as to call the winner of the Adafruit prize a hacker, not to mention kernel devs who manage to get a device working without proper documentation.
Yes, I would call people that work on this hackers in the older more positive sense, but the common, inflammatory meaning of the word "hacked" usually has something to do with a security exploit. As in Headline: "Blahblah.com was recently hacked." As a headline, you would never think that means blahblah was reverse-engineered, but that it was vandalized or people's accounts were stolen.
I see it as a positive thing that the media is shifting to using the word 'hacked' as it was intended to be. Sure it may confuse some people but over time it may return to being used exclusively in the older sense.
I was the one who added the post and appended that title. Originally I was going to use the term "reverse-engineered" but HN made me clip it so that the title fell below 80 characters.
I apologize for any offense or confusion it may have caused.
I was referring to the title of the HN submission. The submitter commented and said it was due to the character limit for HN titles, so I suppose I should be "whinging" about that instead.
Think about it. Just because the drivers let your computer see a hand doesn’t mean your computer can recognize it is a hand. That has to be done in software and doing that will be a massive amount of work. And that's just figuring out it's a hand. Not telling the program what a hand does. Anyone who has used a Kinect on the Xbox knows the software plays a huge part in its execution.
I’d wager the configuration program alone took Microsoft far longer than the 6 allotted weeks this contest gives.
I’d much rather see a high profile person like Matt Cutts start a fund for open source development of a Kinect library for Linux and then giving people the time to accomplish something great (it's certainly a project I'd be willing to donate to)