back to article Nasa guides Mars Rover with Kinect

Nasa has launched a free game for Kinect owners which sees players guide the Mars Rover through its landing sequence. The game - a joint venture with Smoking Gun Interactive - puts players through the "seven minutes of terror" landing procedure, which makes use of Nasa's as-yet-untested system for reducing the vehicle's speed …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. JDX Gold badge

    Any idea how much of a simulation this is rather than a fun little time-killer?

    Also - I'm guessing the screenshot is not what a successful landing should look like. Success means slow and boring and precise.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      > Also - I'm guessing the screenshot is not what a successful landing should look like. Success means slow and boring and precise.

      That and the fact that you'd need to land exactly in front of the camera on a tripod that was left by the previous mission.

    2. James Micallef Silver badge
      Devil

      Control??

      A true simulation will be REALLY boring, you have to wait minutes between making a move and getting some feedback!

  2. LordHighFixer
    Coat

    Enders Game

    Recruiting for a future mission perhaps?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Anyone going to add a Beagle-2 mod ... where the Xbox ignores the controller and lets the probe plunge to its doom!

    1. hplasm
      Happy

      RROD?

      Isn't this already built in?

  4. M Gale

    Nice.

    Now if only I was one of the two or three people with a Kinect...

    Surely a mobile version would be more widely used?

    1. JDX Gold badge

      Re: Nice.

      Worst troll ever - Kinect is a massive success you tard.

      1. M Gale

        Re: Nice.

        ...and a reply from the resident Microserf? I should have guessed.

        When I see anybody I know, at all, who has a Kinect, I might take you even semi-seriously. This thing would probably garner more attention as a ROM available for DS R4 carts, as it will as Kinect software.

        Not saying I don't want a go but.. Kinect? Really?

  5. Christoph

    Do you get to fire the Heat Ray?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Ooooooo-laaaaa

  6. Gotno iShit Wantno iShit
    Happy

    Ah nuts, I'd forgotten about Thrust on the beeb until I saw that screen shot.

    /shuffles off to fire up Beebem and flush a couple of days away.

  7. dotdavid
    Thumb Up

    "The game - a joint venture with Smoking Gun Interactive - puts players through the "seven minutes of terror" landing procedure"

    Better than the "several years of tedium" second stage of the game, as players have to painstakingly collect and catalogue rock samples while avoiding difficult terrain, Martian storms and system malfunctions, I guess.

  8. Matt Piechota

    So,

    It's xlander?

  9. Graham Marsden
    Joke

    "Do you want to drive a car on Mars...?"

    Copyright Howard Wolowitz ;-)

  10. Doug Bostrom

    I was involved in a high school robotics competition this past year, as a mentor. Teams were given free Kinects to use for controlling these machines, which were competing in a sort-of-basketball game. A lot of beautiful software, loads of lovely hardware, many terrific implementations that would shame not a few professional builders but nary a Kinect to be seen controlling any robot, not in our division which included about 200 teams.

    Kinect is largely useless for this type of work. The screenshot is not at all surprising.

  11. Andyf

    "7 minutes of terror" is hardly accurate, but it's a nicely put together filler, rather than a 'game' in it's own right.

  12. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Joke

    But do they add an 8 to 40 minute comms delay

    depending on the relative positions of Earth and Mars?

    Just to add realism?

  13. SpaMster
    Trollface

    God help them if they are using the kinect to control it, worst motion gaming device on the market

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like