back to article Finger-free Kinect coming to fondlesome Windows 8

Kinect, Microsoft's hands-free game controller, will run Windows 8 applications from next month. In its latest Kinect roadmap here, Microsoft states the controller will include support for Windows 8 desktop applications in addition to supporting Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 for development. The features will come as an …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    PROOFREADING

    DO YOU SPEAK IT?

    Also, in before Barry Shitpeas says the fastest selling consumer device ever is crap.

    1. TeeCee Gold badge
      Coat

      Re: PROOFREADING

      I thought Shitpeas was a dyed-in-the-wool apple hater.

      He probably loves the Kinect and wants to have its babies.

      Hmmm, gesture controlled babies. Warm up the Tesla coils, chuck some mutagen compounds in that vat, blag a Kinect from somewhere and pass my lab coat please Igor.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Stop

        Re: PROOFREADING

        I hate anything thats a polished turd, regardless of manufacturer.

        This includes:

        Xbox, Kinect, Zune (or anything else Microsoft has done in hardware)

        ipod, iPad, iPhone (or anything else that's about status rather than function)

        Lumia (or anything else lumbered with Windows Phone abortion)

        Marketing or throwing money at something should never allow a shit product to come across as premium.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: PROOFREADING

          @Barry: You're a wonderful human-being though, eh?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: PROOFREADING

            The BarryTranslatorBot says -

            "I only like Google and Sony products and therefore I must hate every other product and want it to fail so that Google and Sony eventually have an immense services/software(g) + hardware(s) duopoly. I must post about how bad any non-Google and non-Sony product is all the time to achieve this. I must accuse anyone who disagrees with me of being a paid shill. That is why I have become the running joke stereotype of an idiot troll. Please love me."

          2. Dave 126 Silver badge

            Re: PROOFREADING

            Kinnect is a polished turd? I for one was excited by its possibilities, beyond its original 'try and compete with Nintendo' purpose. Here is one example http://www.ted.com/talks/vijay_kumar_robots_that_fly_and_cooperate.html - towards the end of the video.

            Another was the student who had it measuring objects and quickly building 3-dimensional models of his surroundings, within two days of its release. Applications in the workshop seem almost limitless, especially since most timber yards have a CNC router these days. Another area in which it has yet to reach its potential is in human input: I would like to interact with a CAD package by walking around in the actual object I am building.

            Rather than a polished turd, it seems to be more of an yet unpolished gem.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Megaphone

              Re: PROOFREADING

              You have been fooled by the polish.

              The polish was all that tripe on Engadget/El Reg or anywhere else on the payroll, that distracted you from the fact that all the Kinect GAMES (you know, what you bought it for...) all sucked balls. Sure some stupid news story about it being used to control million dollar rockets or being used by surgeons to perform keyhole surgery and stuff makes great headlines that fools cretins, but as anyone that has used Kinect knows, the reality is MUCH more disappointing than the promises of the minority report future....

              I would like to ask Balmer to sit in front of a robot with a scalpel controlled by a doctor whilst it cuts an eyelash. Lets see him put his money (or eyes) where his marketing mouth is. I would also ask him qhen will Microsoft be getting the Guinness Book of Records for the most traded-in or gathering dust peripheral of all time...

              1. You Are Not Free

                Re: PROOFREADING

                "You have been fooled by the polish."

                The "polish" being a carefully crafted campaign of hype, misinformation and psychological manipulation.

                Kinect is a joke. Anyone with half a brain (well actually, anyone with a full brain) can see that it's crap.

                The only success was the bottom line and a marketing campaign that was hype and psychological manipulation of epic proportions. Whoever designed that marketing campaign, they are the winners, they did a real number of the Plebs with that one.

                They knew that by raising expectations of kinect to such levels by the time consumers got hold of it, cognitive dissonance would kick in (google it) and they would convince themselves that it was brilliant!

                Apple do this too. Jobs was an excellent manipulator. Just think of all those "un-veilings" of apple products, pure brainwashing (for want of a better phrase) techniques.

                Some people are resistant to it, those are the ones that get pissed off.

        2. Demosthenese

          @Barry Shitpeas

          +1 for the last line.

          Capitalism's only promise to us proles is that the free market will provide cheaper, and better, goods and services. Marketeers and ad-men ensure it doesn't even do that.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hrm

    Interesting, though I would take issue with the bald assertion of the grassroots nerd interest in Silverlight. There was rather a groundswell of "DO NOT WANT", in contrast to the "hey, that's neat, can we hack some software to drive it" response to the Kinect..

    1. JDX Gold badge

      Re: Hrm

      I found developers liked SL because it let them share .NET code, and avoid having to use another language. This was before HTML5 became the big thing though, and any plugin became popular - when the idea you needed a plugin for rich web was a given, SL was technically pretty exciting.

  3. Majid

    Minority Report style control: The only way I see 'touch' work on the desktop.

    But it has to be enormously precise, So probably they will need Kinect 2. So you can just resize move rotate and swipe, by holding your hands in front of you, and making gestures.

    When I first saw the adds about Kinect I thought it was an advertisement trick, but to my surprise it actually worked. Hope for Microsoft they can deliver with Kinect 2. Otherwise the whole 'Metro' idea on the desktop is dead in the water, because driving it with the mouse is just awkward.

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Minority Report style control: The only way I see 'touch' work on the desktop.

      You don't have to be too precise. DTP and CAD users are used to 'snaps', ie the cursor snaps to, say, end points, mid points, tangents, quadrants, intersections, whatever. Generally, you 'sketch' the rough form using these constraints, and then you populate it with more precise dimensions as and when you know them.

      A vibrating ring for haptic feedback might be handy, though. Stop sniggering at the back!

      1. Frumious Bandersnatch

        Re: Minority Report style control: The only way I see 'touch' work on the desktop.

        A vibrating ring for haptic feedback might be handy, though. Stop sniggering at the back!

        No sniggering here. I do think that memory wire would be a lot nicer than mere buzzing. For "handling" 3d objects, obviously.

    2. stucs201

      Re: Minority Report style control: The only way I see 'touch' work on the desktop.

      This does indeed sound more promising than a touchscreen on a desktop. To use a touchscreen I'd need to either get longer arms or lose most of the deskspace I gained when moving from CRT to LCD.

      Unfortunately it sounds like this is something that application can optionally choose to support, not something done automatically by the operating system and translated to work with any software.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxKRBUzElTU

    I think this sums up the problems with Kinect control...

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    hyperbole

    The Kinect guiness record was shipped numbers, and Microsoft fooled everyone by channel stuffing to achieve it.

    Funny how they only sold 1m units over the next 9 months......

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: hyperbole

      Cite source.

      This is like the people that said same sex civil partnerships had ceased to be popular, because after the first rush the amount of partnerships dropped. Nothing to do with the majority of people who wanted to do it, having done it and therefore demand dropping.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: hyperbole

        "This is like the people that said same sex civil partnerships had ceased to be popular...blah..blah"

        Firstly, What the fuck are you talking about?

        Secondly, those people (whoever they are) would be kind of right. Since when have sex civil partnerships been classed as "popular"?

        Thirdly, cite YOUR source if you want to make a point you hypocrite.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: hyperbole

          It's very simple, what I'm talking about is:

          1) There is a pent up desire for a product or service

          2) Lots of people get that product or service as soon as it's available

          3) Time passes

          4) Not as many people want that product or service because most of the ones who want it, go it as soon as they could.

          5) Nay sayers use 4) to "prove" that it's not popular any more (as happened with certain IIRC Daily Mail journos WRT civil partnerships.)

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: hyperbole

            It is simple isn't it, you almost managed to make a point without forcing the reader to infer your opinion on homosexuality.

            How about that!

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: hyperbole

              Err... I'm bisexual, so I suspect what you've done there is seen something mention same sex relationships, and made up what you think it said in order to try to discredit me by making a suggestion that I'm some sort of homophobe. Nothing could be further from the truth.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: hyperbole

                "Err... I'm bisexual, so I suspect what you've done there is seen something mention same sex relationships, and made up what you think it said in order to try to discredit me by making a suggestion that I'm some sort of homophobe. Nothing could be further from the truth."

                Well your suspicions are completley wrong...

                It was pretty obvious that you were the "type of person" that simply has to bring up the subject of homosexuality at every given opportunity no matter how tedius it is to the people partaking in the discussion, especially when the topic being discussed is utterly un-related.

                Looks like I was right.

                Still not citing any source for your "point" I see...

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: hyperbole

                  Your last post says waaay more about you than it does about me.

                  I see you're still not citing your source and sticking to a "you show me yours and I'll show you mine" defence.

                  1. Anonymous Coward
                    Anonymous Coward

                    Re: hyperbole

                    "Your last post says waaay more about you than it does about me."

                    Does it really? Well, since it revelas a wealth of information about me, which, (assumingly) must put me in a negative light judging by the tone of your wording. Why not share that information with the world right here?

                    Go on. What does my last post say about me?

                    "I see you're still not citing your source and sticking to a "you show me yours and I'll show you mine" defence."

                    You're the one who started demanding that people cite sources. Put your money where your mouth is before expecting others to do the same.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: hyperbole

        http://www.computerandvideogames.com/327350/kinect-sales-pattern-unhealthy-ubisoft/#

        ****CHANNELSTUFFING******COUGH*****

        Everyone in the industry knows that Guiness stuff was total PR bullshat.

  6. Simon B
    Joke

    Mr Jones, please press the start button on your touch screen

    What start button?

    Mr Jones, please press the start button you can't see on your touch screen, without touching it, using the hands free kinnect

    Arrrggghhhhh!

  7. Test Man
    Stop

    What about Windows 8-style apps?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    LeapMotion

    This looks promising - note, it's not released yet but will work with Windows (the video shows a Mac).

    http://leapmotion.com/

  9. Greg J Preece

    This is the only aspect of the Kinect I've ever cared about. For gaming it's rubbish, but I like the idea of using it for PC/TV interaction. Might go pick one up now.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Soooooo

    Someone has made something that uses Kinect and it isn't a pointless gimik?

    Really?

  11. larokus

    not sure about u guys but when my chick plays dance central in lingerie/sexy club dress and heels i LOVE my kinect

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