I have just become Obi-Wan Kenobi — and it is awesome. I am waving my hand with Jedi-like confidence, flipping through the screens and options of the Xbox Kinect. I’m not touching anything or holding a controller yet the game responds with the reliability of a stormtrooper under my influence.
Kinect is the droid I was looking for.
With a revolutionary sensor that remembers my face, seeks out the heat signature of my hand and tracks my every movement, Kinect has just taken a huge new leap into the future of gaming. The human body has become the world’s most advanced game controller, making for incredibly immersive gameplay.
Which is what inspired me to spend nearly 18 hours straight playing beach volleyball in the middle of autumn, knocking out my best friend in a boxing ring and topping it all off with a celebratory dance party.
And when I high-five my buddy, our onscreen characters high-five each other, too. It’s like stepping into a real-life game, with no lag and no separation between you and what’s happening onscreen.
The new system — $150 on its own, $300 to $400 with an Xbox console — comes packaged with Kinect Adventures, featuring river rafting and an obstacle course. But some of the best titles are on Kinect Sports, sold separately for $50. It allows up to four players to go head-to-head in soccer, bowling, track and field, beach volleyball, pingpong and boxing.
In pingpong, the Kinect recognizes all forms of spin. In beach volleyball, it knows when you’ve crouched to set for another player and makes the crowd cheer when you nail a perfect spike. It’s as if the phrase “couch potato” never existed.
Another hot title is Dance Central, also $50, which challenges you to mirror the moves of some amazingly limber bodies. I attempted to get down to Soulja Boy’s “Crank Dat” but found it tough to keep up.
Even when you’ve blown your big play or made a goofy dance move, the new system rewards you. It records all your movements and compiles them into a highlight reel. For sore losers, it’s a feature bound to replace tears with laughter.
The Kinect uses the same kind of motion-capture technology that game developers (and movie makers) have relied on to create realistic effects. It analyzes 48 different joints so that your exact movements are reflected in the game.
And if you don’t feel like waving your hands around to control the system, you can always fall back on another revolutionary element of the Kinect: voice control. Just say “Xbox play sports” and the game system launches. Or if you’ve downloaded a movie, you can say “Xbox pause” or “Xbox fast forward” and it happens instantaneously.
The hand and voice controls also work with other content, including music, ESPN3.com sports feeds, movies and TV shows on Netflix and downloaded media from Zune.
There are a few caveats. City dwellers in tiny apartments need to be sure they have at least six to eight square feet of space in front of their TV sets.
Also, you may need to keep your blinds shut. Not only does sunshine interfere with the sensor, but neighbors are likely to consider you a head-case when they see you punching imaginary friends and kicking invisible soccer balls.
Kinect at the fore
The techbehind new controller
1 Camera and software usemotion-capture technology similar to systems that cost as much as $150,000 for action filmmakers and game developers.
2 Standard video camera uses facial recognition to identify players — and remember them.
3 Class 1 infrared lasers sweep the room to determine who’s standing where. Even if a player is obscured, algorithms predict what the rest of the body is doing.
4 System constantly monitors 48 joints in player’s body. On-screen movement is generated from a database of 20 million images of 200 distinct poses.
5 Four microphones make a detailed acoustic map of your game room, allowing Kinect to detect who’s talking and cancel out the sounds coming from your TV.
5 Launch menu navigation and media playback by waving your hand or issuing voice commands.