Project Natal / Kinect

[HanneSThEGreaT]

Hello again.

I should say this looks very very interesting indeed. Is this the beginning of greater things? I mean, if this is done with games, what does it mean for computing in reality. Are we closer to augmented reality / virtual reality than we think? Am I making sense...?

Hannes

[Brad Jones]

Actually, my first question on Kinect is whether like an Xbox controller, this device will be usable in Visual Studio projects aimed at the PC or other devices.

Brad!

[briankel]

Of course, the technical answer to your question - can you target it from Visual Studio projects - is yes, since the Xbox Development Kit (XDK) integrates with Visual Studio and that's what professional game studios use to build Xbox 360 games. But that's not a reality for the "rest of us" unless we work at a professional game studio and have access to the XDK's.

The "rest of us" answer would rely on them making this available via the XNA Framework, and the Xbox 360 team keeps that kind of stuff under pretty tight wraps. If I had to guess (and this is purely a guess, as a gamer and observer, not as a Microsoft employee since I know nothing in this space) I would assume that the XNA team is looking hard at Kinect to see if it makes sense to introduce into XNA Game Studio, but the reality with these sorts of things is that until they make an announcement it's anybody's guess.

I for one am hoping that they bring it to XNA. It sure would be fun to build games, and non-games alike, for Kinect!

Brian

[Brad Jones]

I for one am hoping that they bring it to XNA. It sure would be fun to build games, and non-games alike, for Kinect!

That's the question/answer! I can already think of a number of applications that would be cool to build that would be PC/Kiosk based....

[HanneSThEGreaT]

Brilliant! Can't wait!