Sony: Kinect Tech Problems Are “Quite Big”

In a recent in-depth interview with SSCE software engineer Anton Mikhailov by Video Gamer, he said that Kinect has tech problems which are “quite big”.

“We’re not necessarily against Kinect or against depth cameras, it’s just we feel like Move has more applicability across more genres so it fits better with what we try to do.

He said that Kinect runs at 30 FPS, whereas the PS Eye camera runs at 60 FPS:

“Also I think the tech is a bit, not so much immature, but not quite up to spec in what we think. Like the PlayStation Eye camera runs at 60 frames per second so it can track you very quickly whereas the Kinect and other depth camera are only 30 frames per second. So they are more suited for slower motions. Dancing is still kind of okay and then the yoga stuff that they were doing, it fits that very well, whereas if you want to do quick punches it’s harder to do that just because you can’t see the player as quickly. And there’s also more latency, things like that. So you know, it’s not a particularly sexy result, it’s just mostly technological problems.”

“We thought that they were just minor, well not so much minor. Marketing-wise they’re minor tech problems, technologically-wise they’re quite big,” he explained.

Anton Mikhailov then went on to explain if the technological limitations could be overcome and how difficult it would be for developers to incorporate Kinect into their games:

“The fact that it runs at 30 frames per second instead of 60, that’s a common problem with all those cameras. It’s actually hard to fix because you have a lot of data to transport. Sort of working with that image is expensive computationally-wise. I think they quoted something like 10-15 per cent of the Xbox resources, plus like 50 megs of memory or something like that. The Move takes less than 1%, and like 1 megabyte. So, you know, that’s just a bunch of numbers but to developers that means like Killzone 3 can just put in Move and not have to worry about it, whereas something like Kinect you have to make significant game changes to actually fit that into your game. So that’s a big plus for Move I think ’cause a lot of people can just try it out and put it in.

He also pointed out that Kinect runs at lower resolution of 320×240:

“Another issue is resolution; it’s a 320×240 camera as far as I’ve heard and the out-to is 640×480 so neither of those are particularly hot resolutions but you can take what you can get. I mean, a lot of webcams now are 720p, etc. but the reality is those cameras are much more expensive and they’re running again at lower frame-rates. So when you do a bunch of this maths, like, the resolution I think is too low, I think the frame-rate is too low, and I think some materials are still a problem.”

Via VideoGamer