Wow .. super cool gadget ..

[Martin Naef]

On 05.04.2011 7:35, Peter Korsten wrote:
>> Primesense, you mean? ;-) Microsoft was on the lookout for range-sensors
>> for some time until they finally settled on that system. Kinect is
>> slightly repackaged, but it's essentially the Primesense system.
>
> Yeah, I'm quite aware that much of what Microsoft produces has been
> acquired from other companies (which is odd, given how many developers
> they employ), but not that many people had heard of Primesense (I hadn't).

Primesense was relatively new in the market anyway, and it was a bit of 
a surprise MS chose their tech. MS was in the market for range sensors 
for quite some time for their project "Natal" (which later became 
Kinect), they even bought a company that had a time-of-flight sensor. 
But these cameras were never cheap nor particularly high-resolution. In 
comes Primesense with a pico-projector for structured light acquisition, 
changing the game...

> In comes Microsoft, puts it in a different package, all the media cover
> this cool new gadget and voilà, we have a hit. That's the difference.

It was a bit more than that. Primesense brought their range sensing 
technology to the table, but there's a lot more behind Kinect than the 
hardware. MS got the whole software pipeline right.

>> I'm now waiting for MS to release the official SDK and for me to have a
>> bit more spare time, then I'm quite likely to get a Kinect for my
>> real-time visuals work.
>
> What would you do with it?

As you might remember, I did a cool project in Glasgow where I projected 
onto performers on stage based on the input from a fast IR camera. The 
project finally went on stage last September. In my spare time (as if I 
had any these days...), I am now working on a successor technology 
that's much simpler from the vision point of view but instead runs a lot 
of video effects on the GPU (2D and 3D). Instead of projecting onto the 
performer, I want a dancer to drive the visuals in the background. I 
have it running nicely using an HD web-cam, but a range sensor would 
give me some nice additional control for effects.
Once that technology is mature enough, I intend to run a new project 
together with a dancer and live music (Ilona).

I'd say 2012, the earliest...

Martin