I don’t mean to be a downer but I’m not sure how productive this is. I applaud his wanting to jump start something but this is a huge project.<p>Think about it. Just because the drivers let your computer see a hand doesn’t mean your computer can recognize it is a hand. That has to be done in software and doing that will be a massive amount of work. And that's just figuring out it's a hand. Not telling the program what a hand does. Anyone who has used a Kinect on the Xbox knows the software plays a huge part in its execution.<p>I’d wager the configuration program alone took Microsoft far longer than the 6 allotted weeks this contest gives.<p>I’d much rather see a high profile person like Matt Cutts start a fund for open source development of a Kinect library for Linux and then giving people the time to accomplish something great (it's certainly a project I'd be willing to donate to)
I love the sense of community this is building already. Microsoft's initial 'don't hack our hardware!' statement only served to bring more attention to it.<p>I've even got some ideas for games for it, but of course, I don't have a license to officially program for it, and I don't think it works with the XNA. This means I have a chance to use with with the PC instead, though. If I can just find the time. ;)
Wow, that picture and video linked to the article is fantastic. I actually never heard about how the Kinect worked, but once you see that you really get it. I'm a lot more impressed now that I know about the hardware details!
I love reading Cutts and I love my Kinect and would love to see exactly what he is asking for, however if a well known MS engineer conducted a contest on discovering/emulating the software* behind Google's search appliance, do you think it would be met with embrace or venom by the HN community?
Matt poses the idea of using two or more Kinects at the same time to reconstruct a true 3D-view of the room. But when I watch the video and see how a Kinect determines depth -by projecting infrared light dots- I have my doubt wether this will work. I suspect the the two Kinects will interfere with eachother.
I give it two weeks before the open source demos become cooler than Microsoft's.<p>Maybe not doing the same things (I remember they have a database of human positions and bone structure), but at least as good looking as.<p>Or maybe just plain useful for non-gamers.
I wonder if Kinect (or several of them) can be used to create a do-it-yourself motion capture kit. Being able to do mocap for your own hobby on a hobbyist budget would be very cool!
I understand that money is ultimately the answer to my question... however...<p>Why haven't Microsoft or Sony, or better yet some video game maker we've never heard of, realized that building a platform to encourage "hacking" would make a lot of money. If Apple's App store has thought us anything it's that people want to be engaged on a deep level with devices such as video game consoles.<p>I must be missing something.
Jesus, it was reverse-engineered, not "hacked". Did Linux engineers "hack" into every single piece of hardware they wrote drivers for? The overuse of this term in headlines drives me nuts. It's not like people can drive by your house and break into your XBox by waving their arms. And that's the colloquial meaning, which has sadly displaced the original, more positive meaning.