Rumor: Apple and Sony considered purchase of first-gen Kinect developer

[ShackNewsFeed]

[url]http://www.shacknews.com/article/80196/report-apple-sony-considering-purchase-of-first-gen-kinect-maker[/url]

[n0cturni]

Is the actual Kinect device anything other than a glorified webcam?

[Zombini]

[QUOTE=n0cturni;41486013]Is the actual Kinect device anything other than a glorified webcam?[/QUOTE]

It's a 3D camera, capable of tracking location and position in realtime in a 3D space. So it has depth perception. It's a pretty neat thing actually, but it's a bad idea for anything other than party games.

[3noneTwo]

[QUOTE=zombini;41486023]It's a 3D camera, capable of tracking location and position in realtime in a 3D space. So it has depth perception. It's a pretty neat thing actually, but it's a bad idea for anything other than party games.[/QUOTE]
It's an affordable option for motion capture, and for [url=http://reconstructme.net/]cheap/low-quality 3D scanning[/url].

[misguided]

[QUOTE=n0cturni;41486013]Is the actual Kinect device anything other than a glorified webcam?[/QUOTE]

Technologically, yes. It has a laser that projects a pattern onto everything in front of it, a CMOS sensor for detecting the IR reflections, the rgb camera and a processor for generating depth info.

[Deunan]

[QUOTE=zombini;41486023]It's a 3D camera, capable of tracking location and position in realtime in a 3D space. So it has depth perception. It's a pretty neat thing actually, but it's a bad idea for anything other than party games.[/QUOTE]

It's also a voicerecog device, and has a bunch of other sensors and chips as well I think.