so just got home, would've stayed longer if i didn't have other plans. i will preface this post by saying i'm pretty high on the kinect thing, so i might make it sound more awesome than it is.
some quick tidbits about the demo itself:
-they're demoing adventures, joyride, dance central, sports, and kinectimals
-these are the e3 demo builds
-the demos are on a dev kit hard drive (saw the boot up screen for camera calibration and launching the games)
-when the system is powered-on, it still says "Natal Device Recognized"
-store is currently taking pre-orders for $20 with a $150 final price, the reps there demoing the thing rattled that off as the price, not a maybe price
-facial and voice recognition are not currently enabled; i asked about kinectimals and the guy said the demo was still playable since the animal will still interact with you.
-i did not try to sit down in front of it.
kinect adventure
played kinect adventures with a small boy (maybe 6); at first it was having a problem seeing me and him. the rep "recalibrated" the kinect by holding his hand in front of it for a few seconds and then moved it away. i asked him if thats how you "reset" the camera and he laughed saying "thats just what they told us to do if it starts acting weird". afterwards it worked totally fine, even with two people of wildly different heights/body shapes. i went through the river-rafting, platform cart obstacle course, dodgeball sequence.
river-rafting was fun; actually required some coordination for the jumps and steering. the photos of us afterward showed me jumping so high my head was cut off, so i guess it can still find you okay if you go off screen.
platform cart obstacle course; pretty fun, it was weird getting used to the fact that you actually have to step left/right to dodge some of the panels. at first i was just leaning in place. body tracking seemed pretty good, i did a spread eagle through the last collection of medals and my avatar pretty much did the same thing.
dodgeball; stupid. i tried playing "legit" and the kid basically spazzed out the entire time. kid won. at least the other games required SOME coordination.
kinect sports: bowling
played a round of bowling; basically wii bowling with no remote. this is kind of cool since you don't have to worry about throwing anything, and its neat that it recognizes your movements. recognized left and right handed throws automatically, you just reach out the corresponding arm to grab the ball.
using kinect itself
-the camera seemed to have problems tracking anything behind your body (i.e. - curving my arm too far behind me in bowling caused my throw to go wild right across the next lane. i tried windmilling my arms in adventures, but my avatar would get as far as holding their arms straight up and would then snap/spaz to down at my sides.
-input seemed minimal at best, noticeable at worst. i managed to get my avatar lagged about a movement behind in bowling by leaning left/right fast. the avatar was leaned left when i was leaning way right and vice versa. overall it didn't seem to be a problem unless i purposely tried to 'break' it.
-the weirdest thing for me and for everyone else who tried it seemed to be the interface itself. using your left hand to gesture over icons (a reticule displays to show where your hand is tracking) and "unzip" the title screen for adventures, you could tell people didn't quite understand what to do at first. playing the actual games that require known skills like jumping/ducking/stepping etc people figured out pretty easily.
-the camera itself is calibrated via software; they showed this briefly just before i left. you control things like tilt, angle, and some other parameters i didn't get a good look at. on screen is basically a 'heat sensor" like read out with corresponding wireframe skeletons and then an avatar mapped to that skeleton. adjusting the camera didn't seem to move the actual body of the kinect, so perhaps the lens inside is controlled separately from the actual body. ex: the kinect device looked as if it were pointed at the floor, but it was showing from floor to ceiling in the calibration screen.
-even though avatar/profiles weren't involved, it was possible for someone to take another's place during the same game. ex: two guys only did the white water rafting, but two kids came on after them to do the platform cart event, and it continued to read their movements.
overall
i am impressed that it seems to work (mostly) as advertised. the games are "motion" games in that their depth seems fairly shallow (although i did not get to see dance central, perhaps tomorrow). the reps there didn't know if a game would be included with the final release (they didn't even know about this demo event until 2 days ago, spur of the moment idea on msft's part?). i had a fun time and the games seemed perfectly suited for children and/or a party environment. i'm going back tomorrow to see if i can try other sports events or dance central.
