Rumour: Kinect 2 Can Lip-Read And Interpret Facial Emotions

gamesnewstech

29 Nov

The successor to Microsoft’s hugely successful motion-sensing device, Kinect, will be so accurate that it will be able to lip-read and be able to detect human emotion from subtle facial expressions, Eurogamer reports.

Likely to be bundled with the next generation of Xbox, the advances made by Kinect 2 will be in removing the artificial limitations placed on the original device by the Xbox 360’s outdated USB controller interface, which is capable of processing around 35Mb of data from a USB device to the Xbox per second. Accordingly, the amount of information Kinect can send to the Xbox is limited to around 15/16Mb/s, meaning a resolution of just 320 x 240 and a frame-rate of 30fps must be used to accommodate such a low data threshold. It is Eurogamer’s prediction that the next Xbox (currently rumoured to be announced early next year at CES 2011) will not impose such restrictions and thus, Kinect 2 will be able to achieve the levels of motion-sensing sophistication as those mentioned prior.

Informed predictions and speculative suggestions aside, it seems rumours regarding a Kinect successor – a device that has racked up several million units sold in the two years since launch - amount to what we had hoped for from Microsoft in the first place. If there is a spot of truth in Eurogamer’s findings, the platform holder will have to push more adventurous titles than Kinect Sports 3 to keep us on board.

Source: Eurogamer