Beyond TV - what the Xbox One user interface means for gamers

[MeachTheMonster]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-what-the-xbox-one-dash-means-for-gamers

What was novelty - if technically impressive - technology on the original Kinect forms a fundamental basis of interaction with Xbox One, and from what we saw at Gamescom, parallels with Xbox 360 hold little water. Voice control on Xbox One actually works and it seems to be genuinely useful. It should be faster than using the joypad for certain functions, but ideally you'd use both in concert. And as for Xbox's isolation from the rest of the components in your system, that is now clearly a thing of the past.

"It'll work with any TV, any amplifiers. It'll work with any AV equipment at home," says Xbox director of product planning Albert Penello. "When we say 'Xbox On' we can actually light up your whole entire system and control everything just with voice."

But what is impressive is that every voice command registered by Kinect is flawlessly transmitted to the relevant kit in the room. It works so well because Kinect itself is the IR blaster. Microsoft has augmented the new Kinect sensor with an IR transmitter in order to see the environment even in pitch black conditions. The upshot of this is that the technology works by drenching the entire room in infra-red light. Forget little LEDs attached to wires you dangle in front of your set-top box; if that's an IR blaster, the Kinect solution is effectively the equivalent of going nuclear.

"It just signed me in. Kinect can actually see me and it knows that I'm talking and engaging with the system and so essentially it has downloaded my profile from Xbox Live and immediately signed me in. And you'll notice everything's changed. It's filled in the most recent applications I was using."

The recognition data and profile data are two separate things. Like Xbox 360 before it, there is a calibration sequence where Kinect on Xbox One learns about you from your skeleton and face. This is held locally. However, the customised UI elements that populate the screen are stored in the cloud, pulled across via Xbox Live. You can even set up "pins" - or favourites, if you will - that you attach to the home screen for swifter navigation.

"Once you've signed into the console it will recognise you and it'll customise [the dash]. If you think about 360, and moving between different Xboxes you have to have a memory unit or a USB thumb drive with all your save games and everything," Penello says. "All of that goes away with Xbox One. All you need to know is your Xbox Live ID and all of your save games and settings follow you wherever you go."

But what really impresses us in the presentation is the ability for Kinect to distinguish between the two men and bring up personalised content. How does it work? We know that Kinect recognises voice commands, but surely it can't distinguish individual voices. It turns out that other sensor data is used to make that determination.

"It knows our skeletons, it knows our faces. Kinect has an array microphone. It can see my face, it can see me talking, it can hear me and because it sees my skeleton, it can isolate that it's me," Penello explains.

"If you went into a development screen it would show you two skeletons standing here. It would show Albert talking. It would show me standing here but not talking," adds Dennis.

"There's another little trick in there. There's an LED emitter in [the joypad] that shows who's controlling which controller and that David is holding controller two and I'm holding controller one. Between all four of those things - who's talking, where they're standing, where the sound is coming from and the controller - it can snap to the right person."

"It's snapping the apps that were in the system. You can't snap the UI," David Dennis answers. "Imagine the Madden game and Madden app running simultaneously. Or think of Halo Waypoint as it is right now. Like you go out to Halo Waypoint and it's aggregating everything you do. Think of a Halo Waypoint app snapped as you're actually playing the game. It's updating the feeds. That's an app and a game operating at the same time and talking to each other."

"You could have YouTube snapped to a game, you could Netflix snapped to a game, you could have YouTube snapped to Netflix," adds Penello, pointing out that apps can be snapped to both games - and other apps.

"Snapping in apps alongside gameplay, media or other apps works exactly as advertised with no adverse performance impact to speak of."

We've spent more time than we care to mention flapping our hands around in front of high-speed cameras in order to measure end-to-end Kinect latency. While we'd take any comment that Kinect is as fast as a button press with significantly more than a pinch of salt, we can't deny that it looks quick. Really quick. In fact, much faster than the Kinect Sports Rivals demo we'd played on the show floor prior to arriving at this presentation.

"The Reflex FPS demo is pretty impressive stuff - we're seeing response that's seemingly faster than any previous Kinect experience we've had."

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the briefing is the transformation in the general perception of the user interface and its relevance to gamers. The Xbox One reveal concentrated too much on live TV to the point where core gamers felt genuinely excluded. At the end of this presentation we came away impressed, wanting to see more. Penello sums it up succinctly, using language uncannily similar to what we've been hearing from other sources close to Microsoft ever since the initial Xbox One debut:

"It's impossible to talk about it. When you see it, you understand."

My body is ready

 

[HNIC973]

can't wait till November

 

[Spliff]

My body is ready

Won't even ask you how

 

[Rekkapryde]

My body is ready

Won't even ask you how

Uhhhh.....

 

[AkaDemiK]

next gen...ya bish

 

[Spliff]

Uhhhh.....

Only demonic individuals conjure demonic thoughts, friend.

 

[Artificial Intelligence]

.......................

 

[Rekkapryde]

So much for getting rid of Kinect even though it will be the death of the system.

 

[Smooth3d]

Sounds very impressive!