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This edition we have Kinect for the laptop, bad marketing from Kinect Star Wars, and a theme park in a box with the Kinect at the helm? Sound interesting? Read on…
Could the Kinect come to a laptop near you? It’s more likely than you think. Rumor has it that Microsoft will be willing to license the technology to laptop manufacturers to include voice recognition, web cam, and gesture control in new laptops, but may wait until Windows 8 comes out since it has inherent support for the tracking system. What will this mean for you? Well besides looking a bit strange riding a bus while you make motions to your portable rig, the experience probably won’t be much different than it would on a PC. Oh, and that if you are considering purchasing a laptop today and have use for a Kinect, then you’ll probably want to hold off a bit. Of course, there are hundreds if not thousands of uses for the device in a laptop. It will be especially useful for scientists and robotics people who need a smaller version of a desktop to use.
Could the marketing for Kinect Star Wars get any stupider? Really. Now I am a big fan of Darth Vader and one of the best scenes in the first movie is where he battles Obi-Wan on the Death Star. The powerful clash between the Jedi and the Sith is awesome. So imagine my dismay when they basically took that scene and ruined it with some attempt that looked like a bad skit on YouTube. The “trailer” features Darth Vader going up against the portly Chris Pratt who is substituting for Alec Guiness, who’s dead and probably turning over in his grave about now. Pratt jumps around, much to the confusion of the Dark Lord. Vader raises his hand. I was hoping he planned to choke him before the footage got even more bizarre. But no such luck. Once he cuts him down, Vader does the usual pat with his foot against the clothes, but then the camera comes up and we see Pratt in his underwear still with light saber in hand. Vader just gives a look like “Oy…” There is no game footage in this so called trailer. The idea is that anyone can be the controller and go up against the Dark Lord in their underwear apparently. I guess that’s true, but the video really “soils” the reputation of the series and doesn’t shine a very bright light really on the players or the game itself. Kinect Star Wars will be out one of these days…
Imagine if you will a theme park that is basically nothing more than you (and 2999 of your closest friends), a series of Kinects and RFID wrist bands and large mega screens and you have the first fully realized virtual theme park, at least that is how it is being billed. The South Korean enterprise called Live Park offers 65 attractions to its possible 10,000 visitors a day (3000 at the same time) ranging from the strange to the pretty cool. Set up in seven different stages that each guest passes through on their adventure, one can create their own avatar and have pictures taken with what they call a “smile engine” in Ender Mirror, they can play in the biggest 360 3D video game environment in Live 360, perform with their favorite stars as holograms, and much, much more. The 10,000 square meter entertainment venue can be stationary or portable. And the creators are talking about licensing, which you can bet that Disney and Universal are looking very closely at. Especially Disney who has announced an Avatar land for Animal Kingdom. Something like this would be perfect for recreating Pandora, although honestly, I hope they actually opt for the “real” thing rather than just projection tricks. But then that does work for Harry Potter, so…You can visit Live Park in South Korea and later on in China and Shanghai.
And that’s the new for the moment. Thanks for reading…
