kinect thoughts
Apr. 10th, 2011 08:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chronovoreI played several Kinect games recently. The differences in front end implementation are stunning. Adventures! and the Kinect Hub have very similar models, where the "stickiness" of the cursor remaining on an interface icon feels similarly weighted, and the timing with which it initiates and processes item selection are nearly identical. Joy Ride seems to ape some of the conventions without actually understanding why it's doing it. Specifically, it makes the cursor stick when over a selectable area, but then the timing of initiating the "selection countdown" seems to trigger quite late. This works in negative conjunction with whatever tolerance they've built into the stickiness, so right when it seems like I'm going to get what I was trying to select, it instead leaps off the item and forces me to re-select.
Don't even get me started on the maddening, unclear, complete freak-out Joy Ride had when I tried to start a two-player race with my kids' accounts logged in. It managed to completely kill their enthusiasm for the game before it had even started.
Dance Central, OTOH, seems to have its ducks in a row. They made some very smart decisions about limiting the selectable items, and instead of using the "mouse pointer" and countdown timer model of everything above, there is a stack of selectable items, and then use relative limb speed to move between the selection. Did you ever own one of those cell phones with a jog wheel? This feels like that; you can very quickly move to the item you want, even within a large list. There is also simple and consistent separation between right-hand and left-handed operation, where a swipe with the right hand is "select" and left hand is "go back." Super simple, very low user stress.
Don't even get me started on the maddening, unclear, complete freak-out Joy Ride had when I tried to start a two-player race with my kids' accounts logged in. It managed to completely kill their enthusiasm for the game before it had even started.
Dance Central, OTOH, seems to have its ducks in a row. They made some very smart decisions about limiting the selectable items, and instead of using the "mouse pointer" and countdown timer model of everything above, there is a stack of selectable items, and then use relative limb speed to move between the selection. Did you ever own one of those cell phones with a jog wheel? This feels like that; you can very quickly move to the item you want, even within a large list. There is also simple and consistent separation between right-hand and left-handed operation, where a swipe with the right hand is "select" and left hand is "go back." Super simple, very low user stress.
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no subject
Date: 2011-04-10 02:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-11 10:28 pm (UTC)a) Thanks for linking this article.
b) Good job on writing this article!
Kinect really is a no-man's land in terms of offering support, and it's hilarious that Dance Central has managed to kick MS' ass at designing an interface for their new hardware. Whenever I'm not actually IN a game, every aspect of using the Kinect as a navigation tool for the Xbox "system OS" has me wishing for a controller in my hands.
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Date: 2011-04-12 03:04 am (UTC)LJ is being DDoSed by russian hackers because of political blogs. if'n you weren't aware, LJ is one of (if not the) most popular blogging platforms in russia and attracts serious blogs, not just "hey i had pbj for lunch today" kinda stuff. in fact so much so a russian company bought LJ a few years back.
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Date: 2011-04-12 04:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-11 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-12 04:10 am (UTC)