Microsoft Kinect specs revealed, only two players can play at once

Geeks have a soft spot for technical specifications – and now revealed for the first time, the Microsoft Kinect tech specs are bound for some geeky attention. A quick fact, the Kinect controller will be able to track you when you’re between 1.2 and 3.5 meters away from it. How’s that for starters?

Interestingly, the two cameras on the Kinect have surprisingly low resolution – two video streams with 640×480 pixels resolution at 30 frames per second. I thought they would need higher resolution to do their tracking magic, but it seems they can do it with just VGA.

Kinect’s horizontal field of view is 57 degrees. Additionally, the Kinect has a motor that can tilt it 27 degrees each way to track you, which expands the field of view. The vertical field of view is 43 degrees.

The Kinect does all the tracking computation on its own, so it’s compatible with all Xbox 360 consoles. It has its limitations though – it can track 6 people at once, but only two of them are ‘active players’. However, it can track 20 joints per active player (I didn’t know I had that many).

The Kinect also has an array of microphones besides the cameras – they can capture 16-bit audio at 16 kHz and include echo cancellation and speech recognition for voice commands.