Despite featuring a better depth of field, improved tracking that could handle even individual fingers and a 1080p resolution, Microsoft’s Kinect has a few limitations according to legendary id Software programmer John Carmack during a keynote speech at QuakeCon 2013.
“I think Kinect still has some fundamental limitations with the latency and frame rate on it. Interacting with it is still…when you interact with Kinect, some of the standard interactions – position and hold, waiting for different things – it’s fundamentally a poor interaction.
“One way that I look at it is – I used to give Apple a lot of grief about the one button mouse. Anybody working with a mouse really wants more buttons – [they’re] helpful there. Kinect is sort of like a zero button mouse with a lot of latency on it.”
Considering that Kinect will be always-on with the Xbox One, that can’t be good news for Microsoft. It’s always possible they release patches to improve the same though – maybe we’ll see the same on launch day?