Your Shape – Fitness Evolved

Your Shape is a Wii fitness game by UbiSoft. Unlike all other Wii games, this one used a webcam, but no controller, to analyse and track your body and to show you on-screen. So, even though it wasn’t a particularly good game, it was only natural that UbiSoft would port, or update, this game for the Kinect (Project Natal). And now they have, with Your Shape Fitness Evolved for Xbox 360. It looks quite different from the original Wii version though. Here’s Microsoft’s presentation. UbiSoft also did a very similar presentation.

That video begs the question… why does it show an orange blob (from the 3D camera) with no texture, when Kinect can also see the colour of each pixel like a normal camera? I don’t know the answer, but I suddenly had a disturbing thought… Perhaps the USB data rate is limiting the pixel data that Kinect sends back. If you’ve ever wondered why all webcams are low resolution (but lie and say they’re a much higher resolution), it’s because USB 2 can’t even handle 640×480 at 60Hz in 24-bit colour. So I’m wondering if Kinect really can send all the depth and colour data at the same time. We haven’t seen as many Augmented Reality applications for Kinect as one might expect. On the other hand, perhaps UbiSoft are just lazy. Milo and Kate did use colour and depth data at the same time when Claire was splashing in the pond, although that was an older version of the hardware.

Interview with the producer, Claudine Cezac:

For comparison, here’s the Wii Trailer from last year’s E3 2009: