PrimeSense is the brains behind Microsoft's Kinect, and
wants a bigger piece of the pie; ASUS has a reputation for announcing
wonderfully wacky peripherals every year. At CES 2011, the Wavi Xtion will check off both boxes nicely. In a nutshell, the Xtion is a PrimeSense 3D depth camera built exclusively for PC, but with an important twist -- it connects to the pair of ASUS Wavi boxes you see immediately above, which
wirelessly streams its data
to your living room PC between your TV and a Windows PC over the 5GHz band. Oh, and should ASUS attract enough developers, it will even pull down applications from an Xtion online store. ASUS says we'll see the package commercially available around the world in Q2 of next year -- with a UI and selection of apps and games on board -- but they'll release an Xtion PRO developer kit in February to tempt all you Kinect hackers into
coding magical things for the platform. No more details for now, but there's an event in Vegas this week where ASUS is all but guaranteed to show it off. PR after the break.
Update: Did we say HTPC? Turns out it doesn't quite work that way -- the Wavi are actually a pair of boxes that wirelessly sling data between them. You put the Xtion sensor on top of your TV, connect it to Wavi #1, then plug Wavi #2 into a PC up to 25 meters away. Disappointingly, it looks like the Xtion may not be quite as capable as Microsoft's unit, as there's only a infrared camera inside -- it should be fine for gesture control, but don't expect any
augmented reality lightsaber fights. See some mockups below!
Continue reading PrimeSense and ASUS team, bring Kinect-like Wavi Xtion to your living room TV (update)
PrimeSense and ASUS team, bring Kinect-like Wavi Xtion to your living room TV (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Jan 2011 13:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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