Microsoft impresses with two Xbox One Kinect demo videos

Microsoft Research has released two new videos showing off the new Kinect peripheral which comes bundled with every Xbox One system.

The first video, narrated by Kareem Choudhry, goes inside the "brains" of the Xbox One Kinect. In it, he provides an excellent tech demo of the Kinect that highlights the peripheral's true human understanding and fidelity of expression. To do so, the Kinect now recognizes true anatomical correctness including the ability to depict individual joints and the orientation of the human body. Taking things a bit further, the Kinect also detect's heart rate and distribution of weight on the ground.

The second video is narrated by Scott Evans who goes behind the eye of the Kinect camera. He touches on the Kinect's improved 3D vision and its much larger field of view. Evans also provides a lengthy look at the Kinect's active IR which not only recognizes you in the dark, but also enables the removal of ambient room lighting.

Even you fanboys have to admit this is some pretty cool technology. How it will enhancing gaming remains to be seen, but it's clear the Xbox One Kinect is much improved over its predecessor. Hopefully these improvements will translate over to games.