[supermatt]

I agree that the kinect is more convenient for casual gaming.

That said, I have yet to see a convincing demo of the new Kinect, so far only having seen increased resolution on the depth visualisation. By the very nature of the technology it will still have the same limitations as its predecessor.

The technology in the PrioVR may be a more cumbersome than ideal, but the proposed sensors are already smaller than those shown in the visualisation (http://i.imgur.com/oSBEloE.png - the middle ones are the new sensors). As for further miniaturisation, well it has to start somewhere (hence kickstarter, i guess).

As for power usage, this kind of device (low powered sensors with a single wireless hub) combined with a mobile phone and some kind of communication bridge would likely give you hours of full-system use (the PrioVR, this: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2041280918/vrase-the-sma... for display and some bridge to access the mocap data on the phone) off a simple 5Ah battery. Or you could go the oculus route, and just have a laptop in a backpack, powering everything through USB.

This isn't just about gaming. This is capturing full body movement for usage in a huge variety of applications. I'm worried that given the current traction this project has, it will fail to fund, and we're going to end up setting back immersive AR/VR for another decade.

[minutetominute]

I agree that you have to start somewhere for miniaturisation, but if this technology is introduced prematurely and consumers don't take to it, you may be doing more damage than if you just let the tech mature in labs and commercial applications. Just look at the Virtual Boy. VR tech died at the consumer level when that failed.

I doubt that you could get hours of gameplay. Maybe if you were playing something very simple, you could do hours, but a fully immersive world would destroy battery life.

[supermatt]

I thought a quarter was pretty small (in UK here, so not sure of the comparison). In my opinion, this company is bringing what is currently a multi-thousand dollar setup down to consumer price levels. If they don't get the response they expect from this campaign, who is going to invest the millions to make it smaller? Surely that WILL be the death of these type of systems?

As for power usage, graphically intense 3d games on the iPhone 5 have about 2-3 hours battery life on a 1.5Ah battery (thats screen, CPU, GPU, etc), so I'd say its still perfectly realistic to expect hours. I don't know the power usage of this kit though, but i would expect it to be low solely based on its function.