Kinect "most accurate" analogue input

Ten million selling Xbox 360 motion-sensing add-on Kinect is the most accurate analogue input device gamers have ever had, Elite creator David Braben has said.

"If you think of the analogue stick for example, if you just show the position of the analogue stick on the screen as a blob, it jitters around all over the place," Braben, whose Frontier Developments made Kinectimals and is worling on Kinect Disneyland Adventures, told Eurogamer in a new interview published this morning.

"When we first got analogue controls we thought, oh yes, you can use it like a mouse. But actually, you can't. It's not precise enough. The mouse is pretty precise, but that's only because that's also a relative device.

"So the way we tend to use analogue sticks is you're doing it as the direction of movement you're controlling. You're not controlling position. Similarly with the mouse, the wheel underneath has got the phase counter on that tracks the relative position. It's just incremental.

"So it feels accurate. But actually it's not that accurate. Same with the analogue stick. So, there's a perception of accuracy."

Kinect's accuracy was called into question when the sensor was released in November last year.

Some launch titles failed to provide the accuracy demanded by their gameplay. But the second wave of Kinect games should provide much better accuracy as developers get to grips with the technology and Microsoft improves the software.

Now, nearly a year after launch, Braben describes Kinect's accuracy as "unbelievable".

"It's one of the first things where you can actually use the position directly as a position, not just as a relative movement. That is a change. We haven't come to terms with how best to use that. We're getting better with each stage."