Kinect not so great at dealing with players lying down

Let's say it's finally happened. Your worst nightmares have come true, and Kinect's become sentient, immediately proceeding to go on a human-murdering, Facebook photo-uploading rampage. You take a seat, hoping your attempt at not resembling a colorfully-clothed idyllic Typical American Family will throw it off your tracks. But that does nothing to slow Kinect's charge.

In your desperation, you trip and fall flat on the ground. But then, something odd happens: Kinect goes haywire. Congratulations: you've just thwarted the apocalypse by lying down.

“We had to consider, would this skeletal tracking ever realistically be able to work out that a player is laying on the floor," Blitz Games CTO Andrew Oliver said during a session at Develop. "We asked – believe me we asked – and we were told it wasn't going to happen."

Currently, Blitz is working on The Biggest Loser: Ultimate Workout, a Kinect-centric fitness game. Obviously, then, push-ups and sit-ups would seem to be shoe-ins, but Kinect apparently said otherwise. Fortunately, Oliver and his team of workout fanatics found a work-around.

"You don't need to rely on the system," Oliver said. "You can write your own [detection routine] if you know what you're looking for."

So, by default, Kinect's not equipped to handle players not in an upright position. With a little bit of tinkering, though, just about anything's possible. Including the apocalypse.

Thanks, IndustryGamers.