Xbox Engineering blog explains how Kinect works

So, remember all those times that you asked us how the Kinect manages to identify your human form and adapt it into an in-game Avatar? Remember how we told you that it did so with "robot magic?" We may have been a little off-base with that one -- the Xbox Engineering blog recently posted a full explanation of the all-seeing eye's actual inner workings in a manner simplistic enough for even technophobic cavemen such as ourselves to understand.

The post also gives a little insight into the trial-and-error development of Kinect. It sounds like it was a pretty fascinating process -- though apparently the dev team didn't even think to incorporate robot magic, which, in our opinion, seems like a pretty major oversight.