Technology

Ghosts in the Kinect

Published

12 months ago

March 31, 2025

Billy Tolley swings a Microsoft Kinect around an abandoned room in sudden, jittery movements. “Whoa!” he says. “Dude, it was so creepy.” On the display, we see an anomaly of arrows, spheres, and red lines that disappears almost as soon as it arrives. For Tolley and Zak Bagans, two members of the Ghost Adventures YouTube channel, this is enough to suggest they should leave the building. Because for this team and other similar enthusiasts, that seemingly innocuous blotter of white arrows means something more terrifying: a glimpse at specters and phantoms invisible to the human eye.

Fifteen years after its release, just about the only people still buying the Microsoft Kinect are ghost hunters like Tolley and Bagans. Though the body-tracking camera, which was discontinued in 2017, started as a gaming peripheral, it also enjoyed a spirited afterlife outside of video games. But in 2025, its most notable application is helping paranormal investigators, like the Ghost Adventures team, in their attempts at documenting the afterlife.

The Kinect’s ability to convert the data from its body-tracking sensors into an on-screen skeletal dummy delights these investigators, who allege the figures it shows in empty space are, in fact, skeletons of the spooky, scary variety. Looking at it in use — the Kinect is particularly popular with ghost-hunting YouTubers — it’s certainly producing results, showing human-like figures where there are none. The question is: why?

With the help of ghost hunters and those familiar with how the Kinect actually works, The Verge set out to understand why the perhaps most misbegotten gaming peripheral has gained such a strong foothold in the search for the paranormal.

Part of the reason is purely technical. “The Kinect’s popularity as a depth camera for ghost hunting stems from its ability to detect depth and create stick-figure representations of humanoid shapes, making it easier to identify potential human-like forms, even if faint or translucent,” says Sam Ashford, founder of ghost-hunting equipment store SpiritShack.

This is made possible by the first-generation Kinect’s structured light system. By projecting a grid of infrared dots into an environment — even a dark one — and reading the resulting pattern, the Kinect can detect deformations in the projection and, through a machine-learning algorithm, discern human limbs within those deformations. The Kinect then converts that data into a visual representation of a stick figure, which, in its previous life, was pumped back into games like Dance Central and Kinect Sports.

The Kinect isn’t always seeing what it thinks it is

When it was released in 2010, the first-gen Kinect was cutting-edge technology: a high-powered, robust, and lightweight depth camera that condensed what would usually retail upward of $6,000 into a $150 peripheral. Today, you can find a Kinect on eBay for around $20. Ghost hunters, however, typically mount it to a carry handle and a tablet and upsell it for around $400-600, rebranded as a “structured light sensor” (SLS) camera. “The user will direct the camera to a certain point of the room where they believe activity to be present,” says Andy Bailey, founder of a gear shop for ghost hunters called Infraready. “The subject area will be absent of human beings. However, the camera will often calculate and display the presence of a skeletal image.”

Though this is often touted as proof we’re all bound for an eternity haunting aging hotels and abandoned prisons, Bailey urges caution, telling would-be ghost hunters that the cameras are best paired with other equipment to “provide an additional layer of supporting evidence.” For this, Ghost Hunters Equipment, the retail arm of haunted tour operator Ghost Augustine recommends that “EMF readings, temperature, baseline readings, and all of that are essential when considering authentication of paranormal activity.”

That’s because the Kinect isn’t always seeing what it thinks it is. But what is it actually seeing? Did Microsoft, while trying to break into a motion-control market monopolized by the Nintendo Wii, accidentally create a conduit through which we might glimpse the afterlife? Sadly, no.

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The Kinect is actually a straightforward piece of hardware. It is trained to recognize the human body, and assumes that it’s always looking at one — because that’s what it’s designed to do. Whatever you show it, whether human or humanoid or something entirely different, it will try and discern human anatomy. If the Kinect is not 100 percent sure of its position, it might even look like the figure it displays is moving. “We may recognise the face of Jesus in a piece of toast or an elephant in a rock formation,” says Jon Wood, a science performer who has a show devoted to examining ghost hunting equipment. “Our brains are trying to make sense of the randomness.” The Kinect does much the same, except it cannot overrule its hunches.

That suits ghost hunters just fine, of course: the Kinect’s habit of finding human shapes where there are none is a crowd-pleaser. The Kinect, deployed in dark rooms bathed in infrared light from cameras and torches, wobbling in the hands of excitable ghost hunters as it tries to read a precise grid of infrared points, is almost guaranteed to show them what they want to see.

Much of ghost hunting depends on ambiguity. If you’re searching for proof of something, be it the afterlife or not, logic suggests you’d want tools that can provide the clearest results, the better to cement the veracity of that proof. Ghost hunters, however, prefer technology that will produce results of any kind: murky recordings on 2000s voice recorders that might be mistaken for voices, low-resolution videos haunted by shadowy artifacts, and any cheap equipment that can call into question the existence of dust (sorry, spirit orbs) — bonus points if battery life is temperamental.

“I’ve watched ghost hunters use two different devices for measuring electromagnetic fields (EMF),” Wood says. “One would be an accurate and expensive Trifled TF2, that never moves unless it actually encounters an electrical field. The other would be a £15 [$18], no-brand, ‘KII’ device with five lights that go berserk when someone so much as sneezes. Which one was more popular, do you think?”

Glitches aren’t tolerated — they’re encouraged

Given the notoriously unreliable skeletal tracking of the Kinect — most non-gaming applications bypass the Kinect’s default SDKs, preferring to process its raw data by other, less error-prone, means — it would be stranger if it didn’t see figures every time it’s deployed. But that’s the point. Like so much technology ghost hunters use, the Kinect’s flaws aren’t bugs or glitches. They’re not tolerated — they’re encouraged.

“If a person pays good money to enjoy a ghost hunt, what are they after?” Wood asks. “They prime themselves for a ‘spooky encounter’ and open up to the suggestion of anything being ‘evidence of a ghost’ — they want to find a ghost, so they make sure they do.”

If it were just the skeletal tracking that ghost hunters were after, better options are now possible with a simple color image. But improved methodology wouldn’t return the false-positives that maintain belief, and so skeletal tracking from 2010 is preferred. None of this is likely to move the needle for those who believe towards something more skeptical. But we do know why the Kinect (or SLS) returns the results it does, and we know it’s not ghosts.

That said, even if its results are erroneous, maybe the Kinect’s new lease on afterlife isn’t a bad thing. Much as ghosts supposedly patrol the same paths over and over until interrupted by ghost hunters, perhaps it’s fitting that the Kinect will continue forevermore to track human bodies — even if the bodies aren’t really there.

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Technology

Woot is offering over 20 percent off Switch 2 controllers and games today

Published

10 hours ago

March 25, 2026

Press Room

Woot is offering over 20 percent off Switch 2 controllers and games today

Woot is running a day-long sale coinciding with the start of Amazon’s Big Spring Sale. Many products across multiple tech categories are discounted, including dozens of video games and accessories. What’s more, you can get an extra 20 percent off through 12:59AM ET on March 26th when you use code SAVETWENTY. Also, if you’re a Prime member who links their Amazon account, you’ll get free shipping.

Of the grab bag of products, the Nintendo Switch 2-related discounts stood out the most. For instance, you can get the physical version of Mario Kart World at Woot for $52 ($28 off). If your Switch 2 didn’t already include a digital copy of the exclusive, World is a must-have racing title that’s fun to play alone or with others (my colleague Andrew Webster called it “the perfect launch game” in his review). It includes an open world chock-full of challenges — a series first — or you can race through different course-filled cups, just like in the old days.

Additionally, 8BitDo’s fantastic Ultimate 2 and Pro 3 controllers — both compatible with the Switch 2 and other platforms — currently cost $36 and $37.60, respectively. Considering that both gamepads typically cost over $50 each, the savings are steep enough to consider getting more than one gamepad. The Ultimate 2 and Pro 3 have a similar set of features — rumble, motion controls, TMR joysticks, customizable back paddles, an extra shoulder button, and adjustable triggers — but their button and stick layouts cater to different gamers.

While the Ultimate 2 is arranged like a Switch 2 Pro (which itself is an Xbox-style layout), the Pro 3 is more akin to a PlayStation controller, with sticks close together in the middle. One neat feature of the Pro 3 not found in the Ultimate 2 is the ability to pull off its magnetic buttons and swap their positions, which is handy if you’re switching platforms. Both models also feature a 90-day Woot warranty. Read our Pro 3 review.

If you already own Mario Kart World — or don’t own a Nintendo Switch or Switch 2 — there are also plenty of other great deals to choose from, including titles for both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X / S.

Here’s a smattering of favorites:

Technology

Air taxis in the US could launch this summer

Published

11 hours ago

March 25, 2026

Press Room

Air taxis in the US could launch this summer

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

For years, air taxis felt like one of those “almost here” technologies. You have seen the sleek designs. You have heard the promises. Quiet flights. Lower costs. No traffic. And yet, nothing.

Now, that might actually change. A new federal push could put electric air taxis in the sky as early as this summer. Not everywhere. Not at full scale. But in enough places to make this real for the first time. This is the first program of its kind designed to bring air taxis into everyday U.S. airspace.

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Joby’s long-tested aircraft is nearing final FAA approval and could be among the first to carry passengers in U.S. air taxi services. (Joby Aviation)

What exactly is an air taxi?

An air taxi, also called an eVTOL, is a small electric aircraft that can take off and land vertically. Think helicopter without the noise and cost. These aircraft are designed to move people short distances across cities or regions. You could skip traffic entirely and fly from one part of a city to another in minutes.

The pitch is simple:

Faster than driving
Cheaper than helicopters
Cleaner than traditional aircraft.

It sounds great. But getting there has been anything but simple.

Why air taxis are still waiting on FAA approval

The biggest hurdle has not been technology. It has been regulation. The FAA requires commercial aircraft to meet extremely high safety standards. We are talking about failure rates closer to commercial airlines than cars.

That creates a problem. Traditional aircraft follow well-known designs. eVTOLs are completely new. They take off vertically, then transition into forward flight. That adds complexity and risk.

Companies like Joby Aviation, Archer Aviation and others have spent years testing. Some have logged thousands of flights. Still, full approval has remained just out of reach.

How the FAA is fast-tracking air taxis in the U.S.

Now comes a major shift. The government has launched a new initiative called the eVTOL Integration Pilot Program. The goal is to speed things up without lowering safety standards.

Instead of waiting for full nationwide approval, companies can begin limited operations in specific areas. This rollout breaks from the old all-or-nothing approval model. Instead of waiting years for full certification, companies can now prove safety in real-world conditions and expand from there.

Eight pilot programs have been approved across the country, including:

New York and New Jersey, with flights from Manhattan heliports
Texas connecting cities like Dallas, Austin and San Antonio
Florida testing passenger flights, cargo and medical use
North Carolina and Virginia are exploring autonomous operations.

PRIVATE AUTONOMOUS PODS COULD REDEFINE RIDE-SHARING

eVTOL Integration Pilot Program sites. (U.S. Department of Transportation)

These pilot programs span 26 states, creating one of the largest real-world test environments for next-generation aircraft. These aircraft will not just carry passengers. They will support cargo delivery, emergency medical response and regional transportation. Data from these pilot programs will help the FAA create new rules to safely expand air taxi use nationwide. That last part matters more than it seems.

“This is the clearest sign yet from the White House, the FAA and the DOT that bringing air taxis to market in the United States is a real priority,” said Adam Goldstein, founder and CEO of Archer. “We appreciate Secretary Duffy and Administrator Bedford’s leadership and are excited to bring Midnight to the skies of some of America’s largest cities.”

Why air taxis are part of a U.S. vs China aviation race

This push is not only about getting you across town faster. It is also about keeping up. China has already moved ahead in drones and air mobility. Companies there have been running real commercial passenger flights since 2023.

Meanwhile, drones have changed modern warfare and logistics. They are cheap, effective and scalable. The U.S. wants to lead again. That means accelerating innovation across civilian and military systems. Air taxis are one piece of that bigger strategy.

The autonomy factor no one is talking about enough

Here is where things get even more interesting. Many of these aircraft are designed to become autonomous. At first, you will likely see pilots on board. But long-term, the goal is to remove them. Why? Pilots add weight. They increase the cost. They limit scalability.

Companies are already testing highly automated systems that can handle complex flight decisions in real time. That means the version of air taxis you see in the next few years may not be the final version.

What this means for you

This is where it gets real. Air taxis will not replace your car overnight. But they could start changing how you think about getting around. Here is how it could impact you:

Shorter commutes in crowded cities

If you live near a major metro area, you may soon have a new option that cuts travel time dramatically.

Faster emergency response

Medical flights and disaster response could become quicker and more efficient.

New pricing models for travel

At first, rides may feel premium. Over time, prices could drop closer to rideshare levels.

More automation in transportation

If air taxis go autonomous, it signals a bigger shift across all forms of travel.

New safety questions

Faster rollout means regulators and companies will need to prove these systems are safe in the real world.

NEW YORK HALTS ROBOTAXI EXPANSION PLAN

Archer’s aircraft is part of the new FAA pilot program, aiming to launch short city routes that could cut travel times dramatically. (Archer Aviation)

So when will you actually be able to ride one?

The timeline is finally getting clearer. You may start seeing limited operations as early as summer 2026. That does not mean you can open an app and book a flight right away.

Early access will likely focus on:

Specific routes
Controlled environments
Pilot programs with limited passengers.

But once that door opens, expansion tends to move quickly. We saw it with rideshare. We saw it with electric vehicles. This could follow the same path.

“The first time I saw a Waymo on the road in San Francisco, it was a big deal. Now, self-driving cars are just part of everyday life there. I believe the eIPP will do the same thing for air taxis. Every safe flight builds towards public acceptance, and we need to build that acceptance in parallel with our certification efforts,” said Adam Goldstein, CEO of Archer.

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Kurt’s key takeaways

Air taxis have lived in the “almost here” category for a long time. Now, they are stepping into reality. There are still real challenges ahead. Safety, cost and infrastructure all need to catch up. But this new approach changes the pace of progress. Instead of waiting for perfection, the industry is moving forward in controlled steps. And once people experience this kind of travel firsthand, expectations will shift fast.

If you could skip traffic and fly across your city in minutes, would you try it… or wait until everyone else goes first? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com.

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Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on “FOX & Friends.” Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.

Technology

The Bumpboxx BB-777 is the ultimate in boombox nostalgia

Published

22 hours ago

March 25, 2026

Press Room

The Bumpboxx BB-777 is the ultimate in boombox nostalgia

Bumpboxx is fully embracing nostalgia with its latest boombox, the BB-777, which is modeled very closely on the legendary Sharp GF-777. A real deal GF-777 will set you back over $2,000 for one in working order. Plus, that vintage unit lacks modern amenities like Bluetooth or a rechargeable battery. Heck, it doesn’t even have a CD player.

The BB-777 takes the core of the GF, right down to the dual-cassette decks, control layout, and speaker specs printed above the subwoofers. It’s undeniably a gorgeous piece of gear with its vintage silver finish and extensive physical controls. But then it adds a replaceable battery pack, Bluetooth, and an LCD screen. One unfortunate loss is the analog VU meters, something that We Are Rewind managed to include on its Blaster boombox.

There are six speakers: Two Super Woofers with dedicated gain control, two coaxial speakers, and two horn tweeters. They’re pushing out a total of 270W, so volume shouldn’t be a concern. Unless, of course, you’re worried about it being too loud. The speakers are ported too, to help with bass response.

In addition to the dual cassette decks, the BB-777 has a slot-loading CD player, an AM / FM / shortwave radio, USB audio playback (MP3 / WMA / WAV / FLAC / ACC), an aux input (with an included RCA adapter), plus Bluetooth. It can even record directly to a USB drive from the tape decks, CD, or radio for digitizing and archiving. Basically, the only thing it can’t do is stream audio directly over Wi-Fi.

There are also two microphone inputs on the front in case you want to get real old school and use the BB-777 to host a rap battle in the park or MC a break dancing competition. There are also two built-in mics for reasons that I’m not entirely sure of. But it might come in handy if you just want to quickly record your kid saying something funny on cassette.

There is a handle for lugging it around, but you’ll probably want to make use of the shoulder strap if you’re going more than a few yards, as the BB-777 weighs in at a chunky 28-pounds. Instead of going straight to market, Bumpboxx is taking the BB-777 to Kickstarter first. A pledge of $649 will secure you one when they start shipping, supposedly in June. After that, they’ll cost $1,049 at retail.