Obligatory Minority Report reference. There, it’s out of the way, and we can enjoy this interesting video without worrying about when the allusion is going to drop.
The University of Lincoln in the UK is hosting an interactive exhibition in which users can navigate a number of gigapixel photos by using over-sized gestures tracked by a Kinect. Meanwhile, your experience is enhanced by ambient noise recorded at the location of the photo. Of course, the people and cattle in the pictures don’t move, which kind of breaks the illusion, but it’s a nice touch. Check out the video inside. → Read More
The great smartening of the idiot box continues. It was several years ago that we started seeing the first internet-connected TVs, and since then TV makers have been adding more and more slightly useful features, generally one or two per generation — it wouldn’t do to put them all out at once, of course. And while much functionality is still left to the set-top box, media player, or console, it seems inevitable that these increasingly capable display devices will integrate things we consider cutting-edge today.
Take gesture controls, for instance. Microsoft’s hit gaming peripheral, the Kinect, has made people aware of the possibilities of motion tracking and depth-sensing cameras, though it’s often hacks that really deliver on the potential. PrimeSense, who contributed much to the development of Kinect, is hoping to combine this next-gen interface with next-gen display hardware. → Read More
We’ve seen hacks for the Kinect from the very start, and even some that suggested one like this might be possible: a Kinect being moved around like a camera, recording the depth of everything it sees and building up a full-3D map of the room and every object in it. They call it KinectFusion, and it’s really quite fascinating to watch.
The position of the camera is constantly tracked by monitoring the depth of known objects in its view, and with that information known, the 3D data recorded can be given absolute measurements, producing a static map of the room. And it all happens in real time. Watch just the first demonstration and you can see the system “painting” a 3D model of the room as quickly as the researcher can move the Kinect around. → Read More
The Kinetic Space project uses almost any type of 3D spatial scanner – including the Xbox Kinect – to register and read gestures. How does it work? Well, first you register your body and then record a set of gestures. The system can read those gestures and trigger events based on the speed and repetition of the gestures. The best part is the granularity: you can even scan hand motions for an interesting form of man-machine sign language. → Read More
And I am C-3PO, human-cyborg relations. And this is my counterpart R2D2. We’ve clearly been pimped out by Master George again. It was probably R2′s fault. That malfunctioning little twirp. I told him not to sell out and let us be turned into cheap gaming accessories, but he’s faulty, malfunctioning. Kept babbling on about his mission. We seem to be made to suffer. It’s our lot in life. → Read More
Asus has been working with Kinect co-creator PrimeSense to put together a PC-based version of Microsoft’s hit depth-detecting game controller. The thought, I presume, was that PC gamers and hackers would like a native device and an open platform for gesture-based game and OS controls.
Their creation has been around for a bit, but we haven’t heard much regarding it, perhaps because it isn’t really an exact copy of the Kinect at all, but an inferior product. Asus is launching a new version (the Xtion Pro Live, detailed here at VR Zone), but one can’t help being reminded of their ill-fated “Eee Stick,” another game-controller clone that never took off. → Read More
It’s been a while since we’ve posted any interesting Kinect hacks. They were coming fast and furious for a while, but this is the first I’ve seen in a while that really makes me happy. Robotics students at Stanford put this “JediBot” together from an articulating arm and a Kinect (and of course a little robotics know-how). The Kinect tracks the location of both “lightsabers” and has the robot make an attack or defending move based on their positions. → Read More
Last week, Microsoft filed for an interesting U.S. trademark for ‘NUADS’, describing it as:
Advertising services, namely, promoting and marketing the goods and services of others through online interactive video games by enabling consumers to interact with third-party advertising content through voice or body gestures via computer game console and sensor devices.
On stage during “The New Geography Of Gaming” panel at Web 2.0 Summit, the topic of conversation between Bing Gordon, Activision’s Robert Kotick and Microsoft’s Don Mattrick focused on how amazingly engaging today’s games. A key talking point was plastics vs. not plastics i.e controllers (or guitars in the case of Activision’s Guitar Hero) vs. the gesture and spoken command control interface of the newly launched Microsoft Kinect. → Read More
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