Kinect for Windows Can See You Up Close

[alandavidson]

I'm excited to see what comes of this. Sure, the Kinect isn't the greatest thing in the world right now, but with time and companies like Microsoft willing to back people who want to make it better and do some pretty amazing things with it, it will get better and be viable force in technology.

 

[UnderCoverGuest]

You know what I'd use a Kinect for on my computer?

Motion-capture work. I could finally make animations in my own living-room, send them to my buddy who could rig them, and together we could make a host of mods for Skyrim that expand the viceral pummeling that--

Just kidding, didn't really mean to bring "that topic" up here. But there are a lot of technical uses for this kind of motion-tracking technology other than dancing like a freak in the kitchen trying to tell your kinect to send a signal to your computer to inform Winamp to play the next song in your playlist.

 

[octafish]

You know what I'd use a Kinect for on my computer?

Motion-capture work. I could finally make animations in my own living-room, send them to my buddy who could rig them, and together we could make a host of mods for Skyrim that expand the viceral pummeling that--

Just kidding, didn't really mean to bring "that topic" up here. But there are a lot of technical uses for this kind of motion-tracking technology other than dancing like a freak in the kitchen trying to tell your kinect to send a signal to your computer to inform Winamp to play the next song in your playlist.

Yeah, mo-cap seems to hold the most potential. Remember those kinect minecraft hacks with 3d models, and animations?

 

[Strazdas]

so a completely useless and terrible idea becomes even more useless and terrible. what a shock!

 

[Spud of Doom]

This is good. They've always had some weak support for PC devs but they are doing what they need to be doing here to bring it up to a good level.

 

[Sampler]

Could be good for presentations, to initiate changes in the power point slides (start vids, next slide, kick-off an animation).

Though I guess you'd have trouble distinguishing commands from natural gesticulations.

 

[Roxor]

From the sounds of it, 3D digitisation is about to get a lot more accessible. Link a few kinects to a PC and cobble together some software to combine the data from them and you could turn real objects into 3D models for use in your game.

 

[tahrey]

Was it really necessary to convert the centimetres to inches like that? If you can't understand metric by now, go hide under a rock

(Yeah I know it's hypocritical as I do that all the time, but shit, it's pretty easy to go use google's built in conversion engine, or just try to remember there's approx 2.5cm to the inch)

*grabs tape measure* as I sit here at my dual monitor setup, I'm 45cm from the main one and 60 from the secondary. So it would involve sitting slightly further away than I'm strictly comfortable with - or really have space for, even on a none-too-cramped desk - but it's within the realm of practicality for motion control.

However, really, at this distance I can reach out and touch the surface of both monitors without much difficulty - not stretching my arm or leaning forwards. It needs a proper fisheye lens on it so it can deal with gestures made at very nearly point-blank range. Say as little as 10cm / 4in...

 

[Scars Unseen]

This might be a good replacement for my TrackIR. It would be nice to have something for 6DoF head tracking that doesn't require me to wear a hat with reflectors.

 

[Jowe]

I am reminded of that old story in which the US spends thousands of dollars trying to develop an ink pen that works in space while the russians just used a pencil.

By the way this story is false, using a pencil in space is a very bad idea, it splinters and graphite is conductive, so it can cause all sorts of chaos. Secondly the pen that was developed to work in space was made by a guy called peter fisher, and all space missions use his pens till this day.
Thought for the day or something.