Microsoft Surface Developer Tries Hand at Kinect Hack

Logan Westbrook

Transform, Roll Out, Etc
Feb 21, 2008
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Microsoft Surface Developer Tries Hand at Kinect Hack

[vimeo=17358021]​

A new Kinect demo allows you to hold the raw forces of the universe in the palm of your hand. One caveat however, you can only use them on roughly drawn squares.

Razorfish, a developer that has done a lot of work recently for Microsoft's touch screen/coffee table hybrid project, Surface, has created a Kinect version of its drawing program DaVinci, allowing users to finger paint with a lot less mess and a lot more physics.

DaVinci allows people to get artistic, and then apply forces like gravity and magnetism to the various shapes, dots and swirls in their picture. While the surface version was touch-based, the Kinect version detects open and closed hands, using them like a switch. The hands appear also appear on screen to give users a point of reference, something that Razorfish's Steve Dawson thinks too many gestural interfaces lack. Dawson admits that Razorfish spent some time pretending to be Jedi moving objects around using the Force, and said that additional features - like the abilities to choke your enemies using just your mind, a la Darth Vader - would be added in the coming weeks.

The demo itself looks like a little limited, but it's easy to see how much potential the control scheme has. Games like Auditorium [http://www.playauditorium.com/] or Crayon Physics [http://www.crayonphysics.com/] would be great matches, or something entirely new that uses different forces to solve puzzles and achieve objectives. It's not clear whether game design is something Razorfish wants to pursue, but the seeds are certainly there if it does.


Source: Gizmodo [http://gizmodo.com/5706545/razorfish-davinci-runs-on-kinect-might-as-well-be-bare-bones-telekinesis?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+gizmodo/full+(Gizmodo)]

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esperandote

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Feb 25, 2009
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That doesn't seem so great but i did love Auditorium and Crayon physics but it should be one or the other, i dont think a mix would work.
 

Tsaba

reconnoiter
Oct 6, 2009
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I can see that there can be a lot of good that could come from this, very interesting thanks for sharing.
 

Gildan Bladeborn

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Aug 11, 2009
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Logan Westbrook said:
Once caveat however, you can only used them on roughly drawn squares.
Something struck me as... off about that sentence, and upon re-reading it I've noticed that it is comprised of nonsense. I'm pretty sure the sentence was meant to read "Once One caveat however, you can only used use them on roughly drawn squares."

Super pedant away!
 

JakobBloch

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Apr 7, 2008
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Hmm as far as I can se here not only does it recognize open and closed hands but also some differentt hand gestures. That is pottentially huge. With some developement it could become a full fledged control system (and not that wave-for-a-few-seconds thing). Imagine if it can se your finger. Then the finger becomes a point. Closed hand grabs an item and moves it, an open hand might be used to activate certain features (a flick of the wrist might move you up, down or sideways in a document or picture or on a workspace). And how many fingers are you using to point with? if you point with 1 it might just sjow where your pointing. If you point with 2 it might function as a selection tool.

All this actually just leads me to what I hope will come out soon. A spell based game that uses hand gestures to caste spells and the like.
 

CaptainCrunch

Imp-imation Department
Jul 21, 2008
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JakobBloch said:
Hmm as far as I can se here not only does it recognize open and closed hands but also some differentt hand gestures. That is pottentially huge. With some developement it could become a full fledged control system (and not that wave-for-a-few-seconds thing). Imagine if it can se your finger. Then the finger becomes a point. Closed hand grabs an item and moves it, an open hand might be used to activate certain features (a flick of the wrist might move you up, down or sideways in a document or picture or on a workspace). And how many fingers are you using to point with? if you point with 1 it might just sjow where your pointing. If you point with 2 it might function as a selection tool.

All this actually just leads me to what I hope will come out soon. A spell based game that uses hand gestures to caste spells and the like.
There's some really amazing things coming out of the Kinect 'hacker' community, and most of them are here:

http://openkinect.org/wiki/Main_Page

I expect a full gesture recognition package will be ready within the year, especially if Microsoft gets on board and releases an SDK for Windows.
 

Tharwen

Ep. VI: Return of the turret
May 7, 2009
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That seems incredibly fun... Imagine using that sort of interface in a rail shooter! You could draw objects and throw them at people and stuff!

Why doesn't Microsoft encourage this sort of thing? It can only improve their (and Kinect's) publicity.