Recently I migrated from Beta2 to Kinect for Windows SDK 1.0, so here’s a quick review of the new features: works w/ Kinect for Windows hardware AND the ‘old’ Kinect for XBox360 requires Kinect for Windows SDK 1.0 (or at least its runtime) tracks two players (you can play split-screen-games…) sends not only WASD keys, but also UHJK racing-mode only, no detection of additional gestures! (like the ones in the older versions) you can use the DLLs to write your own interface (and detect more gestures) –> mail me, or comment if you have questions Oh and one random thought: I think the delay you feel when playing a game with it, is due to the slowness of your hands rather than b/c of software-delay – it’s just a theory I can’t prove, but compare it with playing w/ a hardware steering wheel… Here’s the download link
Tag: KinDriver
KinDrive enhanced – working w/ every game using DirectX input
Last week – on thursday to be precise – I stumbled over a library to send input to the system on DirectX-level, called InputManager (a big different to all the tons of SendKeys()-wrappers out there!!). So great thanks to Shay from Israel for making this awesome library!! As all the rest of the architechture was up and running already, I just made a simple WPF application to show the Skeleton and listen for a gesture as well. The gesture (streching your arms in the air) causes the WASD-input to halt, a press of the F-Key (which I usually use to enter vehicles/use weapons in games..) and finally after 3.5 seconds everything continues as before. Here’s a video of the KinDrive for GTA WPF application: Then of course: GTA IV: And just for fun – Need For Speed Carbon: For those interested in DirectX-level Keyboard/Mouse input: I’ll blog about the InputManager anytime soon. My plan is to open source…
KinDrive
Hey everyone, I’m happy to announce that I finally did the re-coding of KinDriver, now called KinDrive. The new version is made with the Beta 2 SDK, is a lot more stable, simpler and faster than the old one. It lacks of speech recognition and remote-controlability, but I splitted the two main features (tracking and keypressing) into separate assemblies, so it’s very easy to build a whole new application out of it! Here comes the code part: (if you aren’t interested in using coding, skip to the last paragraph) TCD.KinDrive.Tracking.dll In this assembly there are three classes: KinDriveTracker, Point3D and DriveInformation TCD.Mathematics.Point3D is just a helper class for 3D vectors/points with some useful calculation-methods (like calculating the distance etc.) DriveInformation exposes two properties, Throttle and Steer, as well as a constructor that takes a SkeletonFrame as a parameter. Tracking and steer/throttle calculations are done by this very same constructor….
The KinDriver Sources
Hey there, As a result of some requests I got, I decided to share the KinDriver sources with you =) There are 3 important things to notice: 1. You can define how keypresses are generated: there are three different methods that may or may not work with different computer games. 2. There’s built-in speech recognition, but it’s currently deactivated, b/c I don’t really know how to define grammar… 3. There’s something called “KinDriverControllerService” – it’s a WCF service exposed at http://localhost:8001/connect (you probably have to allow it in your firewall). This service can be used to send commands (activate/deactivate/custom macros..) to KinDriver. I’ve made a client for WP7, but as it’s more like a proof-of-concept, I encourage you to write a new one (there are WCF libraries for Android and even iOS I think^) you can get the sources here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7813771/Blog/KinDriverSources.zip If you have any further questions comment on this…
Von unfertigen Apps und Aachen
Bisher habe ich ja eher nicht über private Dinge gebloggt. Ich starte jetzt mal einen Versuch, vielleicht ändert sich das ja 😉 Also machen wir es chronologisch. Im letzten Post (der leider schon eine ganze Weile in der Vergangenheit liegt) habe ich ja demonstriert wie man mit der Kinect Auto fährt… Leider gibt es einen gewaltigen long-tail von dummen und oder faulen Usern, die es als befriedigend empfinden unter die beiden Videos zu trollen… Es ist ärgerlich, aber wahrscheinlich muss man einfach Mitleid mit diesen.. Usern empfinden. Jedenfalls habe ich mich entschlossen, diesen Trollen etwas entgegenzusetzen. Die Rede ist von einem weiteren Demovideo mit mehr Background-Info. Ein großer Makel an KinDriver war bisher die nur mäß funktionierende Sprachsteuerung. In der jetzt aktuellen Version ist sie unverändert implementiert, wird jedoch ergänzt durch eine WCF-Fernsteuerung in Form einer Windows Phone 7 App. Programmiert ist es schon. Getestet im Emulator.. Man kann sagen…
Kinect tracking
UPDATE: The’re newer versions and posts about this software – if you want to test it please have a look at: http://blog.mosthege.net/tag/kindriver/ It’s been only 5 days since MS launched the Kinect for Windows SDK and in three of these days I coded KinDriver (and another small tool I’ll write about too). KinDriver is a dynamic Kinect tracker designed to be used with racing/driving games. We’ve seen Kinect trackers designed for the use w/ games already (talking of FAAST at this point), which may work nicely with ego-shooters or adventure games, but have a huge disadvantage when it comes to driving: They only know 1 or 0, just like the real keyboard. But while you can (an do) tip keys many times in a short period of time on your keyboard, doing so with you whole body is even more exhausting than you think! So I made a tracker that…