Kinect Hacks

We’ve featured Kinect hacks that give users an opportunity to mix song and dance into arguably new works of art. Today’ we’ve got another hack from Chris Vik that aims to do just that. Here are the details of the project straight from the developer himself:

“Since April 2011 I’ve been working solidly with the Microsoft Kinect, developing my software, Kinectar, to enable its use as a MIDI controller for performing music live. I’ve done a number of performances around Australia since I started the project, however, it’s safe to say that, although I would consider myself an electronic musician, I’m certainly no dancer. Enter, Paul…

“Dancer, Paul Walker and I have joined forces to bring the Kinect controlled music concept into the world of contemporary dance. Recently we obtained a residency at PACT theatre (centre for emerging artists), where we spent the week developing different ways of implementing my Kinect music control system in a dance context.

“My system is developed in Max and uses OpenNI drivers, OSCeleton and Ableton Live.”

It’s nice to know how the Kinect is bringing people together to collaborate on these interesting performance pieces that allow us tgo experience things like music and dance differently. Head on over to their project website to get more details about the project.

Fruit Ninja is just one of those games that tool the world by storm. It has such a simple concept — fruit flies around the screen, you slice with your finger, rinse and repeat. It makes you want to bang your head that you didn’t come up with it and are not rolling in piles of Fruit Ninja dough.

In case you haven’t heard, the game has been ported to the Xbox 360 as an XBLA downloadable. Same mechanics only this time, instead of using just your fingers to slice the fruit, you can now use your entire body. The game is the perfect tool for living out all your 80s ninja movie fantasies. But say you wanted to show off your jumpkicks but don’t have an Xbox 360 handy, is there just nothing for you to do?

The good news is someone has actually managed to port the game for the PC Kinect. Same good ol’ Fruit Ninja fun, just on your PC. The developer describes it as follows:

“This Kinect hack enables you to controll Fruit Ninja game PC version with Kinect. You can simulate click with left hand and move cursor with right hand. You can set cursor moving speed. If you want to hold click you should put your right hand to the air than you put down for stop holding.”

Head on over to the project wesbite to download the hack. You may want to brush up on your Hungarian though (we’d also like to beg the developer to come out with an English version soon).

It’s amazing how people have found so many different uses for the Kinect’s motion sensor and depth camera. We’ve seen it used to map and produce 3D reconstructions of everything from the human form to buildings. Today’s hack is from Matherix Labs and another one that utilizes the Kinect for those purposes.

The guys at Matherix labs promise that what they’ve come up with is one of the better alternatives out there because it is so easy to use. Using their method, you can create 3D reconstructions in minutes; all you need is a capture of the object from all angles, a Kinect and the 3Dify application.

After watching the video, I can say that the renders do seem very accurate and their application is something that could be worth checking out of you’re planning on working with something that could involve recreating 3D images. Head on over to the Matherix Labs website for more details.

When  I was a kid, I was fascinated with the orchestra conductor. I thought it was amazing how he can control the music by waving his arms with that little stick of his. At school, I would usually volunteer to be the conductor and lead my classmates as they sang the national anthem. I still have some of that fascination left in me and every once in a while, usually when I get my hands on a discarded chopstick, I would find myself conducting to an invisible orchestra.

Now, I’m sure some of you out there have done this yourselves as well. No need to be shy, we all have our little weird habits. The good news is that today’s featured hack can let yo become a conductor and now have an actual orchestra to lead. All you need is a Kinect.

The video shows an application that allows a conductor to control the music with different hand gestures. Waving to the right, left or front can have different results such as triggering cues, causing ring modulation and changing the frequency. We don’t have much details on how it was constructed but its obvious that this one takes advantage of the Kinect’s motion sensing abilities and links it to some type of audio system.

It’s cool watching her perform with an invisible orchestra and hear those disembodied voices follow her command. Check out the video and experience it yourself.

We’ve been caught up with so many non-gaming uses for the Kinect. We’ve seen it as a tool to educate, advertise and assist with healthcare. Is it possible that we’re forgetting its gaming roots?

Probably not, as today’s featured hack will show. There are still people out there who look at the Kinect and see how its motion sensing technology can be applied in different game play scenarios. Today’s hack is called “Starfighter-K” (we’re assuming the “K” stands for Kinect) and is a throw back at games that we used to play in the 80s… except this time you will be using your body to control the ship and not a joystick.

On his Youtube page, the developer describes the game as “Starfighter-K is a very old-style tunnel game, based on an old ASCII game, designed to work with the Kinect. Brings together childish programming with the fun of flying a plane as a kid.” He also states that the hack was built using MS Kinect SDK. Controls for the game seem simple and intuitive enough: you tilt your arms to pilot the ship, move hands back to go faster and forward to slow down.

Think it’s simple? Well the developer has issued an open challenge. We’ve included a link below so you can download the game and take him up on it. Let us know how high you can score!