Sure, people have come up with ways to turn the Kinect into a useful tool. We’ve seen KinectHAckers turn it into something that can helped disabled people, assist with surgery and provide solutions to some real world problems out there. But that doesn’t mean that the Kinect has to forget its “fun and gaming” roots.
Today’s featured Kinect hack does just that. Our submitter has manged to “build” his own F1 racing car using a Kinect:
After watching this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgebUfKdDAc) video (german language) or english version (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsvWnGgT7Ok), in which Nico Rosberg explained how they sit in a real F1 car I have started building my own racing chair with the Kinect.
And here is my result 🙂As shown in the video I’m using depth data only for calculating throttle, brake and wheel. Throttle and brake are quite good. I have to do some improvements on wheel because I have to send the data via keystrokes (SendInput) to the application (that’s why the hands are shaking).
You can download the executable with all necessary dependencies here (https://dl.dropbox.com/u/878245/Racing%20Controller.7z). Before starting you should have a quick look into “config.cfg”. You can use this with any racing game. I tested F1 2010 and Trackmania Nations Forever.
Have fun!
Be sure to check out the links he’s provided to try and build one of your own. And if you do turn this into one of your projects, be sure to share the results with us!
