Lasers. Yes, I know that they’re technically just lights but seeing them in action is always cool. How may times have you stopped whatever you were doing to admire a laser show? Admit it, you’ve done it almost every time you come across one. What if I told you they can become even more interesting when hooked up to a Kinect? Today’s Kinect hack is about someone who may have just managed to do that:
“This project is a work in progress that involves creating light sculptures out of laser light. The laser light appears as an almost tactile object cutting through mid air illuminating dust, smoke and other airborne particles to create a swirling, mesmerising planes of light. These beams of light are interactive, responding to touch and movement through the use of 3d tracking technology with the aim of this project being to create responsive environments of light, colour and sound.
“The software used to control the laser was created using OpenFrameworks and C++ by Jayson Haebich and uses an Xbox kinect to do 3D tracking. The software creates the lasers beams by sending vectors to the laser via a DAC. The lasers position is then calibrated to the 3-Dimensional field of data viewed from the kinect, which is used to detect when intersections between users and the laser beams occur. These interactions then trigger effects such as colour changes or causing the beams to move which gives users the feeling of being able to touch the laser beams.”
That looked fun, didn’t it? Hopefully it’s something that we’ll see more of in the future. To learn more about the project, be sure to visit the link below!
