A bunch of boffins at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies (USC ICT) have developed some middleware that enables pretty much any PC game to be operated with Microsoft’s Kinect motion sensor.
The middleware is called Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit (FAAST) and is described thusly:
FAAST includes a custom VRPN server to stream the user’s skeleton over a network, allowing VR applications to read the skeletal joints as trackers using any VRPN client. Additionally, the toolkit can also emulate keyboard input triggered by body posture and specific gestures. This allows the user add custom body-based control mechanisms to existing off-the-shelf games that do not provide official support for depth sensors.
In other words, the middleware can be programmed to interpret various body postures and gestures into game commands. FAAST allows the Kinect to do what it was intended to do on a PC, and in any game. To prove their concept, the researchers have released some footage of World of WarCraft being played using gesture based commands.
Now of course the researchers at USC ICT aren’t just buggering around with the Kinect because they are a bunch of latent gamers – there are practical implications.
USC’s Skip Rizza explains that the ability to emulate keyboard actions with body movement could be adapted to movement rehabilitation programmes for those undergoing treatment for strokes and/or traumatic brain injury.
Rizza also suggests that enabling just about any game to be played using a Kinect could be a step toward encouraging fat, lazy childhood gamers to get off the couch and actually move around a little.
FAAST is free to use and distribute for research and noncommercial purposes. The preliminary version of FAAST is currently available for Windows only. The team is currently preparing to release code as an open-source project. A Linux port is planned for the near future.
For more information on the project, visit the FAAST website.
World of WarCraft played using Kinect << Comments and views
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