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.<\/p>\n
The middleware is called Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit (FAAST) and is described thusly:<\/p>\n
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.<\/em><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \n