Fly in Second Life with Intuitive Hand Gestures & Kinect

Turn the volume up before watching this pretty impressive demonstration of flying in Second Life via Kinect:

I like how hands-up and palms-forward gestures control avatar flight and left/right panning -- to me, it metaphorically looks like pushing against the glass surface of virtual reality. (So to speak.) The project is by students at Ryerson Universitys' Interactive Computer Applications and Design (ICAD) Group, in Canada, a school which also developed an earlier Second Life-Kinect project. Remember, USC released code for connecting Kinect to Second Life, to develop your own variations. With Kinect already boasting a 10 million install base, making it the fastest-selling consumer device ever, I think it's time to see commercial, consumer-friendly applications of this technology.

Comments

[Cubey]

Looks like a fun demonstration, but not directly practical as a Second Life controller. It's easier to tap keyboard buttons than to wave your arms around, especially over a long period. All the same, it is pretty nifty.

[Zodiakos]

I always think this stuff is cool, but really just a stopgap measure. For something like this to really be practical, it needs to be movement response based, and not arbitrary gestures. There are still quite a few physical and technical hurdles until we get to that point!

[Ann Otoole InSL]

Dear researchers: Please stop focusing on flying and focus on building instead. kthxbai.

[rosanna]

@Cuby, Think of it as an alternative to get us up and out of our chairs sometimes.

[Adeon Writer]

I know that hand gestures are more practice, but I still really, REALLY want to see 1:1 motion like motion capture for animating avatars.

Even if it's not useful for every day use, it's the most complicated thing to do - and it's impressive. Once you have that down, you can do pretty much program it to do anything with gestures.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Give me a few high-def digital projectors, surround sound, a concave cyclorama (a circular white shower curtain would probably do the trick), the puppeteering code, and a panorama mode for 360 degree viewing.

I'll give you a demo video of the silhouette of somebody dancing inside a circular shower curtain, apparently having a wonderful time :)

[hugobiwan zolnir]

Hello from France. We also did our gesture library and we have tested it with a 3D model of the city of Rennes. After having found the opera the people (about 200 unique testers in the week at laval virtual 2011) had to make a special gesture.

After that they were in SL, in the virtual side of the opera of the city of Rennes. It worked very well.

We are going to use it in june 3th to make the public visit the opera in SL before the last real/virtual event we set up at the end of the week.

I can tell you kinect works very well, yes.

Best regards from France.

Infos about laval virtual prototype : http://ftpast.posterous.com

Infos about the opera : http://www.operabis.net

@hugobiwan