New World Notes

How to Connect Kinect Motion Capture to Your SL Avatar

Jessica Pixel has all the details you need for streaming Kinect-based motion capture to your Second Life avatar here, the cool hack we saw on her live YouTube stream earlier today.

"The software [called Rinions] is developed by Fumi Hax (Fumikazu Iseki IRL) at the Network System Laboratory group at the Toyko University of Information Science," she says. "Their website is here. There is actually a more recent version of Firestorm (4.6.9) compiled with the Rinions code available now and it's pretty easy to setup and run. I've even been able to get the animation server working, so if another person had the proper software installed, they could see my movement in their viewer in real time (versus over the stream)."

Got questions about the setup for Jessica? Ask her in Comments!

Check Out This Tutorial for Setting Up Real-Time Second Life Avatar Movement With a Kinect

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

If you happen to have a Kinect, Microsoft's body-tracking camera peripheral for the Xbox, laying around nearby, you might be surprised by what you can do with it in Second Life. Jessica Pixel posted a quick tutorial on her site yesterday for how to connect your Kinect to Second Life and animate your avatar in real time. It all boils down to Rinions and a special SL viewer that allow you to temporarily replace an avatar animation with animation data provided by the Kinect. The end result isn't seamless, but it's still pretty darn cool.

And while you have your Kinect hooked up, here's something else you may want to try...

Oculus Rift + Kinect = Awesome Real Time 3D Environment

So a dude called "PlayerDuce" on YouTube recently uploaded this video which shows him using the Oculus Rift in conjunction with the Kinect. He uses the Rift's sensor for head rotation, while his Kinect generates a 3D point cloud environment around him. Watch:

I haven't quite wrapped my head around how he does this, but it seems to create a 3D world (abstract though it may be) in real time, displayed around the user. Mr. PlayerDuce sees some interesting applications to this tech:

Kinect Connected through Second Life to an RL Museum

This is a brilliant and recent fusion of Kinect and Second Life, featured last month at a museum in the Netherlands -- by moving their body before the Kinect camera, patrons could control the flight of an SL avatar, and move it through a surreal landscape:

You can still visit the site in Second Life, by the way -- visit the LEA blog for details there.

This devilishly cool hack comes to us from the SL artist known as Marx Catteneo, who told me a bit how he made it:

Kinect System Turns Objects Into Human-Controlled Avatars

Why use Kinect to just control a human avatar, when your Kinect can turn all kinds of objects into avatars that you control? Using KinectFusion, these Microsoft Research researchers have made just that possible, with a system called KinEtre (LOL WUT?) Just watch.

Hat tip: Some dude in my Facebook friends' list whose name I sadly now forget. Gratitude, dude!

Kinect-Driven 3D Holographic Chat: Is This the Future of Avatar Interaction?

When I think about the future of virtual worlds and 3D-based interaction, I'm less likely to think of tablet computing, and more apt to look at things like this -- Human Media Lab's TeleHuman, a Kinect-driven 3D holographic chat:

Read about how they do that on Gizmodo: "The director of the Human Media Lab says the TeleHuman could be available for $5,000 within five years." If there's market interest, I bet it could be done sooner and much cheaper. And because you're converting a person into 3D visual data, it's easy to think about immersing them into a simulated 3D environment, so it doesn't feel like you're talking with a disembodied ghost.

Hat tip: Jeremy Owen Turner.

Augmented Reality Sandbox Displays Virtual Water Flowing Through Grooves You Make in Real Sand

The Augmented Reality Sandbox is a National Science Foundation-funded project at UC Davis which uses Kinect to simulate real time water which flows through the grooves you make in the actual sandbox. It's an awesome demonstration of augmented reality for use in a simulation, and it's also just cool. Watch:

Read more about the project here. The site explanation is pretty heavy reading for a non-technical audience, but this is basically how it works:

Kinect Install Base Grows to 1 in 4 Xbox 360 Owners

I missed this news when it arrived last month, but it's still worth repeating now: 1 in 4 Xbox 360 owners now own a Kinect, Geekwire reported, meaning 18 million of the 360's 66 million worldwide install base. That's a large (and to judge by the growth trends) expanding market for motion-controlled games and interactivity. All the more reason to root for projects like the real time Kinect-to-SL motion capture system now being developed in Japan.

Tokyo University Developing Real Time, Open Source Kinect-to-Second Life Software

SLKinect 2 is a pretty cool open source project being developed by folks at Network System Laboratory of Tokyo University to connect real world motion captured by a Kinect to avatar movement in Second Life and OpenSim. Watch:

Fumi Iseki, a developer with NSL, recently told me more about the project: "These softwares are open source, so anyone can download, read code and use [them] software freely." The code has almost no licensing restrictions, and they've also created code for third party viewers to use. "We hope that third party viewers include our patch."

This is part of a larger SL/OpenSim-oriented project by Network Systems Laboratory:

Kinect Hardware & Firmware for Windows Devs Coming Soon

3D hackers, keep your eyes on this: Microsoft is developing a version Kinect's hardware and firmware specifically for Windows. In other words, this version of Kinect will work well with PCs. For example:

Of particular interest to developers will be the new firmware which enables the depth camera to see objects as close as 50 centimeters in front of the device without losing accuracy or precision, with graceful degradation down to 40 centimeters.

In other words, optimal camera distance for nearby objects in a home computing environment, as opposed to a living room (which Kinect was originally designed for.) So that means a version of Kinect that will better work for innovative 3D projects like the one above: A Kinect hack that links real world facial expression to a dynamic sculpture in Second Life.

No word when this will actually hit shelves (that I can see), but hopefully 3D hackers will get a great holiday surprise this year.

Hat tip: VentureBeat.